No Side Deals

Meeting the challenges of academic leadership today

By Holden Thorp, Chancellor
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Higher education faces daunting challenges.  The acceleration of information transfer, globalization and the loss of the U.S. manufacturing economy have all dramatically raised the anxiety level among students, parents and folks who watch universities.

David Brooks describes in a recent op-ed the birth of the “odyssey years,” a period of life after or during college when 20-somethings oscillate between work and school, delay marriage and postpone permanent employment. The attendant anxiety naturally spills over into questions about what happens during college and how higher education can influence the course of a life.

Astride this psychic backdrop lays the increasing competition for star faculty and students that accrues as faculty retire and state universities try to grow to meet increasing demands for enrollment.

It all adds up to stressed-out academic leaders. How do we build the faculty to maintain our place in the academic pantheon? How do we get the students to realize that the will to learn and the power to make their own choices will allow them to traverse the odyssey years? How do we make it to the next day without missing a deadline or forgetting a promise?

In preparation for my duties as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, I spent three months talking to faculty and studying the memoirs of past university presidents and deans. 

Here’re some things I learned that helped.

No side deals.

In his book, A Contrarian Guide to Leadership, Steve Sample lays out more how-tos than most of his counterparts.  The most useful advice is to have open dialogue while respecting the organizational structure.  Leaders should promote free discussion with faculty and students, says Sample, but only make decisions through the hierarchy of department chairs and associate deans.  This prevents the administrative team from being undermined while reassuring the broader circle that no topic is off limits.

Say something important.

One time when I had to give a very important talk to a high-powered Carolina audience, I encountered IAH founder Ruel Tyson just before I was to go on stage.  “When you get up there,” he said, “for God’s sake say something important.”  Ruel’s advice resonated.  He was trying to tell me that pursuing original knowledge and generating leaders are higher callings.  Now when I get to the microphone I try not to get caught up in the details. My goal is to land a joke or two, follow Ruel’s advice, and then sit down.

Research universities matter.

My favorite academic memoir is The University:  An Owner’s Manual, by Henry Rosovsky.  Rosovsky was dean of arts and sciences at Harvard for 12 years.  I and most of my counterparts probably most enjoy the chapter called “A Dean’s Day” where Rosovksy lays out in humorous fashion the most extreme possible day a dean could face.  But his most useful thoughts involve a hypothetical pitch to a student trying to decide between Harvard and a four-year liberal arts college.  Rosovsky brilliantly delineates the profound distinctions of the undergraduate experience at a research university. 

Rosovsky’s thoughts helped me formulate the three things that we need most to achieve for undergraduates at Carolina.  The first is to expose them to the wide range of knowledge.  Most of our students come from places where they might only see the core subjects in high school.  Job one is to show them the expansive canvas of a place like ours where their passion may well lay waiting to be discovered.

The second facet is to facilitate the study of a subject in depth.  An environment that generates knowledge is the best place to learn that knowledge.  The presence of world-class research faculty and graduate students creates the optimal locus for pursuing an academic major.  In the liberal arts, we’re less concerned about how that major maps onto the first job, especially when that job description may not even exist yet.  We’ve given up on trying to time the market:  the leaders of the future are preparing to make their mark ten or twenty years hence, and the precise nature of what they study now matters far less than developing the will to learn that attends the nexus of interest and scholarship.

The third objective provides the opportunity to experience the challenges of an original idea.  For many of our students, their first encounter with a faculty member is their first experience with someone who has formulated an idea that no one else had before.  This is where the research university shines.  The chance that a Carolina undergraduate will one day advance a new solution for energy, poverty, or inequality increases dramatically if students are not surprised by how tough it is to get traction for their ideas. 

The College has 710 faculty members who’ve been there frequently and are ready to show what it takes to be first.

Editor's Note: Chancellor Thorp authored this article during the spring 2008 semester in his role as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.