A Study of Relationship Between Triple Skills of Department Chairs and Improvement of Educational Quality

Department Chairs are among the most important resources in higher education system. However, they have rarly been studied scientifically. Hence, the present study aims to investigate the aforementioned matter and explore the relationship between triple skills of department chairs and educational quality in 18 departments in Tarbiat Moallem University through correlation method. The skills of department chairs in three aspects of technical, human relation and conceptual including 18 special skills and the educational quality in terms of 14 performance indicators of higher education were also studied. The relationship between skills and educational quality were measured. Statistical population in this study covered all members of faculty of 18 departments who were involved in teaching during the first semester of 2005-06 academic year. Among statistical population, 172 members were selected through stratified random sampling method. Two questionnaires prepared by the researcher were used for data collection. Then, the data was analyzed and correlation was measured. The result of this study showed that: The existence of a meaningful and positive correlation between technical as well as conceptual skills department heads and their educational quality was proved. But the correlation between human relation skills and educational quality wasn’t observed.