A collection of essays is presented, primarily taken from a quarterly newsletter titled "The Department Advisor." The essays include: "A Few Suggestions to New Department Chairs" (Artin Arslanian); "Chairing the Small Department" (Robert Wolverton); "Common and Uncommon Concerns: The Complex Role of the Community College Department Chair" (Myrna Goldenberg); "Communicating Effectively" (Kenneth Eble); "Chairperson and Dean: The Essential Partnership" (Charles Warren); "I Wanted To Be an Administrator; Now How Do I Cope with the Stress" (Jerry May and Robert McBeath); "Successful Proactive Recruiting Strategies" (William Hynes); "Women in Academic Departments: Uneasy Roles, Complex Relationships" (Lois Vander Waerdt); "Faculty Evaluation: The Roles of the Department Chair" (John Bennett); "Managing Part-Time Faculty" (George Biles and Howard Tuckman); "The Department Chair's Leadership Role in Supervising Nonfaculty Personnel" (Donald DeRosa and Quelda Wilson); "Chairpersons and Faculty Development" (Eble); "Tactics and Strategies for Faculty Development" (Wilbert McKeachie); "Teaching the Nontraditional Student" (Eileen Rice); "Chairs as Facilitators of Scholarly Writing" (Robert Boice); "Coping with Difficult Colleagues" (Boice); "Legal Liability: Reducing the Risk" (David Figuli); "Sex in the Department" (Mark Hurtubise); "Dealing with the Chemically Dependent Employee" (Figuli); "The Department Chair's Dilemma: Bad Apples in the Department" (Waerdt); "The Department Chair's Transforming Role in 'Strategic' Academic Planning: How To Work in concert with the Faculty" (Robert Cope); "Five Indices of Program Vitality" (Thomas Emmet and John Bennett); "Positioning the Department for Survival and Growth: An Exercise" (John Minter); "Clarifying Priorities through Paired Choices" (Elwood Ehrle); "The Department Chair and Enrollment Management: Some Strategies" (Antoinette Iadarola); and "Developing Community-Based Programs: A Perspective for Success" (P. Anthony Zeiss). (JDD)