The Essential Academic Dean or Provost

A Comprehensive Desk Reference

Jeffrey L. Buller

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781118762165
• eBook ISBN: 9781118762196
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

The go-to reference for academic leaders seeking practical answers to everyday challenges

The Essential Academic Dean or Provost explains the "how" of academic leadership, providing a practical, comprehensive, reality-based reference for almost any problem, challenge, or opportunity. This updated second edition includes new chapters on the difference between leadership and management in higher education, leadership in politically charged environments, effective strategies for making decisions, and working with associate deans or provosts, plus new case studies, new research, and ten additional chapters available on the companion website. Each topic deals concisely with the most important information deans and provosts need when faced with a particular situation, providing both a comprehensive guide to academic leadership as well as a ready reference to be consulted as needed.

The role of a dean or provost at a modern university is extremely complex, involving budgeting, community relations, personnel decisions, management of a large enterprise, fundraising, and guiding a school, college, or entire institution toward a compelling vision of the future. The details academic leaders have to deal with are numerous and critical, and every little thing matters. This invaluable guide provides the answers you need when you need them, and gives you framework for successfully navigating your job's many competing demands.

• Build support for a shared vision of the future
• Interact effectively with different internal and external constituencies
• Learn decision-making techniques specific to the academic environment
• Set, supervise, and implement a budget that allows your programs to flourish

Academic leaders need a handy, focused reference that provides authoritative answers to the many issues and questions that arise every day. With proven solutions to a multitude of challenges, The Essential Academic Dean or Provost shows academic leaders what they need to know in order to successfully guide their institutions into the future.

Part One

The Academic Leader's Role

Chapter 1
Being #1 in the #2 Business

Harry Carter, who long served as provost at Georgia Southern University and the Citadel, loved to mention the septic tank company that posted a large billboard greeting drivers as they entered Augusta, Georgia, along Highway 25: “We're #1 in the #2 Business.”

There are all kinds of ways in which university provosts and academic deans can feel as though they're in the #2 business. Many of the issues they have to deal with may make them feel as though they're wading into the academic equivalent of a septic tank. But even more important, they're always #2 to someone else who's #1: the person who serves as the visible face and symbol of the institution. Larry Nielsen even devotes an entire chapter to the topic of “Being Number Two” in his book Provost (2013). And so although they're often lumped together with other members of “the upper administration” by students, faculty members, and even at times department chairs, the nature of the position held by the provost or dean is intended to be middle management. While provosts and deans may have a great deal of independence in certain areas, they ultimately report to someone—a specific person who serves as their supervisor—rather than to a governing board, as presidents and chancellors do. At the same time, they are themselves supervisors, evaluating the performance of others, recommending appropriate salary adjustments, and trying to unite them all into a single academic team.

Hundreds of books have been written about the principles of leadership or how to get things done from the top. There's also an expanding literature on how to serve most effectively as an employee, mastering the techniques of followership, a term coined by Robert E. Kelley (1992) and elaborated on in more comprehensive studies by Kellerman (2008), Riggio, Chaleff, and Lipman-Blumen (2008), and Bligh and Kohles (2012). But how can provosts and deans be expected to lead from the middle? How can they become #1 in the #2 business?

As a way of answering these questions, it might be useful to begin with recognizing that no one is ever #1—not really. They may think they are, or the organization chart may say they are, but shared governance in higher education means that no one person has authority over every aspect of what goes on at a college or university. As one way of viewing this idea, the first essential principle in this book is perhaps the most important one you'll encounter when it comes to academic administration:

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All leadership entails leadership from the middle. When you understand how organizations really work, you realize that everybody reports to somebody.

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Standard organizational charts, adapted as they are from military and corporate environments where they often make more sense, tend to distort this issue. On paper, faculty members report to chairs. Department chairs in turn report to you, if you're a dean, or to your deans, if you're a provost. Either way, you eventually report to the president, directly or through the chief academic officer. The president reports to a board. The board is subject to bylaws and other applicable regulations. You can never climb to the top of this chart and be in charge of it all.

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Climbing to the pinnacle of each organizational pyramid simply takes you to the base of the next pyramid.

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Moreover, authority is decentralized in higher education in a way that's not practical in other organizational cultures. The faculty is ultimately responsible for the curriculum. The president and governing board are ultimately responsible for the budget. When people overlook that longstanding division of power, problems start to arise. And yet the system usually works. Decisions are made. Policies are developed. New initiatives get under way. But those initiatives don't always come from the top. We've all known a provost, dean, department chair, or faculty member whose energy, insight, or personal charm completely transformed a school. Institutional leadership can arise from any level of the hierarchy. You don't have to be in charge to be influential.

That's a good thing, because provosts and deans have always had a view from the middle. The English word provost is ultimately derived from two Latin roots, pro- (“in front of”) and positus (the perfect-passive participle of the verb ponere, “to put.” Provosts were thus originally officers who were “put in front of” other people in ecclesiastical, academic, or political life. But they didn't occupy the highest rung on the organizational ladder. In a church, the provost might be the minister of the largest church in a town. At a university, the provost might be the head of a particular college or school. And in government, the provost might be something like a mayor. In each case, the provost's position, while important, did not possess ultimate authority and always reported to someone else whose powers and responsibilities were considerably greater.

In a similar way, our word dean comes to English from Norman French via the Latin word decanus, meaning an officer in charge of ten people (from the Latin decem or the Greek deka, “ten”). A dean thus had far less authority, in etymological terms at least, than a centurion, who was in charge of one hundred people. At the same time, the dean had far more responsibility than any of the ten subordinates. During the Middle Ages, deans ceased to have a military connection, and the term became adopted by the church to describe the priest who supervised ten monks in a monastery, the head of a chapter in a cathedral church, or a member of the religious hierarchy through whom clerics reported to an archbishop. Given the religious origins of universities like Oxford and Cambridge, the word required only a slight shift in emphasis as it moved from ecclesiastical to academic circles. The dean thus became the administrator in charge of the behavior and academic progress of students in a college. As the organizational structures of colleges and universities became more complex, deans became elected members of the faculty who provided administrative guidance, management, and vision to their institutions. By the twentieth century, deans in the United States were already being viewed more as administrators than teachers. They almost always had academic backgrounds, but they were appointed (and less frequently elected) because they demonstrated potential for making their colleges and schools run effectively.

From their origin, therefore, provosts and deans have always had responsibilities that draw them in two directions simultaneously: they are advocates for and supervisors of the people over whom they have authority; they report to and serve as the representatives of some higher administrative level that sets the limits within which they themselves can operate. Performing both responsibilities effectively is one of the perennial challenges facing provosts and deans. Few other aspects of their role are as important as the ability to see the needs of the institution from the middle and to address those needs adequately. So how do you do that? Here are nine basic principles to keep in mind as you begin developing your own approach to providing leadership from the middle.

Principle 1: Develop Collegial Candor

As an academic leader, you want your own supervisor to treat you with respect, give your views a fair hearing even if they're not ultimately accepted, and share information with you freely, particularly when having that information is essential for you to do your job. Is it unreasonable, therefore, to assume that those who report to you are looking for the same considerations from your office? Your method of interacting with department chairs, division directors, and the faculty members at your institution should be a reflection of the role you wish to play in the larger institutional structure. In fact, how you treat others may even help shape that role.

Developing an atmosphere of collegial candor means taking steps to create a working environment where individuals feel safe to provide their perspectives on various issues, understand that you'll agree or disagree with these views on the basis of their arguments' merits and not the individual advancing them, and recognize that the overall mission of the institution is the guiding principle behind all deliberations, not the personal convenience of a particular administrator. You therefore have an obligation to apply this philosophy to all your discussions with your president, governing body, and members of the community. You have no less of an obligation to adhere to these same principles when dealing with the members of your school or college.

The people who report to you rely on you as a sounding board for their ideas and insights, even if their behavior doesn't always suggest that they themselves are open to other perspectives. Disagreement with one's boss shouldn't be confrontational, and it's rarely the case that job security results from blindly accepting every suggestion your superior makes. Phrased in a collegial manner—“Now, that might be true, but another way of looking at it could be…” or, “Perhaps, though, we should also consider whether…”—disagreements can broaden a discussion and help decision makers avoid a serious mistake. Certainly administrators can be frustrated when those who report to them constantly and inconsiderately disagree with every idea they propose, every suggestion they make, or every improvement they consider. But it can also be frustrating when people see it as their responsibility to agree merely for the sake of agreement, avoiding any serious attempt to explore whether the merits of a proposal are offset by any disadvantages. Effective provosts and deans tend to be those who speak freely when it's important to do so but also understand how to provide alternatives in a constructive, consensus-building manner. It's not hypocritical to refrain from expressing a strong opinion on every subject; sometimes that's just the most diplomatic and beneficial strategy to pursue. It's a technique sometimes called strategic nonengagement.

Creating an open atmosphere in a college means making it clear that department chairs and faculty members are free t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part One: The Academic Leader's Role
• Part Two: The Nature of Academic Leadership
• Part Three: The Ecosystem of the College or University
• Part Four: The Academic Leader as Supervisor
• Part Five: The Budget of the College or University
• Part Six: The Opportunities and Challenges of Being an Academic Leader
• Part Seven: The Next Step for the Provost or Dean
• Epilogue: A Checklist for the Essential Academic Leader
• Index
• End User License Agreement