WEBVTT 00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:08.240 I guess one thing that ah I thought about when we talked about doing this 00:00:12.050 --> 00:00:18.607 interview was um there's nothing in there about my philosophy of 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:25.357 leadership and I thought I might just say a word about that, the people 00:00:25.390 --> 00:00:29.407 that worked with me always heard from me that there were three things, 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:32.366 three rules that I wanted to try to live by and I wanted them to try to 00:00:32.399 --> 00:00:38.787 live by. Um the first was to operate on the basis of principles and not 00:00:38.820 --> 00:00:46.756 personalities. Um And by that we met treat people even handedly, I don't 00:00:46.789 --> 00:00:50.817 want to have, I don't have to have a set of friends and a set of enemies. 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:54.826 We have a set of people we're dealing with. And if we're if we're going to 00:00:54.859 --> 00:00:57.527 do something for one person, we're gonna do it for everybody that's 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:01.527 similarly eligible. And if we're going to say no to somebody, then we have 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:05.367 to say no to any anybody else that comes in for that because as Dean, you 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:11.447 have a a stream of people coming in and so we want to treat them fairly. 00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:18.917 We don't want to have friends and enemies. Um Another point was, we all 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:24.977 spend an awful lot of time at work, Let's have fun. And so I think anybody 00:01:25.010 --> 00:01:30.977 that worked with me will say that we laughed a lot. We had a lot of fun um 00:01:31.010 --> 00:01:35.926 doing what we were doing and then the last, the last point maybe should be 00:01:35.959 --> 00:01:41.096 the first. Uh and that was maximized good when you're in a leadership 00:01:41.129 --> 00:01:47.266 position, You can, you receive requests, you're making decisions, you're 00:01:47.299 --> 00:01:50.307 adjudicating differences. 00:01:50.340 --> 00:01:55.997 Our university is there to serve a societal purpose. And so when those 00:01:56.030 --> 00:02:01.197 things come to, you always try to maximize the good that comes out of the 00:02:01.230 --> 00:02:05.697 encounter, whatever it happens to be. And so those are the three rules we 00:02:05.730 --> 00:02:11.577 tried to live by and I think that they, I think they served us well and 00:02:11.610 --> 00:02:18.106 and we enjoyed doing what we were doing. 00:02:18.139 --> 00:02:21.886 You mentioned the fact that a lot of the most actual academic 00:02:21.919 --> 00:02:28.207 administrators have no training in administration. 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:32.886 Did you feel that as a handicap or as an advantage or? Well, I didn't 00:02:32.919 --> 00:02:38.617 really have any thought about it at all. Um Later on, when I say later on 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:42.406 , when I became chair, 00:02:42.439 --> 00:02:46.786 I just became chair, I mean nothing happened except one day I was in this 00:02:46.819 --> 00:02:51.006 office, the next day I was in that one. Um 00:02:51.039 --> 00:02:53.506 when 00:02:53.539 --> 00:03:01.539 when I became Dean actually when SAM was dean, I learned from him that one 00:03:02.060 --> 00:03:08.867 Ought to try to develop the talent of the administrative team. And so he 00:03:08.900 --> 00:03:16.900 started having retreats for department chairs where we would spend a day 00:03:17.620 --> 00:03:23.617 talking about leadership and problem solving and we'd have a little case 00:03:23.650 --> 00:03:31.650 studies. And the whole idea was to cause people to think about their 00:03:31.659 --> 00:03:35.406 administrative role as a leadership one, not just as a first among equals 00:03:35.439 --> 00:03:41.376 , which is that right phrase that people tend to use in higher education 00:03:41.409 --> 00:03:48.397 about people that become department chairs. And and then um I don't 00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:54.906 remember if this started with SAM or with me, but we begin to have um 00:03:54.939 --> 00:03:59.976 workshops for new department chairs. And so each year in the college of 00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:07.807 the size of ours we would have 3 to 5, six, maybe new department chairs. 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:14.307 And during the summer we would have them come in and we would go over each 00:04:14.340 --> 00:04:19.027 of their areas of responsibility and spend time, here's what you need to 00:04:19.060 --> 00:04:21.647 know, here's where you get the information, here's where you can go for 00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:26.467 questions. These are this is the calendar, these are the events that are 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:31.416 going to occur. And so for the budget, they knew where they got their 00:04:31.449 --> 00:04:34.236 information, what their responsibility was, where the information was 00:04:34.269 --> 00:04:38.817 coming from in personnel, they knew here's what here's what you have to do 00:04:38.850 --> 00:04:42.556 in promotion and tenure, here's what it's do, here's what you have to do 00:04:42.589 --> 00:04:46.007 in terms of salary adjustments and an annual evaluation and here's what 00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:53.757 it's due and um Mhm. We always would remind them that their departments 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:57.637 have bylaws that chair's probably ought to ought to be familiar with those 00:04:57.670 --> 00:05:04.346 and and follow them. And just I really tried to help them get ready for 00:05:04.379 --> 00:05:10.957 the job. Well, now there are all kinds of national programs uh for new 00:05:10.990 --> 00:05:16.356 chairs and new deans and so on. And actually one of those, one of the 00:05:16.389 --> 00:05:20.577 biggest ones for many years used the book I wrote on academic leadership 00:05:20.610 --> 00:05:26.457 for the preparation of new deans, which was kind of nice. The were the 00:05:26.490 --> 00:05:31.806 practices in the College of Arts and Sciences in terms in these terms um 00:05:31.839 --> 00:05:35.176 going on in other colleges at the campus at the same time? Or was this 00:05:35.209 --> 00:05:39.286 something that was unique in arts and Sciences? Well, I guess the honest 00:05:39.319 --> 00:05:43.676 answer is I don't know what was going on going on in a way our scale 00:05:43.709 --> 00:05:48.416 allowed us to do things that smaller 00:05:48.449 --> 00:05:53.726 smaller colleges didn't have to do or maybe couldn't do. But the fact that 00:05:53.759 --> 00:06:00.356 we had so many people in leadership positions and so much dependent on 00:06:00.389 --> 00:06:05.246 them providing good leadership that we spent a lot of time on that and it 00:06:05.279 --> 00:06:09.507 paid huge dividends. In fact, 00:06:09.540 --> 00:06:15.416 an interesting transition. I think that occurred when Sam was dean. He was 00:06:15.449 --> 00:06:20.850 enamored with the idea of bringing in department chairs from the outside. 00:06:20.930 --> 00:06:22.930 And so almost every time we had a vacancy, we would do a national search 00:06:26.569 --> 00:06:32.147 and try to bring somebody in um, to whip the department into line or 00:06:32.180 --> 00:06:34.717 something. And other departments really didn't need to be whipped into 00:06:34.750 --> 00:06:39.036 line, but well some, some of them were struggling with more issues than 00:06:39.069 --> 00:06:47.069 others. But anyway, when I became dean, I looked back over that and I, I 00:06:48.899 --> 00:06:54.406 saw two things. One bringing in external chairs was really expensive 00:06:54.439 --> 00:07:01.327 and number two Our batting average was about 50% meaning about half of the 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:05.777 people came in and did a great job and about half the people came in and 00:07:05.810 --> 00:07:07.906 struggled, 00:07:07.939 --> 00:07:12.366 struggle is probably a kind word and then they just, they didn't bring 00:07:12.399 --> 00:07:18.877 about the sorts of changes and positive leadership that we had hoped. Um, 00:07:18.910 --> 00:07:22.736 and it wasn't always their fault. I mean the variety of things contributed 00:07:22.769 --> 00:07:29.757 to it, but our batting average wasn't very good. And so When I, the 11 00:07:29.790 --> 00:07:36.056 years I was dean, we hardly did an external search. Um, I felt like we 00:07:36.089 --> 00:07:39.656 have all these faculty members, they've all been brought to us in national 00:07:39.689 --> 00:07:42.476 searches. They know the culture of the university, they know the culture 00:07:42.509 --> 00:07:45.306 of their department. 00:07:45.339 --> 00:07:50.156 Why don't we try to set up a process to find the best among them each time 00:07:50.189 --> 00:07:53.947 and we'll do the best we can to bring them along to see to their 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:57.007 professional development 00:07:57.040 --> 00:07:59.187 and 00:07:59.220 --> 00:08:04.546 I'm biased, but I thought, I thought we had a tremendous department chairs 00:08:04.579 --> 00:08:08.877 during that era, just one after another person steps forward and just did 00:08:08.910 --> 00:08:13.197 a great job and a number of those have stated administration and gone on 00:08:13.230 --> 00:08:18.207 and been very successful in other roles and many have returned to the 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:24.286 faculty and been very successful there, but we, we just had great chairs 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:29.166 and way less disruption and wasted way less money. I thought just going 00:08:29.199 --> 00:08:32.807 internally and developing our own talent or drawing on our own talent 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:38.506 might be a better way to say it. 00:08:38.539 --> 00:08:46.307 one thing I haven't talked about that I always felt good about was, was 00:08:46.340 --> 00:08:50.207 the notion of difference makers? 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:58.016 The, what happened was to cause me to begin to think about this was, we 00:08:58.049 --> 00:09:03.447 had some endowed professorships that we were going to fill and we filled 00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:11.480 one with a famous person, uh, who came from a really good university and 00:09:11.629 --> 00:09:17.016 came into one of our programs and he continued to be a wonderful faculty 00:09:17.049 --> 00:09:22.006 member. Terrific researcher. But after watching him a few years, I noticed 00:09:22.039 --> 00:09:28.167 that he lifted nobody but himself. Almost all his efforts really work 00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:33.236 toward advancing his own career. And that's fairly typical of many faculty 00:09:33.269 --> 00:09:38.596 members. Um, about the same time though, we'd hired another person, Jim 00:09:38.629 --> 00:09:44.106 Mayor from an Eastern university who was a member of the National Academy. 00:09:44.139 --> 00:09:46.707 But when I called, 00:09:46.740 --> 00:09:51.496 I called john silk cox, who was the dean at Cornell where Jim Mayer was. 00:09:51.529 --> 00:09:56.157 And I said, tell me about Jim. And he said, he's, He said, he's one of a 00:09:56.190 --> 00:10:02.967 kind, one of a kind of course, he was one of a kind, you know, Jim Jim Jim 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:06.766 must be 80 years, 90 years. I don't know what he is now, but Jim has never 00:10:06.799 --> 00:10:11.787 finished the sentence that he started. Um, in all that time. He would, he 00:10:11.820 --> 00:10:14.927 would start a sentence and he'd interrupt himself and then he'd interrupt 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:19.226 that sentence interrupt and he was just a kick. In fact, He gave a talk up 00:10:19.259 --> 00:10:24.407 the Navajo Nation one time and 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:29.026 he went on and on and on and they took a break and at the break he walked 00:10:29.059 --> 00:10:35.217 over to one of the elders and he said, what do you think the elder said a 00:10:35.250 --> 00:10:41.537 little long on story 00:10:41.570 --> 00:10:47.626 jim is, he was amazing. He was over an art, working with people in the art 00:10:47.659 --> 00:10:53.476 department to, to use his some kind of technology to see the picture that 00:10:53.509 --> 00:10:56.356 was under the picture without destroying the picture that was on the front 00:10:56.389 --> 00:11:01.146 , on oil paintings where they painted one painting over an old one. He uh 00:11:01.179 --> 00:11:06.207 , he was over in engineering, working with people, he was in, in chemistry 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:11.067 and physics in solid state science. He was just everywhere. He in no time 00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:16.496 at all. He had van that some somebody donated and he had an electron 00:11:16.529 --> 00:11:19.756 microscope that went all over the state to high school. So kids could do 00:11:19.789 --> 00:11:24.116 stuff on the electron microscope. He had high school kids in the summer. 00:11:24.149 --> 00:11:28.327 He was just unbelievable. So he really was a catalyst for good. He was 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:34.006 amazing. And this individual got to campus, he seemed to connect with 00:11:34.039 --> 00:11:36.717 everybody 00:11:36.750 --> 00:11:41.327 in ways that caused a whole set of others to be more productive. And so 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:47.407 his very presence here. Well, he seemed to be spending no time on his own 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:54.386 work caused people all over to connect it and never connected to cause 00:11:54.419 --> 00:11:59.236 work to occur. That never would have occurred to cause us to do good 00:11:59.269 --> 00:12:02.996 things internally and externally. That would have never happened if he 00:12:03.029 --> 00:12:08.506 wasn't here. And so I could see he really was a catalyst for good and I, 00:12:08.539 --> 00:12:12.307 and so I got to thinking about this guy really makes a difference in the 00:12:12.340 --> 00:12:17.837 broader institution. I wonder I need to look around and see who these 00:12:17.870 --> 00:12:23.756 other difference makers are and then we need to try to recognize that and 00:12:23.789 --> 00:12:27.496 support them so that they'll stay here and continue to do that. And so 00:12:27.529 --> 00:12:32.957 over the last few years that I was Dean, we identified a number of people 00:12:32.990 --> 00:12:35.907 that we thought were difference makers and with milk clicks help and 00:12:35.940 --> 00:12:40.657 laddies help and with endowment money that was raised, we ended up putting 00:12:40.690 --> 00:12:45.557 most of them on some sort of endowed appointment and not all of them, but 00:12:45.590 --> 00:12:51.447 most of them. And, and then we began as we started looking further for 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:56.996 other endowed appointments to try to find people that would lift others 00:12:57.029 --> 00:13:00.317 that would be difference makers. And so 00:13:00.350 --> 00:13:03.986 I always felt good about good about that and think it helped the 00:13:04.019 --> 00:13:07.407 institution. 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:13.746 What an interesting thing with with when Sam was Dean, Sam liked to have 00:13:13.779 --> 00:13:16.407 everything. 00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:20.986 He, he didn't like unpredictable stuff and so he wanted the Dean's, our 00:13:21.019 --> 00:13:25.467 chairs meetings scripted, we're gonna do this for five minutes, this for 00:13:25.500 --> 00:13:29.417 two minutes. This for three minutes and he had notes that were pages thick 00:13:29.450 --> 00:13:34.077 so he could keep everybody on task and I always felt like that was just 00:13:34.110 --> 00:13:39.486 too stilted. Uh you really couldn't get, you really couldn't, you could 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:43.917 disseminate information effectively, but you really couldn't get people 00:13:43.950 --> 00:13:49.506 thinking together about issues. And so when I became Dean, we we just had 00:13:49.539 --> 00:13:54.417 an agenda. It was just just just to keep us on track. But that was it. And 00:13:54.450 --> 00:13:59.026 there was just a there was a lot of free discussion and he went all over 00:13:59.059 --> 00:14:06.207 the place. But it was so healthy for all of us. Really enormously healthy. 00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:10.279 Thank you very much. You're welcome. I've enjoyed it.