In the database at the office of the University's institutional research analyst, Nan Keohane is listed as both as University president and faculty member in the political science department. Dozens of other administrators, who, like Keohane, hold tenured faculty positions, are listed in the same fashion. However, many are listed as faculty members first, even though most of their time is taken up by administrative duties.
Being a dean entails a perpetual balancing act between maintaining one's place in academia while devoting oneself to the administration.
James Siedow, a biology professor, found that his responsibilities as dean of faculty development-which he shouldered in August of 1997-came at the expense of spending sufficient time on his two research grants, running his lab and teaching.
"I told Bill [Chafe] when I took the job I would know in two years [whether or not it was going to work]," Siedow said. Sure enough, in the spring of 1999, he stepped down to return to academia full-time.
Acknowledging that a lab scientist may face greater time constraints, economics professor Craufurd Goodwin, dean of the Graduate School from 1979 to 1987, said that during that time, he kept his foot firmly in his department.
"My experience was you could do a certain amount of administrative work and maintain your academic life only a limited amount," Goodwin said. "The danger is in giving up your place in the discipline.... I always insisted on remaining in my department. I would slip away to the administration, but remained embedded in my department."
Along with the added responsibilities come opportunities to learn new skills, Goodwin said. The work professors do in the administration provides them with fundraising skills and allows them
In fact, a large majority of the arts and sciences administration is composed of Duke faculty members, demonstrating the University's commitment to permeating the proverbial divide between faculty and administrators.
"I am pleased that all of our deans in arts and sciences have strong records of scholarship, with three holding distinguished professorships," William Chafe, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, wrote in an e-mail. "I believe that this signals our commitment to scholarship and intellectual life, and our view that the deanship, even if only for a few years, should be a place for intellectual leadership and not simply caretaking or maintenance of the status quo."
Equipped with a unique understanding of faculty life, professors often move into administrative roles knowing what's important-especially from the faculty's perspective, which is probably their perspective as well.
"It is vitally important to maintain effective relationships between [faculty and administrators]," said Robert Thompson, dean of Trinity College and professor of psychology. "It's easy to enter adversarial relations, but I believe that faculty movement in and out of administration is healthy."
Though these days it is generally felt that mistrust and animosity between faculty and administrators has dwindled, giving a voice to faculty needs while best serving the University as a whole is still no easy task for administrators. And it used to be even harder.
"Becoming a dean was interesting and different," said Ernestine Friedl, professor emeritus of cultural anthropology, who served as dean of Trinity College and the faculty of arts and sciences from 1980 to 1985. "Once you step into the administrative seat, even some faculty who were your friends suspect your integrity and honesty. As academics, we often assume that there's some underlying scenario-that what's going on underneath is not being said on the surface. It was an odd feeling."
The practice of integrating faculty members into administrative positions is hardly a new one, nor is it unique to Duke. Most universities share the conception that it is in the institution's best interest for faculty members to also serve as administrators, said Goodwin.
"It's great for universities to cycle as many faculty as possible through these jobs, and have them leave in time so they leave with a freshness," he said.
Friedl agreed. "Giving faculty that experience is an excellent thing," she said. "It does help to give faculty an understanding of the options of the University as far as what's possible and what's not possible. It also gives you a level of empathy for the problems administrators have."
Siedow said he thought his and most other deans' sensitivities were in line with those of the faculty.
"I think the deans see their role as attempting to facilitate things for faculty," Siedow said.
But with the job come certain restraints and a definite scarcity of resources, which forces deans to make choices for the good of the institution as a whole, sometimes at the expense of individual departments or faculty.
"There is not a bottomless pit of money," Siedow said. "[Deans] take more blame for saying 'no' than they get credit for saying 'yes.' The biggest challenge is that you're resource-constrained. You can't do everything you'd like to with the faculty and the institution. It's the constant challenge of the leveraging of resources."
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