I have blogged about this subject before and it never gets
old because nothing ever changes. There are very ‘few training” programs for university
administrators (academic or non-academic alike), most people are handed the job
based upon seniority or ‘other’ reasons (you figure out the other). There has
been a rise in the ‘professional’ administrator, but that is not the norm.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education today:
“When Domenick
J. Pinto first became a department chair, more than 25 years ago, it was a
different job than it is today”.
“Mr. Pinto, who
still heads the department of computer science and information technology at
Sacred Heart University, created the schedule of classes, advised students,
hired adjuncts, evaluated faculty members, and reviewed the curriculum”.
“"It was a
very academic post back then," he says. "We were thought of as
faculty members with managerial responsibilities."”
“Now Mr. Pinto
and department chairs everywhere have become more like managers who happen to
work in academe. He and his peers were once uninvolved in budgetary matters,
but now they often swim in spreadsheets. They have become fiscal overseers and
fund raisers, student recruiters and public-relations gurus”.
This is a
familiar story is it not? It continues:
“A strong department chair can expand the unit's stature and improve
its performance by recruiting top faculty members, attracting more students to
its majors, creating a climate in which professors can excel at their jobs, and
revising curriculum to keep up with new scholarship. But if a chair doesn't woo
enough donors, faculty members may not be able to travel to as many conferences
as they would like, or do as much research. If a department's leader fails to
promote the group's work and convey its importance, deans and provosts might
overlook the department when deciding where to allocate limited dollars. And if
a chair is ineffective at mediating conflicts between colleagues, the simmering
tensions can disrupt day-to-day work and undermine collaboration”.
“Yet, even though the job is
becoming more pivotal, it remains a role for which few faculty members are
properly trained”.
“"I was just handed this
job," says Mr. Pinto of his transition from professor to administrator.
"Most people are."”
“And that's when it becomes most evident that the skills
most professors have honed to become strong teachers and researchers aren't the
ones they'll flex as they run a department, says Jeffrey Buller, dean of the
honors college at Florida Atlantic University. In short, what attracted faculty
members to academic life in the first place—the autonomy, the camaraderie of
colleagues, opportunities to teach and do exciting research—isn't the stuff
that department-chair appointments are made of”.
I am surprised that at the very least,
there are not more ‘in-house’ training programs being developed. Programs like
that could be a model for eventual certificate programs or university courses.
Thoughts?
Dr
Flavius A B Akerele III
The
ETeam
A very insightful article that raises some additional questions. As a Dean of Education, most of my time was devoted to managerial issues, not academic issues. As you pointed out, most faculty members were attracted to academics for the opportunity to teach, research, autonomy and camaraderie. So why would they want to become an administrator - the antithesis of academic work? Would it not be better to hire professional managers, those who enjoy being managers, to run these departments and let faculty members continue to do what they love?
ReplyDeleteIt is the definition of madness...doing the same thing and expecting a different result
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