Department Chairs

Department Chairs are the heart of instructional leadership, supervising, leading, and supporting ACC’s instructional programs in career and technical fields and in transfer disciplines. Department Chairs put students at the center of their leadership and support faculty and staff in focusing on student success.

The Vice Chancellor of Instruction periodically brings together all the Department Chairs, deans, and associate vice chancellors to learn, listen, plan, and connect. Information from recent collegewide department chair meetings can be accessed on this page, where you can find a link to each meeting’s slide deck.

Organizational Reference

AR 1.0500.02 says that instructional departments “may elect their Department Chair” as “noted in the current Organizational Reference.” Below is the 2024-2025 Organizational Reference.

AY 2024-2025 Organizational Reference (Instruction)

Department Chair Roles & Responsibilities

Distributed Leadership Implementation Work Group (4/2025)

Shared governance is a defining feature of higher education that reflects the power and impact of multiple voices in decision-making, particularly the power of faculty voices in decisions related to teaching and learning. At ACC, where we have a strong commitment to shared governance, we are redesigning our instructional program leadership to reflect that same focus on the benefits of multiple voices.

We’re calling this redesign “distributed leadership”, and the goal is to invite more faculty into the work of departmental governance and operations, because we believe that every faculty member should have a voice in the essential work of the college. The Distributed Leadership Implementation Work Group is bringing creativity, commitment, and discernment to this opportunity to more systematically distribute the work of our instructional programs.

The benefits will include broader voices, greater opportunities for faculty to contribute, and more time for department chairs to engage in strategic leadership.