Dean without Ph.D. or chair experience unusual?

[James]

I'm curious what people would think of a college that hires a new dean who doesn't have a Ph.D. or experience as a department chair. How unusual is this? Does it imply anything unsettling? Regardless of the ability to envision inspiring directions, if the person is smart enough at handling fundamental dean-like tasks and gets mentored by upper administration, does it all simply depend on the situation, or does it seem to indicate something fundamentally amiss? How much would such a development alone inspire you to start looking elsewhere for employment? I don't want to say too much for fear of making the situation identifiable.

[lightning]

I'm curious what people would think of a college that hires a new dean who doesn't have a Ph.D. or experience as a department chair. How unusual is this? Does it imply anything unsettling? Regardless of the ability to envision inspiring directions, if the person is smart enough at handling fundamental dean-like tasks and gets mentored by upper administration, does it all simply depend on the situation, or does it seem to indicate something fundamentally amiss? How much would such a development alone inspire you to start looking elsewhere for employment? I don't want to say too much for fear of making the situation identifiable.

PhD-less deans exist, such as in the fine and performing arts.
I would be less concerned about the lack of a PhD and more concerned about a new dean who does not have any experience as a department chair.
Neither nor both of the above would make me look elsewhere for employment.
However, if they just plain suck, I would look elsewhere for employment.

[James]

Thanks for the common sense. I should add that this dean would be overseeing traditional Ph.D.-type fields.

[sinenomine]

My school has a number of deans who have never been faculty or chairs, and a number of deans who have come up through the faculty, chaired, etc. The former group tends to be dictatorial and causes a lot of resentment from the faculty, while the latter group is collaborative and gets solid faculty buy-in.

[pgher]

I'm on a dean search committee. One criterion is, qualified to be a full professor in a department in the college. Here, that means PhD plus a long research track record.

[Volhiker78]

I have similar opinion to pgher.   I would mentally and work related prepare for a move.  That means finishing papers, preparing new grant applications, looking over present and past openings.  If the person turned out ok, great,  but need to prepare myself for the worst.

[Ruralguy]

There's got to be a missing element here we aren't aware of because it doesn't make any sense.

I think I'd be more concerned about buy in than actual qualifications, but at my school, someone who fits that bill would only be able to serve in a temporary lecturer position unless it was an arts field. 

If this is a 4 year college or university, and the Dean is chief academic officer, then unless this person is the rare savant who rose through the field without degrees, then I don't see how they could get to be an academic Dean.

Taking it face value though, it's problematic if there isn't some obvious exception. I wouldn't necessarily run away, but I'd take note of other unusual situations and get senior faculty to push back.

[research_prof]

My Dean has a PhD and prior admin experience, but they still suck. I would suggest that the OP waits to see what actions the new Dean intends to take before drawing a conclusion either way.

[ciao_yall]

The job of a dean is not to do research, publish, teach, or mentor graduate students.

The job of a dean is to lead the organization, get resources for the organization, navigate the broader political environment across the broader institution, and manage budgets, paperwork and all that other administrivia.

Yes, it helps a lot of the person knows what it takes to accomplish the jobs of professors, respects and understands their work, and has the contacts needed, both inside and outside the institution to help the professors get their jobs done, get through roadblocks, etc.

Because a good professor might not make a good dean, and vice versa.

Focus on what the person needs to do to be an effective dean, and don't worry about what they did or didn't do before.

[Parasaurolophus]

PhD-less deans exist, such as in the fine and performing arts.
I would be less concerned about the lack of a PhD and more concerned about a new dean who does not have any experience as a department chair.
Neither nor both of the above would make me look elsewhere for employment.
However, if they just plain suck, I would look elsewhere for employment.

Yeah, it seems to me that the red flag would be whether they have any actual higher-ed experience. If they have that experience in the fine or performing arts, law, medicine, education, or business, they may well not have a PhD (or an EdD). That seems OK to me, as long as the subject areas they're deaning over aren't far removed from their experience. But if they have no such experience in higher ed, I would worry that that's a bad sign, probably of "restructuring" to come.

[Morden]

OP, does this person have experience at your institution? Or is this someone they brought in from outside?

[financeguy]

Is this someone's spouse?

[Wahoo Redux]

One of our PhD cohorts was hired as a dean straight out of hu's dissertation defense.  Hu was specifically hired as a hatchet-person, fired a bunch of people, made some money, and was let go huself.

[Ruralguy]

Or it might be that they are looking at the Dean to be more like the President of a small college, and many of them don't have Ph.D.'s (we've had several who were either never in higher ed or in higher ed only as high level administrators in development and such). If their job is to raise money, then whoever hired them couldn't care less whether they had a PhD.  On the other hand, if their job is specifically to run the academic program, oversea the curriculum and manage faculty, then its just a bad move unless there's something we're missing.

[pgher]

The job of a dean is not to do research, publish, teach, or mentor graduate students.

The job of a dean is to lead the organization, get resources for the organization, navigate the broader political environment across the broader institution, and manage budgets, paperwork and all that other administrivia.

Yes, it helps a lot of the person knows what it takes to accomplish the jobs of professors, respects and understands their work, and has the contacts needed, both inside and outside the institution to help the professors get their jobs done, get through roadblocks, etc.

Because a good professor might not make a good dean, and vice versa.

Focus on what the person needs to do to be an effective dean, and don't worry about what they did or didn't do before.

Agreed. Part of our justification, though, is that the dean needs to have the respect of the people they are managing. It's hard to hold someone's feet to the fire over their teaching or research productivity if you are not, yourself, at least credible at both. We're not looking for someone to be endowed-professor quality, just adequate. Personally, I would prefer someone who, at some point, was promoted from assistant to associate professor, so that they know what's involved in starting a research program from scratch.

The other thing is that if they don't work out as dean, they have a home as faculty.