Being the Dean – a manifesto reflected and revised In this post I will reflect about the time of being the dean of the faculty of sustainability. After some thinking and recent events I wrote down 10 rules in the very beginning that I consider relevant to me. You might wonder now, why you should read them? Are you a dean? Do you consider becoming a dean? Even if not, the following might be of relevance for you, maybe not to learn something I learned, but to learn something about the academic system, and your part in it. I can say I learned some lessons. The guidelines I defined early on a written in bold. The revisiting of the guidelines six months into the deanship is written in plain text. The revisiting of these texts 2 months after my six year term as a dean are also highlighted acoordingly.
Being the Dean #1 – Developing the faculty The dean works on the coherent triangle of management of the faculty, research in the faculty and teaching of the faculty, together with the other deans.
Management: Many consider that management is the central theme of being the dean. It is simply boring admin, and why would a true researcher or teacher bother at all? Well, it is admin work, I will not fool you here, but maybe we can change the admin system, if only step by step. I learned a lot about admin tricks during the last 6 months, but more importantly, I altered the mode of admin surrounding me. How I did that you ask? First, I observed for 2-3 months. During this time, only emergency changes were made, beside that I sticked quite to the structured I found, which were after all very good. After 2-3 months, I increasingly asked people, what they would change. Then I took the ratio and rational out of the intel, and started implementing changes. It was actually fun, not only for me, but only (I hope) for others. Fact is, that most people want responsibility and trust. I think it is vital to help people reach their peak, and through the efforts of my tremendous surrounding, I actually feel I get closer to my own peak. Admin is actually much much much better than its reputation. I think people do take the time to reflect how good the system actually is. If baffled by admin and procedures, it is best -I learned- to take a step back and look at the whole picture. With some context, I believe to have learned that hardly anyone is harmful, and no one is evil in admin. People are just overworked, and misunderstood. Structured and solution-orientated suggestions for imporvement are what’s working best.
2022 revisit: Management within constructed institutions means playing a long game. If you want to change things, negative emotions or pressure will bring you nowhere. You need to work with the system, not against it. In my experience, the vast majority of the people working in administration and management are doing a tremendous job. Those, few who seemingly bother you actually may have the most challenging job in the whole institution, as they need to enforce principles or mechanisms that they did not choose. We are at a point in time where „the machine“ tries to control for any given outlier point through a new rule. To this end, we pile rules and rules on top of each other. In my experience this is not specific for any given institution, but simply the Zeitgeist. Only time will tell how we can change this. However we can only do this together, because the machine with its mechanisms and principles is quite tight. We should never forget that we came a long way, and I can personally say that I feel to be in a very privileged situation. Also, I am in a very powerful situation, there is no mincing words there. To this end it should be ok that there are some underlying mechanisms that control our power. However, there are definitely parts of the management that need changing. After Utilitarismus widely failed due to the rightful complaints of minorities the protection of smaller groups now often outweighs the needs of the many, yet this protection of minorities is of the most utmost importance, and should be. Consequently, we need time and patience, because there is no doubt that the rights of minorities need to be protected. All this is directly related to the management of constructed institutions. In my experience , we thus need to be open and clear in our communication, yet always consider on why certain people in the administration enforce specific rules, and how this helps and protect people.
Research Leuphana University is a tremendous place, I think. We have some truly inspiring research happening, and it is among the duties of the dean to aid the creation of a coherent and bold research narrative. This is really fun, since it is a true team effort. There are so many inspiring and fascinating researchers at our faculty and university and beyond, and it is very nice to be kind one of the central hubs in this structure. I surely still have my own interests and research (I hope), but creating ties between an array of people is challenging yet fun. What I think is even more fascinating is the mode we can have as a dynamic and thriving faculty. Whenever a new research call comes in, we are prepared, and as a team can consider the best options to approach a potential project. In addition, we build on a tremendous experience from the wider University, especially from the leaders of the University.
2022 revisit: Having an overview concerning the research happening at the faculty is essential in order to tell the story of the faculty. This is a tremendous challenge in a Faculty of Sustainability, where you have many diverse backgrounds focussing on different aspects of research. While this is on the one hand a challenge, it is naturally also an opportunity. Research collaboration at such a diverse place needs to build on a higher level integration as well as trust. On a Faculty wide level coherence is the biggest obstacle. You need a coherent recognition in terms of research in order to work in a joined direction. Much good if not excellent research is build on joined experience, which is basically researchers collaborating together and learning from each other. This is a bigger struggle if the backgrounds are more diverse. What is more, having different goals is a huge barrier. Imagine someone is strongly focussed on english peer reviewed publications, while another researcher only publishes books? How can these two collaborate, do they write both, or each their individual publications? Working towards joined goals is one of the biggest obstacle to gain coherence. In an interdisciplinary setting, and with a transdisciplinary ambition, the trade-offs can be huge, hence its best to have an early joined reflection about the goals within a research project. What is more, in my experience it is best to work within larger collaborative research projects, because this gives you a good level of experience on where the other people are standing.
