A friend of mine coined the term “rent-a-dean” to describe our jobs when we were both serving as interim deans for Indiana University at Kokomo. I’ve also heard people say that serving as interim dean is like being John the Baptist: You work a lot to prepare the way for another yet to come.
It’s a ubiquitous position in academe yet one not all that well understood.
If you are a midcareer academic and have ambitions to go into administration, an interim deanship might be the best way to test the waters. Even if you aren’t interested in administration, as a good campus citizen, you may have to take on the role until a new dean is identified. If nothing else, being asked to become an interim dean will stroke your ego.
But fair warning: That ego surge will likely soon be put in its place by some unpleasant event, as it was for me during my first week on the job when I had to deal with two controversies: first, the arrest of a faculty member and, second, a decision by the president that I had to convey to the faculty announcing that travel budgets had been cut in half. That was not an easy week.
Yet for many the pull toward administration overrides the challenges of the job.
If you’re interested, you should be aware of the similarities and differences between an interim post and a permanent deanship.
At first, it might appear that there are mostly similarities between the two types of deanships. And they do have several things in common. In both jobs you will need to:
Engage the faculty. Whether you are a permanent or an interim dean, you want to encourage, uplift, and support faculty members. You will have to inform them of issues and be transparent about what you do—especially with the budget. It’s important to connect with faculty members individually—send them handwritten notes, take them out to lunch, and show a sincere and caring attitude when they are hit by personal events in their lives.
Lead. That means not just at faculty meetings, but in many other ways as well. For instance, you can lead by encouraging people to develop new programs. Based on a rising number of majors in psychology, I encouraged the department’s faculty members to consider a graduate program. They, in turn, suggested that they wanted first to become an independent department—a move that was then accomplished in less than six months.
Leading also means making decisions between what the faculty wants and what it needs. Nothing you do will make as immediate and profound an impact as decisions that affect personnel, programs, or space. Four student groups wanted their own space, a request I just could not fulfill. However, because of the cooperative spirit of their faculty mentors, one room was found to house all four groups.
A leader, temporary or otherwise, can shape conversations around new ideas. For instance, I thought that the business school needed to consider adding entrepreneurship to its curriculum, so I talked about it on numerous occasions and arranged to bring an entrepreneur to the campus to speak on the subject.
Leaders help faculty members see that everyone is a leader—when the issue and the time is appropriate to their work. And leading means looking at the institution’s mission and vision statements every day and making sure that all actions will dovetail with those statements.
Plan for politics. The day will come when a faculty member, otherwise friendly and cooperative, will challenge you and your actions either privately or in public. When I first became an administrator, a faculty member challenged one of my decisions quite publicly and persistently. I finally had to ask her to stop, which she did. More recently I was challenged severely for appointing someone to a chair’s position who was not the choice of the faculty.
Actions won’t always lead to a reaction. For every difficult and unpopular action you take, there will be an immediate and strong reaction. However, for every nice and pleasant decision you make, there will be ... no reaction. Expect nothing.
While at first glance, the similarities between temporary and permanent deanships might seem to outweigh the differences, there are actually quite a few important differences. A key one is that, as an interim dean, you won’t face periodic reviews. But there are others in which you, as a temporary dean, will have to do things differently from your permanent successor:
Be helpful right away. As an interim dean, you don’t have much time to make a lasting impact. Be helpful not just to professors but to students and staff members as well. Remember that the first impression is the lasting one.
Get your arms around major issues. I do that by visiting with each faculty member in his or her office for 20 to 30 minutes. I ask them to tell me (a) their professional plans for the near future, and (b) the major issues their school faces. I take notes, transcribe them into a clean format, and look for commonalities among the issues mentioned by all of the professors.
Act permanent. Although your tenure is short term, plan and act in the long term. For instance, during faculty hires I take a strong hand in “arranging the faculty bouquet,” by looking at the department’s overall balance. Professors will, on occasion, challenge your long-range plans that will affect them long after you are gone; nevertheless, I work as though I am permanent.
But remember you are preparing the way. To smooth the way for the permanent replacement, make as many preparations as possible. As interim provost, I prepared a document for my successor entitled “Crossroads,” which delineated the major issues the institution faced and recommended actions. As interim dean of arts and sciences, I prepared a document entitled “The Arts and Sciences in the Next Five Years,” which pointed to major issues, hopes, and plans in each major, and was compiled with the input of faculty members in each major.
Start only what you can finish. It is better to start a few projects you can finish rather than starting too many that are left hanging. It is likely that your successor will not finish what you started.
Help with the search for your successor. You are not a candidate, you are not a competitor, and you are not even on the search committee. So that leaves you free to be helpful, by laying all the cards on the table. It is easy.
Create a strong “issues committee.” Select its members from among the faculty, with a diversity of age, rank, gender, and opinion. I tell the committee that there will be no scheduled meetings, no agenda, and no minutes; what is discussed stays in the room. I have benefited tremendously from such committees. They are a sounding board for which issues will be developed further and which will never be suggested again.
Take difficult actions. Your predecessor may have struggled with an issue for a long time and been reluctant to take action because of the potential for lingering resentment. Breaking a longstanding tradition, challenging academic assumptions, and confronting feelings of entitlement (both in position and possessions) are indeed hard nuts to crack. As an interim you are more suited to clean the slate.
Avoid talking about your previous assignment. “Back when I was at XYZ University, we did so and so.” No one can relate to XYZ, and it is not helpful to anyone. It only looks as though you are establishing your own credibility—not a good idea.
Taking an interim position is challenging, stimulating, rewarding, re-energizing, and oh, so worthwhile. The best legacy I can leave as an interim leader is an even keel and a calming, positive atmosphere. The single most underrated attribute of leaders is humility. C.S. Lewis put it best when he said that “humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
I accept the notion that being an interim dean is much like being John the Baptist; you prepare the way for the one to come. I just hope that the ultimate fate of the interim dean is not that of John the Baptist.
