Building capacity for one of higher ed’s unsung heroes—academic deans

At our most recent Deans Advisory Services roundtable in September 2024, we gathered nearly 30 deans from arts & sciences, business, nursing, education, and engineering to engage in our latest research on portfolio management, AI strategy, and recruiting faculty superstars.

In follow-up discussions with the deans who attended the roundtable and in visits with prospective partners, I’ve been struck by the similarity of strategic challenges many deans face. Even for large and selective institutions with growing or at least stable enrollments, deans are constantly under pressure to balance a seemingly unending and competing set of strategic priorities while also making sure their college is effectively running.

In many ways, deans are CEOs of medium-sized enterprises, some with staff and faculty numbering in the thousands and budgets that rival a tech startup. Like any leader of a large, complex, matrixed organization, they also struggle to make time for big strategic priorities and connect with their peers because there is always a more urgent fire to extinguish.

Through the spring of 2025, Deans Advisory Services will be engaging with deans to create capacity, augment their skills, and develop new capabilities in three core areas:

• Academic futures and program innovation
• Strategy development and operational excellence
• Professional development for deans and department chairs

Academic futures and program innovation

In almost every discussion I have with a dean, academic innovation is a topic of conversation. The needs vary, but there are two major themes: 1) revitalizing underperforming programs and 2) developing interdisciplinary programs.

1. Revitalize underperforming programs

To support program revitalization efforts, we’re engaging with deans through expert consultations, custom workshops, and implementation collaboratives.

Most notably, one challenge deans have expressed to us is that undergrads have a hard time understanding the experience of certain majors, and advisors similarly have trouble articulating what to expect. To address this challenge and make it easier to communicate the experience of specific majors, we will be kicking off our first cohort of the Experiential Major Maps Collaborative for University Deans in January 2025.

This collaborative helps heads of faculty and career services understand the best practices around developing major maps, how to articulate critical experiences for specific majors, and how to roll out major maps across their college.

Other deans are struggling with flagging programs and looking for ways to either revitalize them or develop a plan to sunset them and redeploy resources. In this case, EAB is helping deans save time through custom workshops that teach deans and faculty best practices for identifying, monitoring, and revitalizing specific programs, including how to reposition and relaunch them.

2. Develop interdisciplinary programs

Finally, it is nearly impossible to have a discussion with a dean today without discussing interdisciplinary program development. This winter and spring, EAB is conducting a research study to surface and identify best practices for developing and launching interdisciplinary programs, which will debut in April 2025 at the Deans Executive Roundtable.

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Strategy development and operational excellence

Strategy development often takes a back seat to urgent crises, and opportunities to achieve growth and innovation through operational excellence are often overlooked if the current approaches are working well enough.

EAB is helping deans and their teams save time and create space for strategy development this winter and coming spring through a series of partner intensives designed to align key stakeholders on the meaning of strategy, macro-trends impacting higher ed, and the importance of developing a differentiated value proposition to compete and win.

Another key strategic and operational challenge many deans continue to face is attracting and retaining staff and faculty. Many times we see the root cause of the issue relates to how the college communicates its employment value proposition to prospective candidates—often conflating it with their student value proposition.

To help our partners improve their staff and faculty recruiting outcomes, EAB is delivering custom workshops to help deans and their teams understand the common pitfalls of talent acquisition in higher education and the best practices we’ve found to improve how they attract staff and develop and attract superstar faculty.

Professional development for deans and department chairs

Opportunities to build people management skills in higher education are few and far between, and for new-to-role department chairs the challenge is even more difficult if they’ve spent most of their career as an academic.

At the request of deans and provosts, EAB has developed a series of virtual partner intensives designed to deliver foundational people management, conflict management, and leadership development to department chairs. The Department Chair Development Series will be available to Deans Advisory Services partners starting this winter.

To learn more about participating in the Deans Advisory Services partnership or bringing any of these services to your college, please reach out using the form below. Space and capacity is limited.