Demands for openness and honesty are ubiquitous, yet the flood of information in higher education now is overwhelming. Institutions post reams of financial reports, enrollment figures, public statements, policies, and procedures that affect faculty careers. The many acronyms and budget models of upper administrators often are unfamiliar to the vast majority of faculty members. It’s impossible to keep up with all the announcements, newsletters, and e-updates sent by offices and figures all over the campus.

A major role of today’s chairs is to distill this sprawling mass of data into digestible units, and then translate them into clear, relevant, useful guidance to support and advance faculty careers. Your colleagues are looking to you, as chair, to convey the overload of information and procedures in a navigable way. With that in mind, I offer the following five sequential steps to help chairs devise, and put into practice as much as possible, a policy of openness and honesty.