Listening to the Wrong People

By Tara M. Samuels. Over the past 14 years, I have served as the chief academic officer of undergraduate colleges, all in small to midsized private institutions. The job was pretty much the same in all four institutions in which I served, despite the fact that the titles varied wildly. In two of the four cases, the job did not resemble at all what I thought I had applied for — the dean was little more than an assistant to the provost, with limited decision-making authority. Read more...