Success for All Posted on January 20, 2009 Dr. Patricia Molina sees achieving maximum potential for department members as her core responsibility as department head.

Becoming a department head is a tremendous change in terms of the responsibilities that are associated with it, the feeling that I'm no longer just responsible for my students and my technicians, there's all this, there are all these faculty members that all of a sudden I'm responsible for. And I need to be able to look out for their best interests, for their success, for their advancement.

I'm in a particularly funny situation because I am now department head of the department where I got my PhD. And the majority of the faculty members in that department were my professors. And, so, that brings an additional layer of complexity in which you are asking those who were your mentors, those who were your professors, to do things that you think are going to move things forward, to do things that you think are going to make the department successful.

And you have to have a certain amount of confidence in what you're thinking and what you're planning to be able to sell this to these more senior faculty members. On the other hand, we have the younger faculty that are looking up for guidance, that are still in need of establishing their programs. And you feel this tremendous responsibility that you want to see them succeed, that you are willing to do whatever to see them get ahead because that's your new job description.

Now it's not just about making sure that my students are successful or making sure that my students get ahead or making sure that my technicians are happy with what they're doing, now it's more about how do I make these people achieve their maximum potential?

I'm excited. And I feel the challenge, and I can only hope that whatever I have learned up to now, that the strategies that I have used in my own life, I can share them and I can use them to help them achieve their potential as well, to provide the support that is needed.

It's a whole new type of day, of workday. I mean, I have much less time for my own thoughts and my data and my research. I have a lot more face-to-face time, which is needed, but it takes time away from your thinking. I mean, it does take time away from doing your work.

But I think that slowly, I will find that happy medium where I can determine how much time I need to spend on each side. I think right now I do feel the need to be there and to make all these changes or to implement all these programs that I had been wanting to see come forth. But I think that once they take a life of their own, I'm going to be able to step back and just see it grow.