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We’ve read and talked about prioritizing academic programs and, in a recent SCUP webcast, prioritizing non-academic programs. Alcorn State is having faculty prioritize deans.

Dickson Idusuyi, the Faculty Senate president and an associate professor of social science at the university, said that discussions have centered around how to make Alcorn more efficient and whether some departments need restructuring. Idusuyi said the university has had a culture where deans stay on in their jobs year after year. “They stay in these positions too long to be effective,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they are not doing their work or they are inefficient. Being a dean is not a lifetime appointment. Just like there is reassessment in the business world, there should be a reassessment of these positions.”

Brown said that one problem with the existing situation was that the deans were not being re-evaluated regularly.

Of course you do. That's why I stop regularly by "The Confessions of a Community College Dean" at IHE to see what Dean Dad's shared recently. His latest examines the possibility that there are good things about being a dean, and is titled, It's Not the Dark Side. It Just Sucks. The comments sections is also interesting and insightful.

This comment by Dr. Crazy about yesterday's post stuck with me. In explaining – very clearly – why she refused to move into administration, she noted that much of what attracted her to academia is precisely what keeps her out of administration. Instead of teaching and doing research, both of which she enjoys, she'd have to spend her time in committee meetings and dealing with recalcitrant colleagues. Plus, she'd have to do it eight-plus hours a day, five days a week, twelve months a year.

Some other commenters made similar points, if with different emphases. One put it quite bluntly, asking just what, exactly, makes this job worth doing.

I had to think about that one for a while.

Very good, lengthy article by Jack Stripling in Inside Higher Ed about the changing roles of deans. One of his sources says, “'A dean really more and more becomes like a mini-president -- the best ones, I should say.'" He examines the changing roles and brings perspective on the positive and potentially negative effects of the change, which appears to be unstoppable.

This is deanship 2.0, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Increasingly complex and big-budget colleges, a crushing economy, and a skeptical public questioning the very purpose of higher education have changed the landscape for a middle management position that now resembles some earlier incarnation of the presidency itself. While the deanship was always a position of leadership in academe, today’s deans say they are administrators in the truest sense, called upon to engage in more long-term strategic thinking within the wider contexts of universities that are often struggling financially. At many institutions, deans are also forced to fend more for themselves by courting donors, bolstering research and creating entrepreneurial partnerships with industry.