Over lunch a couple of years ago, Heidi Bostic, my colleague and the Arts and Sciences Dean at Marquette University, worried aloud about having a life of the mind while serving as dean. Heidi and I had both been appointed Arts and Sciences deans at Jesuit universities, starting right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first two years were much like everybody’s pandemic years – lots of anxiety, frustration, fear. Heidi had been a dean before. I had not, but both of us were wondering if we were using our skills and experiences to their fullest (or at least, to their fulfilling-est…).
When Heidi first broached this subject, I found myself asking whether a dean could have a life of the mind without continuing their scholarship or creative activity, as well as staying out of the classroom. In essence, if we weren’t doing all the usual tasks of a faculty member, could we still claim to be intellectuals, or even academics? I’m reminded of how often academic leaders reflect on their careers, saying “I didn’t go to graduate school/start a job as a professor…for this.” Such a disclaimer suggests academic leadership could never be as interesting as teaching and scholarship in one’s discipline. What if that were false? What if the flourishing of a great college or university is not just important or worthwhile, but also a fascinating puzzle to tackle, one that draws upon the intellectual habits of academics in ways very familiar to us?
If the answer is yes, then which of my duties or pursuits as dean make me feel like I am using my mind in a way that is authentically academic, at least in my version of that identity? I attempt to answer that question by framing my primary administrative responsibilities as intellectual, creative and inquisitive in their own rights, independent of my scholarship and teaching. Three of these responsibilities include problem-solving, advocacy, and management… and as it so happens, there are academic disciplines specializing in these professional tasks as well as many others in a dean’s portfolio. If I want best practices or a deeper dive, I can turn to the learning sciences, academic organization and management, rhetoric and communication, or sustainability disciplines, to name just a few that have been relevant to me in recent years.
Problems, Enigmas and Causality
Channeling the positivist and empiricist in me, I pose many questions in my role as an academic leader.
- Are there classes or disciplines in which our students struggle the most? Who struggles and does that differ by race, gender or socioeconomic status? Why do they succeed less than their colleagues, how do they feel about that and what happens to them during their college careers?
- How should our university balance teaching and scholarship? What does teacher-scholar mean for us, here, today? Can we better support faculty in achieving the best mix of these fundamental academic dimensions?
- Thinking of our university as a mini city, what are the energy and resource flows? Is there waste in the system and if so, why and how much is there? Have prior interventions to reduce energy and other resource demands been effective and if so, according to what criteria?
- What is my college’s net contribution to the university’s budget? Does my unit bring in more tuition dollars than it spends? If so, where do the dollars flow and why?
A lot of these types of questions are empirical; many are ones that our institutional research, facilities or budget offices are well equipped to answer…if they can find the time and are not too afraid of the answers! Such questions also assume that various causal mechanisms must be at work, so the task becomes developing some theoretical or conceptual framework that can be tested with campus data. The answers require hypothesis-building, formulation, and testing, so not only does this work feel central to my role as dean, it is familiar in all its intellectual requirements and satisfyingly academic.
Connections to all of the liberal arts
The College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University, where I serve as dean, comprises 27 different departments and programs, 220+ tenured/tenure track faculty, 70+ non-tenure track faculty on recurring appointments and about 80 lecturers on temporary appointments. Over 60 staff serve the College on a full-time basis. Together, the faculty and staff serve 3,000 undergraduates and 70+ graduate students in the College, and also provide much of the core curriculum to the undergraduates in the schools of Engineering and Business.
Without exception the faculty, staff and students in each of these departments and programs want to be understood and supported. As academics, we are used to this kind of deep engagement, but always from a place of expertise. Paradoxically, every arts and sciences dean comes from just one or two disciplines, but serves dozens of them.
I have found that the intellectual habits I developed for research and teaching also deepen my embrace of the programs I serve. If I approach them with curiosity and affection, if there is an emotional attachment, then I can learn a lot about my colleagues and celebrate them effectively.
When I truly see my colleagues, and they know it, I feel the same intellectual satisfaction as I did in my research. In those moments I have learned something new to me, communicated effectively, and strengthened my bonds to an academic community I cherish. Relatedly, the learning I pursue to understand my departments serves me in tenure and promotion reviews, which are numerous and complex every year.
I often find myself playing a game with my faculty colleagues. The more I learn about what they do, the more connections I try to make to their work. What in my personal history or professional life can connect to the teaching and research provided by faculty from so many diverse fields?
Sometimes I draw upon my own training – there was a lot of chemistry and microbiology in my undergraduate career; I try to dust all that off when visiting a lab, thinking about a scientist’s startup package or looking at requests for new class sections. At other times, I draw upon my own history. My father ran a rare bookstore specializing in art and architecture for many years. There is no question that his aesthetic and sensibilities inform my outreach to the artists in the College.
Running the place
Administration often gets a bad rap, delegated to the boring or wonk-ish minutiae of bureaucracy. That perspective is fine when things are going really well, but universities often go through periods of organizational stresses, which are rapidly felt throughout the institution. In my college in recent years, administrative stressors have included the rollout of three new Workday platforms (necessary, but transitionally difficult), high staff turnover and pandemic-related policy changes, not to mention contemporary attacks on higher education. For these reasons, I have focused a great deal of energy on maintaining a highly functional, responsive and service-oriented Dean’s Office.
Here, the intellectual work is first logistical and analytic. What is working or not working, and is that even a meaningful question, in that we must continually apply some evaluative criteria to administration? Do personnel evaluations take too much time from too many people with diminishing returns of accountability, voice, or new information? Do the software platforms for purchases, student records or HR functions drive staff to distraction?
Somewhat surprisingly, a second characteristic of good management is that it requires a great story. That’s because much of what I contribute to administration requires change (e.g., to fix processes) or more resources. For example, to be a good change agent or resource advocate, I often find myself telling “stories of decline and rising,” to quote from political scientist Deborah Stone in her book Policy Paradox. “In the beginning, things were pretty good. But they got worse. In fact, right now, they are nearly intolerable. Something must be done.”1 Such stories usually predict a crisis and offer proposals for steps to avoid catastrophe.
Mind games
If you read this essay and remain unconvinced that my examples come anywhere close to how your intellect and creativity thrive in the lab, studio, archive, office or field site, then senior academic leadership may not be for you! But if, often enough, the puzzles and stories are fun while teaching you something, if the marvelous and somewhat zany academics you serve thank you for helping them feel happier at work, well then, maybe you have a mind that can have a life as a dean!
Notes
1. Stone, D (2012). Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, 3rd edition. New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Pp. 160 – 65.
