Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/61367
Your Turn Up to the Challenge: Views from a New Dean assessment of our school, I was sur- prised at what I found. The assess- ment's neatly detailed report outlined 16 major "must-fix" items. These included fundamental issues such as the rigor of our promotion, tenure, and review processes; the need to cut programs; the need to assess learning outcomes; and the need to define academic qualifications, among oth- ers.We were a good college, the assessment found, but we had been ravaged by budget cuts over the last two decades.We were trying to do far too much with too few resources. We weren't enforcing some key rules calm before the storm. In my very first week on the job, I had to implement an externally imposed budget cut that involved job elimi- nations. In addition, a mountain of AACSB reaccreditation materials covered my desk, for I had taken the job during the third year of a continuing review of the CBE. As our review team leader put it when he described the situation to our faculty, the school was "at the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and a full count." As I dug into the review team's 50 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004 Two years ago, when I was 41 years old, I became the new dean of the College of Business and Economics at Washington State University. For two years before, I had spearheaded the CBE's information systems program, so I thought I knew the college more than well enough to step seamlessly into the dean's position. I was unaware of what was ahead of me. I had no break-in period, no by Len Jessup and standards.We weren't as merit- based as we should have been. Morale was low, and our staff and faculty desperately needed to be ener- gized, praised, trusted, focused, and enabled. Furthermore, our faculty had no idea of the performance, rewards, or resource allocations of each unit; misperceptions and mis- trust were rampant throughout the college. Finally, the report said, we lacked clear vision.We needed com- plete re-engineering and transforma- tion, which included making signifi- cant changes to our culture. alone. A broad coalition of faculty and administrators offered their services. The president and provost of the university really wanted to have a strong, accredited business program, and they supported our efforts. A number of influential alumni recognized the need for change. Soon, I began to see this daunting challenge as a "good-to- great" opportunity and a useful blueprint of our future transforma- tion. I started to believe that we really could get this job done. I knew I needed some adminis- Luckily, I found I wasn't in this Len Jessup what I had I gotten myself into. The audit was painful, embarrassing, and discouraging. I now can admit openly that in that first week on the job, I thought the task before us could be insurmountable, especially given that we had only a year left on our continuing review clock. It was June; the review team was sched- uled to visit again in August. I felt an urgency to do something bold and dramatic—and fast. That's the moment I wondered for faculty. s Rewrite the college's promo- tion and tenure document and re- ance appraisal process to be com- pletely merit-based. to take several drastic measures: s Enforce strict standards of aca- demic and professional qualifications the review team's visit, my associate deans and I determined which facul- ty members were available that sum- mer to help. We formed a cross- college reaccreditation task force and wrote a detailed action plan addressing each of the 16 points, explaining what we would do to solve each problem and in what time frame. The plan required us engineer both processes. s Redesign the annual perform- trative backup, something usually provided by associate deans. I had a very good sitting associate dean of undergraduate programs, but I had no associate dean of faculty affairs. The lack of that position was a symptom and cause of many of the problems outlined in that 16-point analysis. I filled that post in short order with a talented faculty mem- ber from our marketing department. Then, with just weeks left before