Evaluation in departments is widespread but often fails to spark positive change. Based on his extensive work with academic departments across the country, Wergin explains that successful department evaluation exists only when faculty and departments have a strong influence on the purposes, processes, and methods of evaluation. The central purpose of Departments That Work is how academic programs can make evaluation more useful and critical reflection more likely.

Topics include:
* How quality has become confused with such concepts as effectiveness, productivity, and marketability and how it might more constructively be conceived as focusing on the engagement of the department with its constituencies
* An examination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of faculty work, the concept of organizational motivation, and the factors influencing identification with the institution and motivation to contribute to it
* The three critical factors of effective department evaluation
* How academic leaders can create a culture of engagement
* How to define and negotiate academic values with diverse stakeholders
* How to ask the right questions and collect the right idea
* How to determine standards and make meaning of evaluation data
* An overall summary of specific recommendations for academic leaders and departmental faculty, including an appendix of the constructs presented in each chapter