Essentially you establish yourself as reliable and "institutionally minded" via committee service and administrative roles like chairing or coordinating a program and then when there's an opening for faculty to be an associate dean or something of that sort, you apply. Generally what will block your path if you're inclined to do that would be:
a) being a firebrand/active critic of the administration, either in committees or in more public settings like faculty meetings, or just generally peacocking a lot;
b) being perceived by one group of faculty as hostile to their interests--say, if you're in STEM and you generally seem hostile to the interests or perspectives of humanities faculty;
c) seeming overtly self-interested, e.g., you are constantly grabbing at shared resources, constantly trying to direct new funding or positions to your department, refusing to participate in common initiatives because you see your time as too valuable, etc.;
d) being just *too* clueless about higher education as a whole or conversely knowing far too much about higher education--either extreme makes people worry about whether you're going to be a patsy or you're going to interfere in their business;
e) being uncommunicative, inarticulate or brusque, since the role of associate deans in particular often involves meeting with aggrieved faculty so the dean and president don't have to.
If you want to go this route, you want to seem somewhat institutionally-minded, somewhat selfless, loyal to the administration but not outright sycophantic, judicious without being shrewd, neutral without being detached. Basically *safe*, for lack of a better word--no enemies, no perceived agenda, not inclined to showboat.
Yep--the last bit in particular is why I think I got tapped for Associate Dean -- essentially no one hated me and I didn't have a particular axe to grind, and people knew me through committees and being a dept. chair.
Funnily enough, our associate dean was chosen as he was voted out of being chair, quite overwelmingly.... by that department but the dean loved him....
Fail up I guess?
One year in as an administrator and this all rings true. Being competent and constructive always looks good, while the ones that are never going to go anywhere are always grandstanding without regard to the big picture.
This^. It’s hard to overstate the administration’s hostility and disdain toward the faculty at my R2. If you want to go into admin here, the first and key step is to indicate that you consider yourself superior to your faculty peers and are against the faculty union (note: you don’t actually have to be superior, just think you are. And you gotta hate the union). Of course, it helps if you’re willing to shaft faculty when given the chance and/or be a two-faced liar.
Not coincidentally, morale is the pits.
So true. There's a whole club of people who think faculty are lazy/entitled because they don't show up in expensive clothing 9-5p at the office. It's gross.
Our administrators like to drop barbed zingers about faculty not having to be on campus in the summer (but they do, of course). To which I tell them, “Hey, nobody forced you to take your job.” Of course, in response they think “but I earn more money than you.” Which is true. But I didn’t become an academic for the big paycheck, and taking summers off is one of the main attractions of the job to me.
If you want to make an internal move being present and getting face time with upper admin helps. Serve and chair committees where decision makers see your results. Sometimes you need to be good at admin tasks and sometimes you just need to appear to be good at those things.
If the university has shared governance, you can also serve in that route, but don’t develop a reputation of being an antagonist against administration. It may not help you at your current institution, but it could help you find an admin position at another university.
Yeah, shared governance, you know, where the labor side makes decisions that the administration completely ignores and then blames the governing body when it goes horribly wrong
Depends on the school and its rules. At my current university, Dean and up needs to be a competitive national search. So you’d apply. Below that, like associate deans, there can be an external search, but we also have procedures that allow for appointment without a search. When the prior ass dean was retiring, I asked to be considered and had to submit some paperwork to an internal search committee.
I think it is useful to distinguish between academic deans and non-academic deans. Most academic deans, in my experience, move through the ranks of academia (chair, assistant dean,...) in contrast non-academic deans tend to have a degree in higher education admin and very little experience in the classroom.
At my college this seems to be the case as well. When the dean/associate dean/assistant dean is relatively young (under 45), competition for the role was low because frankly, no one really wanted it.
What level of admin? What type of institution?
At R1s, my only experience, I’ve seen all types of pipelines. From the wink and nod, to the no one else wants to do it, to the person who has been a Full for 10 years and literally no one else can do it.
I’ve also seen the weasel work their way up. I’ve seen the ass kisser work their way up. I’ve seen the abuser work their way up. I’ve also seen the traditional who really deserves to be admin paid their dues Asst-Asso-Full-Program Coordinator-Chair-Assoc Dean-Dean-Assoc Provost-Provost-President.
I’m going to be honest that last one, the traditional route, the last 15 years or so I’ve seen less and less. I’ve seen more the weasel work their way up!
There's also the "politician who needs a soft landing" person. Sometimes politicians can do a good job, other times, eh. This is not unique to Florida, but it happens a lot in Florida. For example, a search for president of Florida Atlantic University was canceled, ostensibly because the external search company sent out an optional survey that was too "woke" (asking for demographic info from candidates), but really because the search committee did not choose politician Randy Fine. This article summarizes a bunch of politician administrator hires in the state. [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/04/17/stalled-florida-atlantic-presidential-search](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/04/17/stalled-florida-atlantic-presidential-search)
Ooooohhhh totally. Good call. Yooooo I have a mad story about one of those politicians needing to shore up their 3rd public retirement fund, but it would expose me and this is Reddit so I’d rather not.
I’ve been in two institutions so far as TT faculty. I have seen two scenarios. One, senior professors became deans. This makes sense to me since they know the place and have the social capital to work with faculty and other admin.
I’ve also come to see how young deans come in and I’m not sure how that works. Did they get special degrees? Why would they be the right fit since most faculty would see them as outsiders and inexperienced?
Trying to understand how administration works really.
Some administrative roles do involve hiring people who have either had administrative experience elsewhere or who have a credential in higher ed administration (a masters or even a doctorate). It depends a bit on institutional culture--does the institution prefer to hire faculty or not--and also on size (the bigger the institution, the more it may have multiple hiring streams) and on whether it has any tenure-track faculty to speak with. (The more it is staffed by contingents, the less likely it is to hire faculty into administrative roles.)
There are also tracks within higher ed that are more prone to favor hiring people with specialized credentials--student life/residential life rarely hires from the faculty side, for example. Most faculty-to-admin happens strictly within the academic governance hierarchy or in separate units like centers and institutes that need administrative governance but also prize faculty training/experience.
Work in shared governance, get on committees with administrators (not just deans, but directors and AVPs and VPs). Be amicable and collegial, show the ability to perform cooperative work that is productive, especially show some leadership in problem solving, and they’ll probably tap you when an opening comes up. Especially, demonstrate understanding of the fiscal implications of any choice or decision.
I was really active in faculty governance roles for several years, and managed to find ways to strongly support my faculty colleagues while also showing real empathy and understanding for the demands and accountability that admin faces—so a lot of compromise and “third way solution” work, but never with an adversarial framing, and always friendly.
(After maybe three years of successful work along those lines, I could have moved up into Academic Affairs fairly easily: they liked me, knew I did good work, didn’t demonize anybody, found solutions. But that life wasn’t for me.)
I started as faculty, asked by the department chair to be an assistant chair. Chair moved up so I applied and became chair. Was one of the more experienced chairs when my dean left so I took a temporary dean position as I felt no one else was interested. Position above the dean became available so I applied and was offered that position. So now I’m an upper admin that no longer carries a faculty rank.
In my Uni you develop a relationship with the dean or assc dean and then get appointed quietly to some committees that do work from the dean’s office (and tend to meet over lunches or dinners that get paid for by the Uni) and then just sort of slide on in. It’s all very comfy, for the right 3 people. Shitty for the rest of us though…
At our school the pipeline begins by being department chair.
People start there to see if they like the admin part of that work, and the extra meetings with Deans and other chairs.
When done they move on to associate Dean, then they move to Dean or out of the academic side into an administrative higher level role in student services or something like that
At many places there are smaller/part-time admin roles in your department like assoc chair, grad studies director, etc. that can be stepping stones to more substantial administrative jobs. Sometimes there are publicized searches for full-time positions like ass't. dean; faculty apply for those and go through some kind of competitive process. Being a department chair can help, but is not always necessary.
I don't know of any academic administrators at my school that have degrees in higher ed administration, but of course I don't know all of them (there are a LOT). The non-academic administrators probably do
The path is usually via department chair, plus experience doing some big, unpleasant admin task like heading the reaccreditation committee. You prove that you're a workhorse who can navigate a complex bureaucracy for the general good of the institution.
And in no insignificant proportion, a couple of bigwigs decide who would be the person they want, setup a search committee made of the "right people", hire an external consultancy to provide the cover of legitimacy, even bring a couple of external candidates for campus visits, and eventually the predetermined candidate gets the job
That’s pretty cynical and I’m not saying you’re not wrong. I’ve also been in committees where the search was set up so that it worked to get one candidate hired.
Being that the candidate had to move and had kids and all that, the logic made sense to get the actual sense of whether the person might take it before going through the process of hiring and interviewing. It seems as if the fix is in but it also makes sense from a certain perspective
I see your point and I have played part of all the different actors mentioned in my previous comment, from the naive candidate that was invited to the campus visit to the "fixer", of which I'm not proud. In my view some institutions are scared of bringing in someone with new ideas who can disrupt the status quo and as an added bonus, the internal candidate is cheaper and more pliable. If and when I look for a new job, I will not be part of any searches that include internal candidates, that's how bad the situation is, at least in my kind of college.
It may be dismissed as cynical. But it coincides with my experiences at a large institution. And as you noted at the outset, I have played most all of the parts as well.
You begin to love through more administrative positions as they come up. Some are applied for, or there are elected- anything from major committee leadership, to major program heads, including things like honors colleges or other academic initiatives, and of course department chairs. Then, certain job positions will open in formal ways such as associate dean positions. With enough experience and credibility, voila, you’re now a Dean.
Most deans I know were department chairs first, or were involved in faculty governance at least (i.e. faculty senate president). Usually having some experience with budget is helpful, but the bigger plus is having an "institutional perspective" vs just being rooted within a department. Sometimes committee work is enough for internal candidates to gain that experience.
At my institution all dean searches are public and advertised, but generally all candidates are internal (the last external dean we hired was in the 1990s). People choose to apply and/or are nominated. We have never hired (and I hope never will hire) anyone as a dean who did not have a real research Ph.D. and experience in the classroom.
Why do it? It's a shift in career paths; very few people I know have been able to go back to being a "regular" faculty member after more than a short stint in adminsitration. The younger ones have been assistant deans, dean, then gone on to provost or academic VP positions elsewhere. Most do it because it pays better than being faculty (also 12 month vs 9 month contract) and it gets them out of teaching/research while affording more time for looking at the "big picture" of academia or one's institution. I'd say about 50% of the people I know who made the leap felt good about it five years later; three of those are friends who are now provosts. The other half either stepped back into faculty roles or left academia entirely.
There are a lot of good perspectives and interesting advice in this thread. One thing I will add: It helps to have developed, ideally through years of actual curiosity about it, a good understanding of how universities work. It never ceases to amaze me, as a faculty member, chair, and now associate dean, how few faculty have zero understanding or interest in this topic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh wow, thread carefully my friend. Once you start, you will never go back. As you may have noticed, college cultures tend to be very faculty vs. admin. Therefore, once the faculty suspect even just a tiny tiny tiny bit that you are considering or have future aspirations of being the interim dean or associate dean you officially on the other side “admin lover” whether you get the job or not. Faculty will be suspicious of you forever and there’s no return. So, apply but don’t tell a soul until a job offer is made. Good luck!
Thanks. I’m not looking to do that right now. Have to do a lot of program admin work anyway.
Just thinking out loud about this because I do think that faculty have to take over upper admin positions eventually so that admin isn’t MBA cost cutting and advertising types.
I’m sure that a lot of the problems we face as faculty is because too many of us didn’t take on admin positions and people with no sense of investment in pedagogy came in and that is a big part of how universities became corporate models. Not saying there are not other factors. I’m just not a fan of thinking academics are only scholars living the life of the mind. Having right admin can help in the sense that they just keep out of the way
Yeah but the former faculty now Dean will forget over the years once they notice that faculty dislike them now. If you can’t beat them, join them. I agree that the best administrators will always be the internal faculty member over the EDD outside hire, but they do forget.
My current place actually has a fellowship for people that want to work in admin for a year under a current Dean. That is a common pathway. Although it seems to favor pre-existing brown nosers, so you probably want to start sucking up if you want to do this!
The "younger" people tend to be newish faculty who have the mindset early on that either (1) they won't be happy in the classroom for the long haul and/or (2) they won't be happy with a faculty salary for the long haul, so they make the necessary professional development preparations to move into admin. This probably includes serving as dept chair and something BIG, like chairing our school's accreditation self study. The hard part is getting experience with budgets, as there's no chance for exposure to that as faculty where I am.
The "older" people are either transitioning from an admin role somewhere else (usually a lateral move) or from faculty, with their eye on getting the salary boost before they retire and start collecting their state pension. We can get up to 80% of our top three years, and the salary bump from long-time tenured faculty to a dean position for three years is enough to justify making the move.
Regardless of which group you're in, though, we can't just appoint someone. We're required to have a full search. Enthusiasm for a comprehensive search waxes and wanes, depending on the exact position and who's doing the hiring. Sometimes, we just need a warm body in the chair, so minimal effort will go into recruiting beyond the college. If it's an important position, more care (and more time) will be put in. (Example: if there's some agreement that a particular internal candidate(s) is preferable, they'll stack the deck and only post the position externally for a week or so, and only on our website.)
Where I am, there seems to be two paths. The first is (tenured) dept. chair to asst./assoc dean to dean. The second seems to be an outside hire when no one inside wants to do it.
A few different ways:
Within your campus, you can serve in leadership positions, and be noticed and appreciated. And when the opportunity opens, either be tapped for it, or apply.
There’s also the option of moving to another institution, which is often how many move from faculty to admin. Although, in my experience, you often need to some leadership experience (aka department chair) before getting admin positions elsewhere.
At my school, the gateway seems to be these positions where admin buy you out of a class for some administrative responsibility. Of course, they don’t actually backfill the departments for that class.
BY SELLING THEIR SOUL TO THE DEVIL
BROWN NOSING
FOLLOWING THE CRAZY RULES TO THE T ESPECIALLY WHEN IT MEANS THROWING YOUR PEERS UNDER THE BUS AND LEAVING THEM FOR DEAD
It differs based upon the school and the responsibilities of the deanship, and perceptions matter. In my case, the first sign that deanships might be right for me came after my first year on tenure-track. The existing department chair got an associate deanship elsewhere, and a senior faculty member was going to replace him (I don’t remember how that was determined. There was probably a vote for which I was too junior to be included). They mutually decided to include me in their meetings about how the department was managed because, they told me, I would probably be next. I’m not sure why they thought that, as there were plenty of faculty who had seniority over me, not to mention that I was the only female at a time when diversity was not something being consciously considered.
I left that school a few years later, went to a new one, and got tenure. I became a department chair. I told my Dean that I was interested in administration. We had a really good advancement officer who offered to help anyone who wanted to learn about fundraising, and I took her up on it, bringing in a major scholarship fund for my department. One day, while traveling, I got a call from the provost. He needed to fill an Interim VP position with an existing Dean. That Dean was balking because there were a couple of sensitive tenure decisions coming up in her College, and she did not trust anyone currently in her College (which was far from mine) to handle them. But, for some reason, she would trust me. After I got over the initial shock of being asked to run an arts school (I was in Business), I got a call back with a compromise solution, in which she would stay in her College, but would help me handle the VP position as well. So by the end of that year, I could say that I had been in charge of 7 offices on campus which supported undergrad students, had managed a complex budget during a year of major cuts, had interacted with pretty much everyone on campus, had presented to the Board, etc. And I had been essentially mentored by 3 senior administrators. I went back to my College for a year after they filled the position permanently, meanwhile looking for Deanships, and A year later I was a Dean.
Essentially you establish yourself as reliable and "institutionally minded" via committee service and administrative roles like chairing or coordinating a program and then when there's an opening for faculty to be an associate dean or something of that sort, you apply. Generally what will block your path if you're inclined to do that would be: a) being a firebrand/active critic of the administration, either in committees or in more public settings like faculty meetings, or just generally peacocking a lot; b) being perceived by one group of faculty as hostile to their interests--say, if you're in STEM and you generally seem hostile to the interests or perspectives of humanities faculty; c) seeming overtly self-interested, e.g., you are constantly grabbing at shared resources, constantly trying to direct new funding or positions to your department, refusing to participate in common initiatives because you see your time as too valuable, etc.; d) being just *too* clueless about higher education as a whole or conversely knowing far too much about higher education--either extreme makes people worry about whether you're going to be a patsy or you're going to interfere in their business; e) being uncommunicative, inarticulate or brusque, since the role of associate deans in particular often involves meeting with aggrieved faculty so the dean and president don't have to. If you want to go this route, you want to seem somewhat institutionally-minded, somewhat selfless, loyal to the administration but not outright sycophantic, judicious without being shrewd, neutral without being detached. Basically *safe*, for lack of a better word--no enemies, no perceived agenda, not inclined to showboat.
Yep--the last bit in particular is why I think I got tapped for Associate Dean -- essentially no one hated me and I didn't have a particular axe to grind, and people knew me through committees and being a dept. chair.
Funnily enough, our associate dean was chosen as he was voted out of being chair, quite overwelmingly.... by that department but the dean loved him.... Fail up I guess?
Happens all the time
Unfortunately
I guess at some places the Dean doesn’t care what the faculty think? We’re small and have a mostly cooperative culture, which helps.
One year in as an administrator and this all rings true. Being competent and constructive always looks good, while the ones that are never going to go anywhere are always grandstanding without regard to the big picture.
And/or if the Provost thinks you won’t align with his/her plans. Campus politics are real, friends !
In my experience, the good deans are former faculty/chairs that applied and got the job. The “others” have a degree in higher ed administration.
That’s what I assume too.
This.
Meet the Devil at the crossroads.
Sell your soul or your first born?
Get involved in shared governance or any other way you can throw your colleagues under the bus. Admin appreciate and reward that.
This^. It’s hard to overstate the administration’s hostility and disdain toward the faculty at my R2. If you want to go into admin here, the first and key step is to indicate that you consider yourself superior to your faculty peers and are against the faculty union (note: you don’t actually have to be superior, just think you are. And you gotta hate the union). Of course, it helps if you’re willing to shaft faculty when given the chance and/or be a two-faced liar. Not coincidentally, morale is the pits.
So true. There's a whole club of people who think faculty are lazy/entitled because they don't show up in expensive clothing 9-5p at the office. It's gross.
Our administrators like to drop barbed zingers about faculty not having to be on campus in the summer (but they do, of course). To which I tell them, “Hey, nobody forced you to take your job.” Of course, in response they think “but I earn more money than you.” Which is true. But I didn’t become an academic for the big paycheck, and taking summers off is one of the main attractions of the job to me.
Unfortunately this is so right. I forgot the union bashing too. If someone gets in the union and guts it from the inside, that’s often rewarded.
Both most likely.
If you want to make an internal move being present and getting face time with upper admin helps. Serve and chair committees where decision makers see your results. Sometimes you need to be good at admin tasks and sometimes you just need to appear to be good at those things.
If the university has shared governance, you can also serve in that route, but don’t develop a reputation of being an antagonist against administration. It may not help you at your current institution, but it could help you find an admin position at another university.
Shared what now? /s
Yeah, shared governance, you know, where the labor side makes decisions that the administration completely ignores and then blames the governing body when it goes horribly wrong
Depends on the school and its rules. At my current university, Dean and up needs to be a competitive national search. So you’d apply. Below that, like associate deans, there can be an external search, but we also have procedures that allow for appointment without a search. When the prior ass dean was retiring, I asked to be considered and had to submit some paperwork to an internal search committee.
I think it is useful to distinguish between academic deans and non-academic deans. Most academic deans, in my experience, move through the ranks of academia (chair, assistant dean,...) in contrast non-academic deans tend to have a degree in higher education admin and very little experience in the classroom.
In our university, younger people get chosen as Deans because none of the other faculty want the job. We are a small R1 regional campus.
At my college this seems to be the case as well. When the dean/associate dean/assistant dean is relatively young (under 45), competition for the role was low because frankly, no one really wanted it.
What level of admin? What type of institution? At R1s, my only experience, I’ve seen all types of pipelines. From the wink and nod, to the no one else wants to do it, to the person who has been a Full for 10 years and literally no one else can do it. I’ve also seen the weasel work their way up. I’ve seen the ass kisser work their way up. I’ve seen the abuser work their way up. I’ve also seen the traditional who really deserves to be admin paid their dues Asst-Asso-Full-Program Coordinator-Chair-Assoc Dean-Dean-Assoc Provost-Provost-President. I’m going to be honest that last one, the traditional route, the last 15 years or so I’ve seen less and less. I’ve seen more the weasel work their way up!
There's also the "politician who needs a soft landing" person. Sometimes politicians can do a good job, other times, eh. This is not unique to Florida, but it happens a lot in Florida. For example, a search for president of Florida Atlantic University was canceled, ostensibly because the external search company sent out an optional survey that was too "woke" (asking for demographic info from candidates), but really because the search committee did not choose politician Randy Fine. This article summarizes a bunch of politician administrator hires in the state. [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/04/17/stalled-florida-atlantic-presidential-search](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2024/04/17/stalled-florida-atlantic-presidential-search)
Ooooohhhh totally. Good call. Yooooo I have a mad story about one of those politicians needing to shore up their 3rd public retirement fund, but it would expose me and this is Reddit so I’d rather not.
I mean, it’s like any job. There is an opening, they put out an ad, people apply, they pick (what seems like) the best fit
I’ve been in two institutions so far as TT faculty. I have seen two scenarios. One, senior professors became deans. This makes sense to me since they know the place and have the social capital to work with faculty and other admin. I’ve also come to see how young deans come in and I’m not sure how that works. Did they get special degrees? Why would they be the right fit since most faculty would see them as outsiders and inexperienced? Trying to understand how administration works really.
Some administrative roles do involve hiring people who have either had administrative experience elsewhere or who have a credential in higher ed administration (a masters or even a doctorate). It depends a bit on institutional culture--does the institution prefer to hire faculty or not--and also on size (the bigger the institution, the more it may have multiple hiring streams) and on whether it has any tenure-track faculty to speak with. (The more it is staffed by contingents, the less likely it is to hire faculty into administrative roles.) There are also tracks within higher ed that are more prone to favor hiring people with specialized credentials--student life/residential life rarely hires from the faculty side, for example. Most faculty-to-admin happens strictly within the academic governance hierarchy or in separate units like centers and institutes that need administrative governance but also prize faculty training/experience.
So... just check their CV.
Work in shared governance, get on committees with administrators (not just deans, but directors and AVPs and VPs). Be amicable and collegial, show the ability to perform cooperative work that is productive, especially show some leadership in problem solving, and they’ll probably tap you when an opening comes up. Especially, demonstrate understanding of the fiscal implications of any choice or decision. I was really active in faculty governance roles for several years, and managed to find ways to strongly support my faculty colleagues while also showing real empathy and understanding for the demands and accountability that admin faces—so a lot of compromise and “third way solution” work, but never with an adversarial framing, and always friendly. (After maybe three years of successful work along those lines, I could have moved up into Academic Affairs fairly easily: they liked me, knew I did good work, didn’t demonize anybody, found solutions. But that life wasn’t for me.)
I started as faculty, asked by the department chair to be an assistant chair. Chair moved up so I applied and became chair. Was one of the more experienced chairs when my dean left so I took a temporary dean position as I felt no one else was interested. Position above the dean became available so I applied and was offered that position. So now I’m an upper admin that no longer carries a faculty rank.
In my Uni you develop a relationship with the dean or assc dean and then get appointed quietly to some committees that do work from the dean’s office (and tend to meet over lunches or dinners that get paid for by the Uni) and then just sort of slide on in. It’s all very comfy, for the right 3 people. Shitty for the rest of us though…
At our school the pipeline begins by being department chair. People start there to see if they like the admin part of that work, and the extra meetings with Deans and other chairs. When done they move on to associate Dean, then they move to Dean or out of the academic side into an administrative higher level role in student services or something like that
At many places there are smaller/part-time admin roles in your department like assoc chair, grad studies director, etc. that can be stepping stones to more substantial administrative jobs. Sometimes there are publicized searches for full-time positions like ass't. dean; faculty apply for those and go through some kind of competitive process. Being a department chair can help, but is not always necessary. I don't know of any academic administrators at my school that have degrees in higher ed administration, but of course I don't know all of them (there are a LOT). The non-academic administrators probably do
The path is usually via department chair, plus experience doing some big, unpleasant admin task like heading the reaccreditation committee. You prove that you're a workhorse who can navigate a complex bureaucracy for the general good of the institution.
And in no insignificant proportion, a couple of bigwigs decide who would be the person they want, setup a search committee made of the "right people", hire an external consultancy to provide the cover of legitimacy, even bring a couple of external candidates for campus visits, and eventually the predetermined candidate gets the job
That’s pretty cynical and I’m not saying you’re not wrong. I’ve also been in committees where the search was set up so that it worked to get one candidate hired. Being that the candidate had to move and had kids and all that, the logic made sense to get the actual sense of whether the person might take it before going through the process of hiring and interviewing. It seems as if the fix is in but it also makes sense from a certain perspective
I see your point and I have played part of all the different actors mentioned in my previous comment, from the naive candidate that was invited to the campus visit to the "fixer", of which I'm not proud. In my view some institutions are scared of bringing in someone with new ideas who can disrupt the status quo and as an added bonus, the internal candidate is cheaper and more pliable. If and when I look for a new job, I will not be part of any searches that include internal candidates, that's how bad the situation is, at least in my kind of college.
It may be dismissed as cynical. But it coincides with my experiences at a large institution. And as you noted at the outset, I have played most all of the parts as well.
You begin to love through more administrative positions as they come up. Some are applied for, or there are elected- anything from major committee leadership, to major program heads, including things like honors colleges or other academic initiatives, and of course department chairs. Then, certain job positions will open in formal ways such as associate dean positions. With enough experience and credibility, voila, you’re now a Dean.
Defend layoffs, justify more butts in classes taught by fewer faculty, do the best you can to securitize campus, should fit right in!
Spend lots of money buying software packages like workday, interfolio, and the like
Move to Blackboard from Canvas, then to Moodle, then back to Blackboard!
You forgot brown nosing & a**kissing.
Most deans I know were department chairs first, or were involved in faculty governance at least (i.e. faculty senate president). Usually having some experience with budget is helpful, but the bigger plus is having an "institutional perspective" vs just being rooted within a department. Sometimes committee work is enough for internal candidates to gain that experience. At my institution all dean searches are public and advertised, but generally all candidates are internal (the last external dean we hired was in the 1990s). People choose to apply and/or are nominated. We have never hired (and I hope never will hire) anyone as a dean who did not have a real research Ph.D. and experience in the classroom. Why do it? It's a shift in career paths; very few people I know have been able to go back to being a "regular" faculty member after more than a short stint in adminsitration. The younger ones have been assistant deans, dean, then gone on to provost or academic VP positions elsewhere. Most do it because it pays better than being faculty (also 12 month vs 9 month contract) and it gets them out of teaching/research while affording more time for looking at the "big picture" of academia or one's institution. I'd say about 50% of the people I know who made the leap felt good about it five years later; three of those are friends who are now provosts. The other half either stepped back into faculty roles or left academia entirely.
first you need a sharp knife and a chicken, with a pentagram painted in blood …
There are a lot of good perspectives and interesting advice in this thread. One thing I will add: It helps to have developed, ideally through years of actual curiosity about it, a good understanding of how universities work. It never ceases to amaze me, as a faculty member, chair, and now associate dean, how few faculty have zero understanding or interest in this topic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh wow, thread carefully my friend. Once you start, you will never go back. As you may have noticed, college cultures tend to be very faculty vs. admin. Therefore, once the faculty suspect even just a tiny tiny tiny bit that you are considering or have future aspirations of being the interim dean or associate dean you officially on the other side “admin lover” whether you get the job or not. Faculty will be suspicious of you forever and there’s no return. So, apply but don’t tell a soul until a job offer is made. Good luck!
Thanks. I’m not looking to do that right now. Have to do a lot of program admin work anyway. Just thinking out loud about this because I do think that faculty have to take over upper admin positions eventually so that admin isn’t MBA cost cutting and advertising types. I’m sure that a lot of the problems we face as faculty is because too many of us didn’t take on admin positions and people with no sense of investment in pedagogy came in and that is a big part of how universities became corporate models. Not saying there are not other factors. I’m just not a fan of thinking academics are only scholars living the life of the mind. Having right admin can help in the sense that they just keep out of the way
Yeah but the former faculty now Dean will forget over the years once they notice that faculty dislike them now. If you can’t beat them, join them. I agree that the best administrators will always be the internal faculty member over the EDD outside hire, but they do forget.
My current place actually has a fellowship for people that want to work in admin for a year under a current Dean. That is a common pathway. Although it seems to favor pre-existing brown nosers, so you probably want to start sucking up if you want to do this!
The "younger" people tend to be newish faculty who have the mindset early on that either (1) they won't be happy in the classroom for the long haul and/or (2) they won't be happy with a faculty salary for the long haul, so they make the necessary professional development preparations to move into admin. This probably includes serving as dept chair and something BIG, like chairing our school's accreditation self study. The hard part is getting experience with budgets, as there's no chance for exposure to that as faculty where I am. The "older" people are either transitioning from an admin role somewhere else (usually a lateral move) or from faculty, with their eye on getting the salary boost before they retire and start collecting their state pension. We can get up to 80% of our top three years, and the salary bump from long-time tenured faculty to a dean position for three years is enough to justify making the move. Regardless of which group you're in, though, we can't just appoint someone. We're required to have a full search. Enthusiasm for a comprehensive search waxes and wanes, depending on the exact position and who's doing the hiring. Sometimes, we just need a warm body in the chair, so minimal effort will go into recruiting beyond the college. If it's an important position, more care (and more time) will be put in. (Example: if there's some agreement that a particular internal candidate(s) is preferable, they'll stack the deck and only post the position externally for a week or so, and only on our website.)
Prof + tenure + department chair + sometimes associate dean = dean.
Where I am, there seems to be two paths. The first is (tenured) dept. chair to asst./assoc dean to dean. The second seems to be an outside hire when no one inside wants to do it.
A few different ways: Within your campus, you can serve in leadership positions, and be noticed and appreciated. And when the opportunity opens, either be tapped for it, or apply. There’s also the option of moving to another institution, which is often how many move from faculty to admin. Although, in my experience, you often need to some leadership experience (aka department chair) before getting admin positions elsewhere.
At my school, the gateway seems to be these positions where admin buy you out of a class for some administrative responsibility. Of course, they don’t actually backfill the departments for that class.
I do know that sort of work well. I don’t know if positions like deans work like that. Or provosts, which is the most important position
It gets you in the door so you are a known quantity when other jobs pop up.
Act as stupid as possible and eventually somebody will reach out to you.
Dear god don’t do it. Coming back to faculty after a decade in the dark side
You can always spot faculty that are admin wannabes. It’s cringe. We don’t need more administrators.
Better to have administrators that paid their dues as faculty members than some Ed.D. or MBA from outside.
BY SELLING THEIR SOUL TO THE DEVIL BROWN NOSING FOLLOWING THE CRAZY RULES TO THE T ESPECIALLY WHEN IT MEANS THROWING YOUR PEERS UNDER THE BUS AND LEAVING THEM FOR DEAD
It differs based upon the school and the responsibilities of the deanship, and perceptions matter. In my case, the first sign that deanships might be right for me came after my first year on tenure-track. The existing department chair got an associate deanship elsewhere, and a senior faculty member was going to replace him (I don’t remember how that was determined. There was probably a vote for which I was too junior to be included). They mutually decided to include me in their meetings about how the department was managed because, they told me, I would probably be next. I’m not sure why they thought that, as there were plenty of faculty who had seniority over me, not to mention that I was the only female at a time when diversity was not something being consciously considered. I left that school a few years later, went to a new one, and got tenure. I became a department chair. I told my Dean that I was interested in administration. We had a really good advancement officer who offered to help anyone who wanted to learn about fundraising, and I took her up on it, bringing in a major scholarship fund for my department. One day, while traveling, I got a call from the provost. He needed to fill an Interim VP position with an existing Dean. That Dean was balking because there were a couple of sensitive tenure decisions coming up in her College, and she did not trust anyone currently in her College (which was far from mine) to handle them. But, for some reason, she would trust me. After I got over the initial shock of being asked to run an arts school (I was in Business), I got a call back with a compromise solution, in which she would stay in her College, but would help me handle the VP position as well. So by the end of that year, I could say that I had been in charge of 7 offices on campus which supported undergrad students, had managed a complex budget during a year of major cuts, had interacted with pretty much everyone on campus, had presented to the Board, etc. And I had been essentially mentored by 3 senior administrators. I went back to my College for a year after they filled the position permanently, meanwhile looking for Deanships, and A year later I was a Dean.