This study examines the influence of job stress, role conflict, and job satisfaction on department chairs’ likelihood to serve for another term. Analyzing factors that affect department chairs’ decisions to serve for another term is important. The results of this analysis not only revealed the struggles faced by the department chairs, but they also provided university central administrators with the feedback to address the department chairs’ needs and to attract faculty members for this middle manager position.

The participants of this study were the department chairs of seventy land grant universities, specifically those who serve in the fields of agriculture, engineering, and science. Four research questions guided the study, they are: (1) According to the department chair what are the factors that cause significant stress? (2) How do the factors that cause stress vary among department chairs at different disciplines, i.e., Agriculture, Science, and Engineering? (3) How do gender differences affect the issues surrounding department chairs role, i.e., stress, role conflict, and job satisfaction? (4) Are there any relationships between department chair’s perceived stress, job satisfaction, and likelihood to serve for another term? In order to answer the research questions I used factor analysis, MANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multiple regressions as the statistical methods.

This study found increased workload and insufficient time for scholarship and/or research were two factors that ranked as the highest with regard to factors that cause stress to department chairs in all three fields (i.e., agriculture, engineering, and science). In addition, this finding indicated that department chair’s work is similar, regardless of the disciplines. The tasks of department chairs are not discipline-dependent. However, unlike the disciplines variable, gender variable shows significant difference in terms of its impact towards stress variable. On the contrary, when it comes to job satisfaction, gender does not significantly make a difference. The independent variables, namely job stress, job satisfaction, as well as other predictors, i.e., disciplines, gender, and age, contributed to the variance in the dependent variable, that is, department chairs’ likelihood to serve for another term. Age variable shows that the older the department chairs’ age, the less likely they will serve for another term. Another predicting variable, stress, is related to workload, proven to significantly influence the department chairs’ likelihood to serve for another term. Likewise, another stress variable pertinent to the availability of support, also significantly predicted the department chairs’ likelihood to serve for another term. Finally, job satisfaction, as anticipated, significantly predicts the department chairs’ likelihood to serve for another term. The higher their score on job satisfaction, the more likely they will serve for another term as department chairs.