T wo years ago, in the second-most significant event in my academic career (getting an espresso machine was No. 1), I moved into a position with a half-time administrative load at my university. In becoming the director of our teaching center, I assumed a role defined as half-faculty, half-administrator — or “staffulty,” as a colleague suggested.
I had previously served three years as chair of my small department, but at my university — as is the case with many small institutions, I suspect — department chairs aren’t really seen as a group apart. We received release time from teaching (one course a year), and a nominal (really nominal) stipend. Chairs were signers of forms and go-betweens more than administrators in our own right.
In my new role as director of the university’s teaching and learning center, however, I am in charge of an entire unit in our academic-affairs structure, and many of my defined responsibilities are explicitly administrative. It’s a new world for me, and I love it. Teaching, learning, and faculty development are true passions for me, and I still teach two courses a semester. It’s an ideal blend for someone like me who wants to take on a leadership role but not completely abandon teaching.
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But it’s taken a series of significant adjustments, for sure. It occurred to me this year that I am now squarely in that nebulous space known as “midcareer,” and that’s a weird realization. The academic-job market in my field (history) is so hideous that, from grad school onward, I was more concerned with getting and keeping an academic position than anything else. To have arrived at this point, then, is akin to realizing I’ve reached the age that, as a kid, seemed really old — maybe almost dead.
How exactly did I get here, anyway? Yet, here I am, and I’ve learned a number of lessons in the last two years that have made me a better administrator, teacher, and colleague. Four, in particular, stand out:
Not every disagreement is a call to arms. Probably the most important adjustment has been in my sense of perspective. In an administrative role, your primary responsibility is to your unit, but it’s also incumbent upon you to see your office as one among many that support the institutional mission.
There are advantages to this — you get a campuswide perspective that’s nearly impossible in the weeds of one’s own department (particularly when you’re chair of said department). I work with faculty and a number of staff members across departments and administrative units, and I get to see an amazing amount of creative energy devoted to teaching and learning around the campus.
In this work, I get to see which issues are weighing on colleagues across the university, and are thus larger institutional priorities. Just as significant, I get to see which issues don’t rise to that level. Just because a handful of people have chosen something as the hill upon which they’ll make their stand doesn’t mean it’s worth the attention that a more widely important matter requires. Time and attention — as well as barricades, pitchforks, and torches — are finite commodities; I have to be mindful about how I allocate them.
How, and when, I use my voice matters. As I see it, my job requires that I advocate for faculty members and students, and for teaching and learning. Sometimes that means speaking truth to power; other times it means speaking truth to colleagues. Most urgent, I’ve seen — in a concrete and personal way — just how much work we have to do to overcome issues of gender and race, as well as academic bullying. Faculty of color and young female faculty members face struggles and discrimination that I have never come close to experiencing. What I’d long known in the abstract has, in the past two years, become quite tangible as I’ve listened to, counseled, and sometimes just sat with colleagues.
Doctoral training doesn’t exactly prepare us to admit areas of ignorance.
Structures of power and privilege are real, they’re insidious, and they’re all around us. We confront them in an academic sense in our classrooms, but as a whole, we are far less observant in our interfaculty relations and governance. For those of us in a position to both observe the problems and call attention to the need for just and equitable solutions, it’s a moral imperative to do both. If you’re moving into administrative work, know your institution’s policies on discrimination, bullying, and workplace harassment. If there aren’t any, or if they’re inadequate, advocate for something better.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When I was department chair, I oversaw a budget of under $1,000. After we made copies and bought paper clips, there weren’t really any more fiscal decisions to be made. Now I am the steward of a much larger budget that funds an array of initiatives and programming. In my entire academic career, I’ve had a total of perhaps 30 minutes of formal budgetary training. It was not an area of strength for me, and I knew I needed help. Even though an administrative post calls for a broad perspective, it also requires me to be detail oriented. Managing multiple projects, keeping track of programming, juggling calendars — those things, much like budgeting, weren’t areas in which I had lots of practice.
Knowing that going in, I was more than ready to ask for help. And I found that people were glad to offer it. I had to fight the instinct to “fake it until you make it.” No one likes to acknowledge weakness, but honesty is imperative, especially when you don’t know something. One of the most powerful things I can say to my students, as a teacher, is “I don’t know,” because it shows them that I’m still learning, and it usually leads to us saying, “Let’s find out.” It’s just as important to acknowledge my limits in a position where mentoring and advising are big parts of the job. It’s better to admit ignorance, and then offer to find the answer, than to get something wrong and adversely affect a workshop’s funding or a colleague’s career.
Be good to people (including yourself). I’ll admit that I often honor the rules about self-care and maintaining balance in the breach, but they’re an important part of doing any job well. It’s difficult to balance the central mission of the institution — teaching and learning — with all of the things that happen on a daily basis ostensibly aimed at fulfilling that mission. It’s all too easy to let the minutiae detract from the larger goal. I may be on a committee to develop really cool learning initiatives, but if my work there detracts from office hours, or prep time for my classes, I’m robbing Peter to pay Paul, and there’s no net gain. I’m not useful to anyone I serve if I’m overcommitted.
Directly related to that point is the realization that I don’t need to be involved in every task force, initiative, or conversation. I’ve learned through experience (and mistakes) that leadership is more than talking loudly in every forum. Support, affirmation, and modeling collegiality are more important. For me, leadership has become a matter of knowing and respecting my colleagues all over the campus, appreciating the work they do, and letting them know it. Things are hard in higher education; we often forget that affirmation — honest and genuine affirmation — is really important. There’s no daily quota on thank-yous.
I won’t pretend that this is an exhaustive list for the aspiring administrator, but these are the key takeaways from my initial foray into this new world. All of these points sound simple, but there’s often a large gulf between “simple” and “easy.” Ph.D. training doesn’t exactly prepare us to admit areas of ignorance or demur from participating in some conversations.
As a faculty member, I focused primarily on my classes and my students. My perspective as a department chair was bounded by my department’s agenda and particular concerns. But now my constituencies are across the institution. If you’re thinking about — or have just begun the process of — entering into administrative work, you’ll find that balance and perspective coupled with a commitment to keep learning will serve you well. Well, those and an espresso machine.
Kevin Gannon is a professor of history and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Grand View University.
