Legal Commentary

It's the season for changes in the associate dean's office.  New ADs are starting, and those cycling out (like myself) are picking new offices and working hard to leave a clean desk for their successors.   (We're also containing our elation at the prospect of being promoted back into the faculty, but that's another post.)  Associate deaning can be an incredibly rewarding experience, but it can be daunting, especially for those who haven't had institutional decision-making responsibility for a long time, if ever.  What follows is the first batch of suggestions I have (in no particular order) for incoming associate deans.  In the best tradition of associate deaning I invite incoming ADs to use whatever part of this advice you find helpful and discard the rest.

1. Take a vacation.  Seriously.  The upcoming year will be tough enough; don't make it harder by staggering into August exhausted.  The school will run fine in your absence for a couple of weeks in the summer.   Take time in June or July to recharge your batteries and prepare for what's to come.  As between June or July there's no perfect time (obviously the schedules of your decannal colleagues is relevant to when you take time off). Taking time off in June means you'll have all of July to settle in and get ready for the year; taking time off in July gives you June to settle in and refreshes you just before the August deluge.  It doesn't matter when you take the time.  Just take it.

2. Ask the experts.  Don't hesitate to rely heavily on your career administrator colleagues, especially early on in your tenure.   Your Dean of Students, Registrar, Director of Career Services and all the rest have far more experience than you on the issues you'll be facing.  Ask them for background, and even a recommendation, when you confront a decision implicating their areas of expertise.  You're not bothering them -- you're saving them from having to spend a lot more time cleaning up the mess you otherwise might make if you acted without consulting them.   But at the same time ...

3. Trust your intuition.  This is important. You've been selected to be associate dean because you possess good judgment, the respect of your colleagues and an understanding of your institution's culture.  If something doesn't sound right to you, don't do it, or at least get a second opinion.  There's probably a good reason for whatever intuition you have.  Respect it.

4. Use your discretion.  To paraphrase Madeleine Albright, what good is discretion if it can't be used?  All schools have rules, but many of those rules are not so sacrasanct that you can't waive or modify them.   If you're not sure whether a particular rule can be waived, ask a career administrator in your office, or your predecessor.  And if you do have discretion on a particular issue, don't be afraid to use it.  Some of the actions I wish I could change now were really failures to act or delays in acting, caused by being too scared to make a decision.  A good rule of thumb -- not absolute, of course -- is that if you have all the information and advice relevant to making a decision, you should make it within just a few days.  Don't let something sit with the hope it will go away.  Maybe it will -- but more likely the delay will frustrate the person involved and/or make the problem worse.  Again, trust your intuition.

More to come in subsequent posts.