Professor Richard Chait Honored with Council of Independent Colleges Award

Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Richard Chait has received the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Academic Leadership Award. The award was presented Saturday at the CIC's annual Chief Academic Officers Institute in San Antonio. The honor was conferred by the chief academic officers, typically the second-ranking officer after the president at each of CIC's 548 member colleges and universities.

During the award presentation, CIC President Richard Ekman noted that Chait "is a popular and gifted teacher... [and] an imaginative researcher who has created fresh understandings of critical campus issues, ranging from shared governance, to faculty employment and evaluation, to academic freedom."

Chait was honored for his pathbreaking research on the management and governance of colleges and universities. For more than 20 years, Chait has taught in the Ed School's professional education programs for leaders in higher education. He is an expert on the terms and conditions of faculty employment; has studied the roles, responsibilities, and performance of boards of trustees; and has written on faculty work life. His current research focuses on job satisfaction of junior faculty as part of the Ed School's Study of New Scholars, for which he is the coprincipal investigator.