Dawn of the Dodo Deans (the trustees mess with dean requirements)

Dissent 43

February 7, 2000

DAWN OF THE DODO DEANS!

Chunk Wheeler [Roy Bauer]

The union's MacMillan

       Silly us. We (faculty) of the School of Humanities and Languages (at IVC) feel that our dean should know something about the Humanities and Languages! So when the president of IVC—Raghu “Poinsettia” Mathur—composed and imposed a job description for the new H&L dean position that did not even require a BA, we complained.

Somehow, our complaint was heard, or so we thought, and, early in the Fall, a committee was created and given the task of writing a more adequate description. Essentially, we adopted one that had just been used in the Saddleback Liberal Arts dean search. It required an M.A. in one of the relevant academic areas. What could be more reasonable? We were told that the president would take our recommendation seriously. Then we were told that our advice was accepted! Hooray!

       No. At the last board meeting—despite protests from the Academic Senate presidents—the Board Majority, urged on by Mathur, accepted the chancellor’s recommendation according to which area expertise is no longer required!

       Soon, economists will be evaluating philosophers and chemists will be evaluating coaches. It’s wonderfully absurd.

Relax!

       But why stop with administrators? Why not apply the model to instructors? Let’s have coaches teaching chemistry and anthropologists teaching writing! Why the hell not!

       Once again, we have Curt and Sherry and Lee and the rest of the Old Guard gang to thank, for they spent many tens of thousands of our union dollars to give us this “Board from Hell.”

       At a recent union meeting, I noted this fact. The Old Guard responded by explaining that the job of the union is a simple one: to support those trustee candidates who will support the contract. “Yeah, but what if these ‘pro-contract’ candidates are anti-union (Padberg/Wagner)? What if they’re Holocaust deniers (Frogue)? What if they’re enemies of shared governance (Williams/Fortune/Frogue/Padberg/Wagner)?”

      --None of that matters, you silly person.

Thursday, January 27, 2000

College district relaxes requirements for deans (LA Times)

Sampson

Trustees decide that new administrators will not need academic experience in the discipline they supervise.

By RENEE MOILANEN.  

     Deans at Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges no longer will need experience in the academic disciplines they oversee, a policy change opposed by nearly every staff, faculty and administrative group in the South Orange County Community College District.

     The district’s board of trustees decided this week that deans should not be required to have a master’s degree or certificate in the academic disciplines they supervise. Instead, future deans can have a master’s degree in any subject.

     Chancellor Cedric Sampson said he recommended the change to enlarge the pool of dean applicants and to emphasize administrative, rather than academic, experience.

     “It meets the needs of the board’s direction in the management structure of the district,” he said.

     Sampson’s recommendation defies nearly every major interest group at the two campuses. The faculty senates and Chancellor’s Cabinet, which represents faculty, staff and administrators, voted in November to oppose the change.

     “It makes an enormous difference,” said Anne Cox, Saddleback’s senate president. “The various disciplines have their own language. You don’t bring in the CEO of Coca-Cola to run a hospital.”

     Proponents argued that academic experience is largely irrelevant because some departments include up to 50 widely varying disciplines.

     Saddleback’s division of advanced technology and applied sciences houses everything from computer technology to cosmetology, a result of the district’s restructuring in 1997.

     “The point here is that if a candidate for dean of technology at Saddleback College has an M.A. in landscape design, one of the 47 programs offered, is he better qualified than someone with an M.A. in physics or computer programming or even administration of higher education?” said trustee Dorothy Fortune.

     She also pointed to a district report that said “few” past dean positions required a specific academic background. The report listed 21 dean positions advertised since 1985. Of those, eight required discipline experience and 13 did not.

     That district report is almost identical in wording to an informal survey prepared by Fortune to bolster her case against stricter academic requirements.

     Trustees Marcia Milchiker and Dave Lang sided with faculty groups to oppose the change. 

     “I’m not interested in having the biggest pool of candidates,” Lang said. “I’m interested in having the biggest pool of qualified candidates.”