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.
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