American College Presidency as Vocation

Easing the Burden, Enhancing the Joy

William V. Frame

• Publisher: Abilene Christian University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780891123859
• eBook ISBN: 9780891127581
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

An engaging report on the Lilly Endowment-supported program on Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission, led by the Council of Independent Colleges since 2005, showing the impact of the program upon the conception and practice of the American college and university presidency.

CHAPTER 1
From Career to Calling
The Making of the Vocational President

More than twenty percent of the “prospective presidents” who enrolled in the Vocation and Institutional Mission Program were selected for a presidency either during or shortly after participating in the program. Every one of these “graduates” took the classic academic route to the presidency—from the professoriate through ascending administrative responsibilities, usually in the same institution, to candidacy for presidencies in church-related, regional, or another type of institution. Meeting them at the midpoint of this journey gave us in the program a rare glimpse into the processes by which teaching careers are typically converted from the classroom to academic administration. Interviewing this group one to three years later added insight, wherever it occurred, of the conversion from the professoriate to the vocational presidency. Being given a counseling role in these conversions as they actually were occurring was a great privilege: it provided a unique opportunity to witness the transitions that typically occur in this context and thus to identify the significant differences among career, profession, and vocation.

The program confronted these sojourners with the idea of vocation at an impressionable moment in their journeys—after their potential as vocationally oriented presidents had been flagged by presidents under whom they served and before their selection for a presidency. Such a moment provided fertile opportunity for the ideas “of calling, community service, personal fulfillment, and alignment (of one’s own vocation[s] with those of one’s spouse and colleagues)” to take firm root among them. But what in their lives, experiences, and purposes made that moment so fertile?

The answer is spread through their stories as told in the interviews. I have reconstructed these stories in this chapter for the purpose of revealing what these deans-become-presidents and their spouses tell us about the distinguishing features of living and thinking vocationally in American academe, in contrast with living and thinking in terms of career and profession. This grounding, helped by the subsequent testimony of other, longer-serving presidents, allows us to attempt, in Chapters Two and Three below, to distinguish the vocational presidency in practice from others that are differently motivated.

Vocational Commitment as a Qualification for the Presidency

A provost with an impressive record of service to a particular tradition in Catholic higher education came to the program with a strong desire to become a president in that tradition. Even though she was not Catholic, she twice had been a finalist in recent presidential searches by Catholic colleges.

An accomplished academic search specialist whose counsel we offered to that particular seminar suggested that the effort be abandoned. Although a recent papal bull had permitted Catholic institutions to elect non-Catholic presidents, the counselor reckoned from wide experience in the academic leadership market in general, and in that segment of it in particular, that the provost’s career would stall if she insisted on holding out for her preference. This counsel certainly was respectful of the provost’s talent and intentions but was primarily guided, instead, by the concepts of career that have become prominent among employers and search committees in independent institutions in American higher education.

The advice shook the dean’s resolve. Reluctantly, she gave thought to widening and refocusing her search, even though doing so felt like “self-betrayal” as well as embarrassed flight from a tradition to which she had given—and from which she had received—much.

The next day, a facilitator of that seminar who was particularly familiar with, and deeply respectful of, Catholic colleges and universities helped the provost to see, in her pained reaction to the search specialist’s prudent advice, that it wasn’t the presidency per se that was calling her; it was service to a particular educational tradition. The facilitator considered the dean an attractive candidate for several open presidencies and a very highly qualified one for any that might eventually open in that particular Catholic tradition. Reassured by this second opinion, the dean held onto her original intention and eventually won an especially fitting presidency. She has since led that institution to greater clarity of purpose and deeper commitment to mission, and she has acquired a deeper sense of fulfillment and self-confidence along the way.

The tradition to which the dean was dedicated was neither her natal culture nor the one she eventually chose as her religious home. She traces her embrace of it to other, earlier elements of her identity. It was upon these elements and the life and work to which they seemed to point that she and her spouse (who works outside of academe) focused their joint attention both before and during their participation in the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program. They found the exercise, played out in the matrix of formal, collegial, and marital conversation that extended the reach and depth of the seminar inquiry into their personal lives, mutually rewarding.

Through that exercise, they discovered in their separate biographies a common array of service and leadership obligations, though to very different industries and occupations. This discovery strengthened what already marked their very empathic relationship, namely, something that might be called “inter-vocational cordiality.” We saw other examples of this cordiality among both prospective and sitting presidents and their spouses. Each spouse was sympathetic to the calling of the other, and each embraced the discernment and pursuit of their respective vocations as a shared responsibility.

Their interview suggested a notable idea about the nature of calling, an idea echoed in other interviews, more often of sitting presidents than prospective presidents. The suggestion was that the tradition to which the dean had come as a stranger and later to which she had become committed had somehow called her into its service! She and her spouse understand her presidential leadership to her college as compensation for all that the tradition has given her. They also see it as service to those as yet unknown whom her leadership eventually will benefit.

Program Facilitation of Vocational Discernment among Prospective Presidents

Although three or four other deans and vice presidents also received wise and distinctively vocational counsel from the program in securing fitting presidencies, this outcome was not the principal measure of the program’s success. Nor was it that 25–30 percent of the sixty-five provosts, deans, and other academic executives who participated in it as prospective presidents have since become presidents. This result—which was actually achieved—should not have been surprising. High leadership turnover continues to plague American academe. Postings abound. Further, every “prospective” (as we called them) in the program had been nominated to it by a sitting president familiar with and impressed by their work. In short, the program prospectives constituted a rarefied mixture of proven executive competence, presidential promise, and declared interest either in seeking a presidency or seriously wondering if they should. It is not at all clear that the “graduation” of these prospectives from the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program had any bearing, one way or the other, on their success in winning a presidency.

What is clear, however, is that all eighteen prospectives interviewed—thirteen of whom have won presidencies, three of whom continue to try, and two who don’t now want a presidency—say that the program changed the nature and focus of their ambition and narrowed the range of colleges and universities whose employment they would accept.

The factor that more than any other facilitated such deep and abiding personal reorientation was the full inclusion of spouses in the inquiry. The first interview question, “What first seized your interest in the inquiry?” was almost always answered by what one prospective described as “the equal honor and respect” paid by the program to the participation of spouses. This full inclusion of spouses was perhaps the chief attraction of the program. It turned out to enrich the inquiry to an extent far surpassing our expectations because it brought into the seminars one of the key conditions of vocational discernment: friendship.

“I applied to the program,” said one dean, “in order to do what my husband and I never found time for at home, namely, to talk with each other about our particular dreams and to see how they fit together.” Another said he signed up when he realized that the program was not “just another professional development workshop” in which one is counseled on when and how to reach for a presidency. Since he wondered whether to reach for a presidency, rather than when, he “jumped” at the chance to think this through with his wife beside him.

It turned out that his wife was ready to take full advantage of her inclusion. She described herself as “floundering” when she joined the seminar, “wondering what my role would be when (not if) he became a president. I supported him but wanted to be something more than ‘the wife.’ I’d been trying to find my personal role. What I needed was to be comfortable with myself.”

A dean from a college that had used a grant it received from the Lilly Endowment’s Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation (PTEV) to draw its faculty and staff into vocational discernment wanted a similar opportunity for himself and his wife. They treasured the remoteness of the program’s retreat site because it allowed them three days uninterrupted by the demands of work and family to consider whether their lives and occupations were in service to or at odds with their callings.

Another dean whose academic spouse had followed her to three different colleges brought him to the program in order to win his acceptance of her ambition for a presidency. The fact that the program nurtured spouses as much as prospective presidents opened an exciting prospect to them—that the eventual decision to accept a particular presidency might be made collaboratively and might turn out to be mutually fulfilling.

One couple from an evangelical Christian college, fluent in the theological language of vocation, brought three questions to the program: “Are we called to the vocation of president? Are we fit for that call? How do we find the right place in which to follow the call?” Although they proposed to answer the first two questions themselves, they report that much of their reflection was inspired by the seminar inquiry. They openly sought the counsel of their seminar colleagues to help them answer the third.

Several spouses came to the program to learn for the first time why and to what degree their aspiring mates wanted to be presidents and discovered some interesting things about their own inclinations. They also wanted to know in advance how their lives would change with the arrival of a presidency. All of them arrived with a desire to learn how they might best help their prospective presidents to attain and then to manage a presidency.

Yet another dean and his wife used the seminar principally to develop a profile of the institution that best matched their talents, tastes, and needs. A facilitator noticed that this profile, which had appeared in preliminary form in his application to the program, mirrored the requirements of a position recently advertised. She pointed this out to the couple, and he was selected by that institution within the year. In the interview, he described the college that chose him as a “dead ringer” for the one his wife and he had imagined.

The very few prospectives who came to the program alone relied relatively heavily upon self-reflective conversation with program facilitators for discernment; but they shared equitably with their married colleagues in the exchange of testimonials in both the formal and extra-curricular conversations of the inquiry.

Variations in Discernment among Prospectives and Spouses

These vignettes suggest that the spouses of the prospectives were, in general, less clear about their own aspirations than were the prospectives about theirs. This uncertainty was a great gift to the program. It contributed to something of an alliance that formed in each seminar between the spouses, on the one hand, and the uncommitted prospectives—those who came to the program wondering whether they should seek a presidency or not—on the other. This informal alliance helped us fend off the incessant request for practical advice in landing and managing a presidency—a request commonly voiced by prospectives who not only knew that they wanted a presidency but just what presidency they most preferred. Ultimately, this alliance secured the hospitable atmosphere for vocational discernment that was the first objective of the program.

In reading the reflections on vocation submitted by nominees to the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program, it was often difficult to distinguish between prospectives who simply wanted a presidency from those who desired a presidency so long as it would make effective use of their talents in a good cause. Ironically, what compounded this difficulty is the growing credibility of vocational language and thinking in academe. Vocation is rightly described as a “calling.” In the secular academy, this means something audible only to the one who is called. It’s very hard to know whether he or she who claims to be “called” is pursuing a preference, an illusion, or a responsibility. In fact, there is now no better way in colleges and universities to camouflage naked ambition—for power, for prestige, for higher income—than to claim one feels “called” to the work one seeks. Such ambitions have long been rife in the academy but have been only rarely admitted; they are associated among independent undergraduate liberal arts colleges in particular with “corporate life” or—more dismissively—with “capitalism.” This is surely one reason why the academy is vocation’s largest industrial convert. As an accomplished American sociologist observed during a consultancy about the methodology and argument of this book, “The claim of many academics to the mantle of vocation is mere elocution!”

One of the prospectives, who entered the deliberation skeptical of the program’s utility but completed it full of gratitude for its contributions to his own discernment, remembered an early exchange in his seminar. “We were discussing stories of great vocational achievement, even martyrdom. We already felt comfortable enough with each other that two or three said openly that they were ready to become a president so that they could do something significant and were just waiting for God to call them. And I was astonished that hearing a voice might really be a reason for doing something. And I spoke up, saying, ‘I don’t hear voices; I hear noise.’ But I was confident enough about my own skills that I thought I could be a president. I remember saying, ‘Is it okay to just be ambitious? You know, ambitious in its really simple sense?’ I’ve done these things: successful classroom teaching, publishing, addressing large audiences after which I heard remarks like, ‘Wow! That was really smart!’ (You know that academics really love that stuff!) So I just used the word ‘ambitious,’ and I said, ‘I just want to be a president. Is it okay if I stay in the seminar?’ And that teased out a few other similar confessions.”

By requiring a testimonial on vocation from applicants to the Presidential and Institutional Mission Program, we were guaranteed significant enrollment of “vocationists”—by their own lights—in every seminar. (The confessing skeptic above was rare among us.) Only when they actually arrived and entered into the inquiry in the presence of their peers and facilitators were we really able to distinguish those who were simply ambitious from those who were interested in discerning their callings.

Two of the uncertain deans claimed in the interviews that the professional development options available in academe are increasingly “corporate” in their presumptions. These programs conceive of college and university administration as what one called a “progression of academic attainment.” Those programs, he said, “don’t look at you, at your purposes, and they don’t ask whether the step they say is next in this progression is the right one for you. The fact that it is ‘next’ is what makes it ‘right.’” “And if you don’t take that next step when it’s time,” said another, “you’re asked, ‘Where did you fail? Where did you plateau?’” Both agreed that such programs were born in the corporate world and are guided by career rather than vocational thinking.

Another prospective who was intent upon obtaining a presidency but only where he could identify with the institution’s mission noticed that several members of his particular seminar lost interest in the presidency in the course of the seminar inquiry. A couple of these people, he thought, were unhappy in their current positions and eventually not only refused to try for a presidency but stepped off what he called “the career ladder” altogether.

The Conflation of Vocation and Work

Other aspiring presidents balked at our insistence on a program axiom that one’s vocation may point to one’s occupation but is not identical with it. They had carefully constructed impressive records of increasing responsibility and rank in a particular institution or family of institutions. Their strategy was to make of that record a ladder to a presidency—and, in a couple of cases, to a particular presidency.

In fact, these deans were busy forging careers. The record of experience around which they had fashioned their resumes functioned for these careers as did “discernment” and “calling” for vocations, and “president” was their next and ultimate station stop. By mustering support for open-mindedness and uncertainty, we led at least one of these experience-bound deans away from career and toward vocation. We secured the first and critical part of the task by driving home one small point: if any of us were to identify our job as our vocation, we would thereafter be unable to assess the vocational propriety of any new work we might happen to take up. Knowing whether our work is the right thing for us to be doing depends upon keeping some separation between vocation and job.

Another limitation of conflating vocation and job is that it confines the range of one’s appropriate work to the current employing institution or, perhaps, to a small group of closely associated institutions. And it confines it to the current rank or position and, of course, to those positions often considered “next” in higher education’s ladder of ascent. Hence, ambition in the service of career is restricted to proximate and familiar positions to which promotion would mark waypoints on an ascending path in the organizational landscape that is expected to end simply “clos...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: From Career to Calling: The Making of the Vocational President
• Chapter 2: From Administration to Envisioning: Shaping the Vocational Presidency
• Chapter 3: Inspiring and Sustaining the Vocational Presidency
• Chapter 4: The Design and Construction of the Vocational College
• Chapter 5: Conclusion—The Alignment of Vocation and Mission in American Academe
• Afterword
• Appendix I: Facilitators of the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program (2005-2009)
• Appendix II: The Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Administration of the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program
• Appendix III: Representative Syllabus for the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission Program
• Appendix IV: The Interview Questions