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Dean-bashing
EDITORIAL Dean-Bashing HILE SPEAKING to a faculty member, she said with real concern in her voice, "But you don't know how hard it is to have had to work with 5 deans in less than 9 years!" Precisely! One is very concerned about the revolving door to and from the dean's office. Though the statistics may not be the same, and the turnover lesser or greater, it is quite likely that in the time-span and setting you can cite from your experience, the turnover rate was equally unfortunate. In many settings these gaps in continuity of the deanship, characterized by an empty chair, bring forth the much needed but difficult role of someone assuming the acting or interim dean. Instead of displaying their appreciation it is unfortunate that even the interim dean may be a candidate for bashing. So, deans may come, deans may go, but the faculty stays on forever? The more cogent question is why do deans go? If you have the answer to this question you probably can see the significance of the next question: W h y would the next dean want to come to a bashing organization?
W
Dissatisfaction There are many studies and papers about the decanal role that it would behoove faculty members, administrators, alumni, and students to read. But this is not written with a cold, logical eye or with research. Rather, it is about how faculties treat the dean and how deans treat the faculty. Dean-bashing is not one game of power politics, but rather many games, even as many games as there are faculty members. As much as some persons enjoy drawing first blood, it must be kept in mind that the stakes are very high--for the dean, the faculty, the students, the alumni, and the university at large. Confrontational politics and collision courses often inflict harm, hardship, sabotage, and contribute to institutional deterioration in function and standing.
Journal of ProfessionalNursing, Vol
Students, faculty, and prospective deans alike tend to avoid those schools. Faculty dissatisfaction with the dean include lack of support, heavy workloads, budget, equity, jeopardized autonomy, lack of change, questionable merit pay decisions, playing favorites or the appearance of doing so, contractual arrangements, tenure decisions, new hires, non-protection from others (administrators, faculty, alumni, or students), broken confidences, questionable judgement, paralysis, pressure to produce, and more. But an important point is that the dissatisfactions of the faculty may be identical, quite similar, or parallel to the dissatisfactions of the dean. Re-read the categories above putting on a dean's glasses and thinking like a dean. If the pressures and dissatisfactions are so similar, why is there not a sense of collegiality, fellow-feeling, empathy engendered between faculty and dean instead of the opposite?
Fouling the Nest By engaging in dean-bashing, faculty are fouling the very nest they must occupy. The faculty may have "won" and crippled or run off the dean. But what of the victory? It has more of the characteristics of a loss. If the dean stays, the role may have been rendered impotent and any advocacy for the school or persons in it is no longer viable. In some cases it is not discovered until too late that the academic environment is now uninhabitable. In a surprisingly short time those who led dean-bashing also leave. The rest of the faculty are left to pick up the pieces though they themselves are also suffering wounds and attempting to heal. How unfortunate it is that only in retrospect those faculty who are willing to do so can see where working relationships went wrong, negotiations were untried (or tried and failed), and where individual responsibility was negated.
11, No 1 (January-February), 1995: pp 1-2
1
Bashing from Above Excluding God, most deans take episodic bashing from upper administration: provost, vice chancellor, chancellor/president and those with commensurate role titles. Sometimes the intimidation is initiated with the administrator, and in some other cases it is merely handed down. Some upper administration individuals enjoy flexing their muscles, showing how easy it is to make a dean cringe. Not so for others, they are just so sick oic hearing about trouble in the school of nursing that they take inappropriate and intemperate action on their irritation and frustration. They prefer to cut administrative knots rather than to untie them. For faculty there are not many ways to know about the pressures being brought on the dean from above. They have little awareness of the dean's advocacy for the school and its faculty because they are not there. They do not witness nor see minutes of dean/vice chancellor interactions. They do not sense the enormity of the stress. They do not ask, risk, question
those who have the data to be validated. In order not to be confused with the facts, they sit more safely on the sidelines and try to guess from questionable and almost always unreliable sources--other people. Their motivation for dean-bashing may be based on hearsay, innuendo, and faculty gossip, often interpreted from vested interest and self-serving.
Man's Inhumanity to Man Let us think of women's inhumanity to women as well. In most curricula we teach our students collegiality, team building, advocacy, ethics, caring, diversity, integrity, advantages of mentorship, leadership, role socialization, and organizational savvy. But what are we teaching by our demonstrated behavior? Probably something we would not like to see listed in the college catalogue.
LAUREL ARCHER COPP, PHD, DHL, RN, FAAN, Editor
W
Dissatisfaction There are many studies and papers about the decanal role that it would behoove faculty members, administrators, alumni, and students to read. But this is not written with a cold, logical eye or with research. Rather, it is about how faculties treat the dean and how deans treat the faculty. Dean-bashing is not one game of power politics, but rather many games, even as many games as there are faculty members. As much as some persons enjoy drawing first blood, it must be kept in mind that the stakes are very high--for the dean, the faculty, the students, the alumni, and the university at large. Confrontational politics and collision courses often inflict harm, hardship, sabotage, and contribute to institutional deterioration in function and standing.
Journal of ProfessionalNursing, Vol
Students, faculty, and prospective deans alike tend to avoid those schools. Faculty dissatisfaction with the dean include lack of support, heavy workloads, budget, equity, jeopardized autonomy, lack of change, questionable merit pay decisions, playing favorites or the appearance of doing so, contractual arrangements, tenure decisions, new hires, non-protection from others (administrators, faculty, alumni, or students), broken confidences, questionable judgement, paralysis, pressure to produce, and more. But an important point is that the dissatisfactions of the faculty may be identical, quite similar, or parallel to the dissatisfactions of the dean. Re-read the categories above putting on a dean's glasses and thinking like a dean. If the pressures and dissatisfactions are so similar, why is there not a sense of collegiality, fellow-feeling, empathy engendered between faculty and dean instead of the opposite?
Fouling the Nest By engaging in dean-bashing, faculty are fouling the very nest they must occupy. The faculty may have "won" and crippled or run off the dean. But what of the victory? It has more of the characteristics of a loss. If the dean stays, the role may have been rendered impotent and any advocacy for the school or persons in it is no longer viable. In some cases it is not discovered until too late that the academic environment is now uninhabitable. In a surprisingly short time those who led dean-bashing also leave. The rest of the faculty are left to pick up the pieces though they themselves are also suffering wounds and attempting to heal. How unfortunate it is that only in retrospect those faculty who are willing to do so can see where working relationships went wrong, negotiations were untried (or tried and failed), and where individual responsibility was negated.
11, No 1 (January-February), 1995: pp 1-2
1
Bashing from Above Excluding God, most deans take episodic bashing from upper administration: provost, vice chancellor, chancellor/president and those with commensurate role titles. Sometimes the intimidation is initiated with the administrator, and in some other cases it is merely handed down. Some upper administration individuals enjoy flexing their muscles, showing how easy it is to make a dean cringe. Not so for others, they are just so sick oic hearing about trouble in the school of nursing that they take inappropriate and intemperate action on their irritation and frustration. They prefer to cut administrative knots rather than to untie them. For faculty there are not many ways to know about the pressures being brought on the dean from above. They have little awareness of the dean's advocacy for the school and its faculty because they are not there. They do not witness nor see minutes of dean/vice chancellor interactions. They do not sense the enormity of the stress. They do not ask, risk, question
those who have the data to be validated. In order not to be confused with the facts, they sit more safely on the sidelines and try to guess from questionable and almost always unreliable sources--other people. Their motivation for dean-bashing may be based on hearsay, innuendo, and faculty gossip, often interpreted from vested interest and self-serving.
Man's Inhumanity to Man Let us think of women's inhumanity to women as well. In most curricula we teach our students collegiality, team building, advocacy, ethics, caring, diversity, integrity, advantages of mentorship, leadership, role socialization, and organizational savvy. But what are we teaching by our demonstrated behavior? Probably something we would not like to see listed in the college catalogue.
LAUREL ARCHER COPP, PHD, DHL, RN, FAAN, Editor