English Department chair to step down

Joseph Conte, chair of the English Department since 2001, will resign in May and remain on staff as a professor, according to department officials and professors.

Although Conte's plans to step down were not unexpected, the department has been unable to find an in-house professor willing to step up to the chair's office. Professor Mark Shechner will serve as the interim chair.

"I will be a 'bridge chair.' The hope is that we can successfully hire a chair from the outside for fall 2006," Shechner said.

Conte was unavailable for comment on Tuesday, but those involved in recent departmental meetings said they suspect Conte is stepping down to continue his scholarly work after four years of draining administrative business.

"It's a laborious and mostly thankless job," said Susan Eilenberg, an associate professor of English.

Eilenberg described Conte's tenure as chair as "very smooth." "He did an excellent job keeping us together productively and amicably," she said.

Shechner said a national search will be conducted for a chair, hasn't happened at UB since the 1960s.

"It presents us with an opportunity to hire a chair with major national and even international credentials, to solve an administrative dilemma and to upgrade our professional visibility in a single blow," Shechner said.

Conte himself was an in-house replacement for former chair and current associate professor Barbara Bono. Conte, who primarily teaches 20th century American literature, took the position in fall 2001 and has been a UB faculty member since 1988.

"He was one of the best chairs we've had," said Stefan Fleischer, an associate English professor who has taught at UB for 38 years. "He was very precise on administrative detail. He's extremely fair to people. He doesn't play favorites, he doesn't screw around, and he's brought us through a kind of challenging time."

Fleischer also attributed Conte's resignation to the "thankless" nature of the job.

"It's a hard job and nobody wants to do it," he said.

According to Eilenberg, Conte has been trying to find a replacement, but the only professor willing to step up was Shechner for the interim. Following a departmental meeting with Uday Sukhatme, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the department was granted permission to start an outside search, which was discussed at a Feb. 16 faculty meeting.

Eilenberg credited the void of candidates to professor demographics. Becoming a department chair, she said, means putting aside all scholarly work, all writing and academic opportunities.

Right now, UB has too many older professors who don't want to change positions and too many younger professors who don't want to give up their academic momentum after having just received tenure, she said.

"It's not a matter of crisis of morale," Eilenberg said. "It's simply a matter of not enough people to go around."

Shechner, who has taught at UB since 1970 and has served as interim chair before, said finding a chair outside UB would help the young faculty.

"The choice of going outside for the next chair reflects in part a need to find younger leadership while our own younger faculty are coming of age to lead themselves," he said.