How Are They Treating You Over There?

By George Justice

Ever since I became an academic administrator, I have routinely been asked two versions of the same basic question: "How do you like your new job?" and, the more suspicious variant, "How are they treating you over there?"

"Over there" is the university's main administrative building, to which I relocated a year ago in my new position as associate dean of the graduate school. It is a mere 50 yards from my previous address in the English department, where I am a tenured associate professor.

I should make clear from the outset that I am not going to affect a reluctance to enter administration or imply that I was somehow pressed into duty by my superiors. I applied, and I plan to dedicate myself to this work for the foreseeable future.

Taking an administrative position also does not mean that my faculty career was a sham or is over. I still see myself as a scholar and teacher, but I am using my skills and interests in the service of my students and employer in different ways. Before I took the job, a colleague, an eminent scholar who had been a dean, advised me to set a period of time and then decide whether to pursue administration or scholarship because, he said, you can't do both at a very high level. He himself made the decision not to accept a position as provost but to return to active faculty status.

So far, though, the answer to the sympathetic version of the question is "I love my job," and I am not second-guessing my decision to take it.

But there are a lot of differences between administrative and faculty work, and I am still adjusting to them. Most people assume that the greatest difference involves not teaching classes in my discipline anymore. However, one of my tasks as associate dean is "student affairs," and that includes teaching our yearlong Preparing Future Faculty Seminar. I find a great deal of pleasure in helping students from different departments handle issues that arise in their programs.

So I don't miss teaching. I certainly don't miss grading papers. Strangely, I do miss class preparation, that wonderfully intense time spent rereading great works of literature and trying to figure out how to engage students in new ways. And I get far fewer "Hey, I happened to be in the building so I thought I'd stop by and shoot the breeze with you for a half hour" visits from students. Those were fun, but that was then, and this is now.

Some faculty members and students will never understand the move I've made, while others know they want to pursue administrative careers and wonder what it's really like "over there."

What follows is not a definitive list of the differences I've encountered between the two realms, but it reflects my experience thus far.

Salary. It isn't as different as some people assume. My base salary stayed the same. But as a faculty member I was paid for nine months of work. Now I'm paid for 11 months of work, plus a small administrative stipend. So I'm not doing it for the money, even if it does make it easier to pay for things like a bathroom remodeling or preschool tuition.

Work schedule. The dean made it clear to me that our hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., every day, except on holidays. I'm no longer on academic time. The dean understands how important it is for me to continue working on my scholarship, even at a reduced pace, and she has encouraged me to set aside a few hours a week for writing and editing. But that time has to fit into my daily schedule, and many weeks I can't carve it out. When I do, I have to keep my cellphone near and my e-mail program open to respond to whatever comes up.

The dean. Some faculty members, especially at research universities, act like independent contractors, agreeing to teach their classes, hold office hours, and go to a minimal numbers of meetings. Professors have nearly full independence in the classroom and in labs and libraries. In contrast, I now have a boss, and I am very attentive to her requests for me to do work. Brainstorming is part of the job -- but it's the brainstorming that she wants me to do. That might be difficult if we didn't get along. Instead, it has been a pleasure.

The staff. In Jane Smiley's Moo, the long-serving and powerful secretary runs the show. Most faculty members are familiar with competent staff people who are the glue holding things together. But that is elevated exponentially in the graduate school. We have a dean and two associate deans. And we have nearly 20 other people who keep everything running and help formulate policy. Like staff members across the university, ours are overworked and underpaid. But they can be more appreciated and supported, I believe, in administrative units like mine. And because they are working the 9-to-5 shift, too, we have a highly developed office culture that I am enjoying.

Space. When I began my first tenure-track job, my mentors told me, "Don't close your office door." Leaving it open even just a crack was crucial. Once I got tenure, I was able to relax that rule and close my door, even during my office hours. (They can knock, can't they?) Now, as an administrator, I feel I'm back to the beginning of my career. I shut my office door only when in a confidential meeting. Moreover, my office does not even have a key. It's part of a whole complex, the front door of which locks. I have to be available, not just during specified "office hours," but whenever a question or a crisis might arise.

Personnel supervision. One of my duties involves supervising a program for international students who are teaching assistants. It was the part of the job I initially saw as tangential to my interests and remote from my skill area. We have an outstanding program director who, along with her staff, supervises the courses and annual programs we sponsor to improve the language and teaching skills of our international teaching assistants. That program director reports to me, and I have worked with her in matters relating to the budget, personnel, program direction, and offerings. Oddly, it has become one of the most satisfying parts of my job. It has helped me understand how integral budgets and personnel issues are to the mission of improving graduate education.

Dress code. Sometimes I think the dean hired me because I already dressed the part. Even as a faculty member, I wore blazers and bow ties, not bermudas and Birkenstocks. When the dean hired me, she emphasized I would have to wear a tie. For me, that was a benefit. I got to go out and buy three new suits and three new sport coats, and I've been able to boost my collection of neckwear, including a number in our university colors of black and gold. As a faculty member, I would occasionally go into my office unshaven if I wasn't teaching that day. Not anymore.

Getting things done. For the first six months of my new job, I wasn't. I had some half-baked to-do lists, but I relied on my growing e-mail in box (which nearly hit 300 messages at one point) and my Outlook calendar to structure my time. Insofar as my calendar was being maintained by an assistant (which was a very weird thing for me at first), I should have been able trust it. My assistant was trustworthy, but the calendar itself was causing me problems. I had insisted, in English department fashion, on getting a Macintosh computer when I took the job. I love my Mac. But syncing Microsoft Outlook to Apple iCal, which I use for family and personal purposes, resulted in losing the entire calendar three times and duplicating all events, causing some merriment for the office staff but great frustration for myself.

I suppose I could have trusted my in box if I could have found anything in it. Then on one magical day, two people simultaneously recommended to me David Allen's Getting Things Done. Its general principle is to get things out of your head and onto paper. I'm not all the way there yet, but my office is more organized and my to-do lists are nearly complete. I trust my system. I am also trying to avoid becoming a zealot, since the whole schedule thing can be a bit cultlike. Now if I could just make the dean see how important it would be for me to get an iPhone.

Pursuing research. I am tenured, but I have not done the work required for promotion to full professor, and I realize that a successful career in either administration or teaching and research would require that promotion. I have editing projects under contract and am closely involved with a range of professional organizations in my scholarly field. At this point, nearly a year into the job, I feel I finally understand it well enough to set aside time for my research. But I don't have the freedom of a faculty member to order my days and weeks, since so much of my job involves working with other people and deferring to their time requirements.

Making phone calls, answering e-mail. I spend a lot of the day on the phone and responding to stacks of paper that come to me addressed, implausibly, to "Dean Justice." And answering e-mail. A lot of it. Cold calling has always seemed terrifying to me, but now I do it. My unit has just hired a development officer, and I am working with him to maintain relations with alumni, most of whom don't know me from Adam. I am a classic middleman.

What do I do all day? We used to call it paperwork, but only a portion of it is on paper. It is not meaningless paperwork. We are not only helping students get to campus, do their work, and pursue their degrees, we are helping them become better professionals, whether they choose careers in academe or elsewhere.

For every note of encouragement this past year, I have also received any number of snarky comments. A colleague at a different university put it bluntly: "We have plenty of people who can become deans. We have fewer real scholars."

It is true that I got my Ph.D. in English literature rather than higher-education administration, but administrative work feels natural to me now. I still supervise Ph.D. students in my discipline and meet with undergraduates interested in my subfield. I attend conferences, write papers, and participate in a range of professional events. I am still a faculty member, and that identity is crucial to my approach to the job of associate dean.

I do not know what will happen in five years. I have already taken to heart and understand the point made by the eminent scholar who turned away from a career in administration: No one can do both research and administration at the highest level. A year into my job, I still have no idea which path I will ultimately pursue.