In the mid-1990s, when I was an assistant professor at Marquette University, a senior colleague and I enjoyed going out to a Milwaukee bar and grill to talk shop. I was at the beginning of my career in higher education, she was in the middle of hers. But we both loved the mixed mission of our private research university — equal parts teaching and research — and spent hours plotting (as you do in faculty life) how to make it a model of modest excellence.
To that end, she mentioned an idea that she and some grad-school friends had concocted: “Pete’s Pretty Good University.” Pete’s was the kind of campus they wanted to work at. It didn’t take itself too seriously, but was very serious about education and research. It was a genuine community of scholar-teachers, whose integrity and good sense would drive organizational decency. A pretty good university, not a pretentious, hypercompetitive university.
The past few decades have been very unkind to such a modest vision of higher education. Elite national universities get all the attention, the students, the money, and everyone else tries to imitate their fiercely competitive model. Would any administrators campaign nowadays to become Pretty Good U., and if they did, would they keep their jobs?
That sort of faculty idyll was probably always a myth (go back and reread Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe for a scathing takedown) but not a completely implausible one. After all, every type of institution — however modest its budget, endowment, and ranking — aims to successfully combine a commitment to faculty-led teaching and research with the aspirations of the president and trustees for competitive appeal to students and real distinction in research.
Managing that combination is the provost’s job description, in a nutshell. And the key way that a provost achieves those ends? By leading the search for strong and focused deans.
Good deans — and there are many of them — can meet the expectations of both professors and presidents/trustees. No doubt at our mythical Pretty Good U., deans would be chosen from the ranks of its faculty, perhaps through elections. “For he’s a jolly good fellow” and so forth. Some faculty members probably think that’s how deans should be chosen and wished they worked at Pretty Good U. But to find and attract these deans at a university that aims to be more than “pretty good,” the provost needs to take the lead.
Provosts look for candidates, whether internally or on the national scene, who can build culture within a college. To the faculty, “build culture” can often look like “change culture,” and the cynical take is that the administration will use the dean’s search to install a preselected candidate favored by the upper administration. But a search process overseen by a provost looking for dynamic leadership will reflect the reality that deans serve at the pleasure of the president and are seen as doing a good job if they advance the institution through enrollment gains and strong faculty hiring while keeping complaints to a manageable minimum.
Is there any middle ground between a faculty ideal of essentially electing their new dean and the provost’s task of finding a dean who will be in sync with the president’s agenda?
The truth is that presidents and provosts bring their networks to their positions — and that’s a good thing. Often after holding a range of positions at multiple institutions, the provost does “know people.” Encouraging colleagues to apply for dean positions doesn’t constitute “hiring friends.” It’s leveraging experience and ensuring that the academic enterprise can aggressively meet the board’s expectations.
The challenge for any provost, then, is to design a search process that:
- Reflects the realities of the job description and conveys that this new dean will report to, and work closely with, you and the president.
- Produces the strongest possible pool of candidates, vetted by faculty members, who are, of course, the institutional experts in the fields the dean will oversee.
The wrinkle here, for provosts: Yes, you are leading the search for a new hire who will report to you. But once hired, this dean will need to maintain a healthy working relationship with the president. Indeed, the president and the new dean may have conversations that don’t include you (the provost). You’ll need to expect a level of direct communication between your boss and your direct report that might make you feel a bit uncomfortable at times. It’s just the way it is.
So this hire can’t only be from your own perspective of building the provost’s academic-leadership team. In overseeing this search, you may even end up recommending a candidate who isn’t “your choice” but who you believe will work best with the college’s faculty and with the president.
Think of it this way: You as the provost are a facilitator with the deans, rather than a choke point. The org chart might list you above the deans but, regardless, the deans are campus leaders who will have a stature and power independent of yours. Embrace that. You’re not helping to hire someone who works for you; you’re helping to hire someone who works for the university. You’re not the architect of Pete’s Pretty Good University — you’re the city manager of a crazily complex metropolitan area.
What follows is a list of seven steps any provost should undertake in running a dean’s search. I’ve presented them in a way that seems logical and chronological (to me and, I hope, to you).
Decide whether to hire an executive search firm (and if so, which one). The use of an executive search firm can reassure constituents that the process will be managed with integrity and that candidates will be recruited from a national pool. On the other hand, an internally managed search can save an institution hundreds of thousands of dollars and actually provide more seeming transparency in the process.
Some institutions will default to a particular way of doing things, but a conscientious provost should take the circumstances of each position into consideration and then advocate for one mode or another, depending on what’s best for that particular search.
The president and provost agree upon a search-committee chair. You need someone in this role with strong people skills because the search-committee chair will take the lead both in interacting with candidates and in directing the committee members’ deliberations and brainstorming.
Typically, the best person to lead the search for a dean is a current or former dean of a different college. That way, the search-committee chair deeply understands the nature of the role of dean (especially at that particular institution) without having disciplinary prejudice toward any of the departments that make up the college.
The search chair and the provost decide on the structure of the search. Is the position being filled an internal or external-facing role? What are the particular aspects of institutional mission that this new dean will be charged with leading? There will certainly be faculty members on the committee, but it might also need institutional leaders in research, teaching, fund raising, finance, and other areas.
Will this be a “selection” or a “search” committee? Meaning, will the committee wait for applications, evaluate them, and then choose the next dean? Or will this be a recruiting, vetting, and recommending body that presents a number of thoroughly interviewed finalists to the provost and president? As provost, I strongly advocate for the latter. What provosts need from search committees are realistic (with pros and cons) and knowledgeable evaluations of candidates.
Name the committee. The provost and the search chair invite particular people to join the committee and ask the departments and faculty senate for appropriate faculty representation. At most institutions, the faculty senate will be charged with nominating a professor outside of the hiring college to participate in the search. Other faculty members on the committee, either elected or appointed, will represent the departments in the college or specific transdisciplinary interests that the incoming dean will oversee.
Draft and post the position announcement. The provost drafts the job ad, running it past the chair (and in some cases, the search committees) for advice on specific ways to describe the position, the college, the campus, and the fundamental focus areas being sought.
These ads should function as invitations and recruiting tools — not as a list of dream considerations for the single perfect candidate. A major lesson I’ve learned from the most successful searches is that the outcome can’t be predetermined, even when the senior leadership starts out eyeing a particular internal or external candidate for the deanship.
The ad could run anywhere from two weeks to six months. But it should appear everywhere, including publications and outlets that cater to candidates from underrepresented backgrounds and those from atypical careers.
The search committee interviews candidates. Typically there are two rounds. In most dean searches, the provost will approve an initial slate of semi-finalists for one-hour interviews, typically held via videoconference. Next, based on those results, the provost will approve a shortlist for a second round of interviews in which three to five candidates are brought to campus for two-day visits.
As the provost, your “approval” of the candidates chosen for each round of interviews doesn’t have to be a passive rubber stamp (and probably shouldn’t be). If your assessment of the quality or fit of particular candidates differs from that of the committee — it’s time for a conversation.
Either way, the provost needs to affirmatively approve, and even shape, the slate at each juncture. Genuine communication at this stage will prevent the committee from becoming too invested in candidates that the provost sees as a poor fit for the strategic goals laid out by the board and the president. At the same time, if a committee makes a strong case for a candidate who wasn’t deemed viable, that can push the provost to take a closer look.
Once the finalists come to town, everyone from the general faculty to the president should take a fresh look at their qualifications in light of the leadership qualities they exhibit during this somewhat grueling visit. The interviews can include a sit-down with the search committee, a dinner with the president, a few meetings with donors, and other sessions designed to provide the fullest amount of information about what the candidate would bring to the campus.
It helps to find some way of inviting feedback about the candidates and aggregating it. A search firm can help with that. Or even just paper and pens distributed to faculty members after each campus meeting.
The provost forwards the committee’s recommendations to the president. The search committee might want to rank the top candidates for the deanship, but as provost, you should refuse to forward a ranked list to the president. A ranked list ties the hands of the provost and the president: You’re either stuck with the top candidate or you’ve explicitly rejected the committee’s recommendation.
Ideally the shortlist of names that you give to the president should have substantial positives and negatives about each candidate.
Your boss will probably ask for your advice on the candidates themselves, or on side issues such as their potential compensation packages, tenure, opportunities for partner accommodation, and other aspects of wooing the favored candidate. This is a time for the provost to take the lead, not only giving your own recommendation but bringing to bear all the data that might support it, particularly the final report from the search committee as well as information from CVs, reference calls, and other sources of useful information.
A final note. Any process has to allow for that unicorn: the perfect dean who has unique credentials and skills and might be willing to take on the position — right now. When the president knows the single right candidate, a process should be custom-designed to introduce that person to the campus (or, in the case of an internal candidate, introduce that candidate in this new role).
Gather a wide variety of views on that candidate, not to “select” or to “disqualify” the candidate, but to provide a sense of the landscape that the dean will come into. Campus constituents should always be heard; but, given the nature of the dean’s role, the president will, regardless of process, make the final decision on hiring, retaining, and changing deans.
