If you're planning to go into academic administration at a two-year college, you should probably think about what kind of administrator you're going to be: one who fundamentally trusts faculty members, or one who doesn't.
I say that because 21 years at four community colleges, including 10 as a midlevel administrator, have taught me that there are basically only those two types. And although I've had the pleasure of working for, and with, several of the former, the latter certainly seem more common.
Administrators who don't fully trust faculty members are easy to spot. They're the ones whose default response to every situation is to whip out the policy manual, as if it were the sole arbiter of professional conduct. And when an issue arises that isn't covered by a policy, these administrators can usually be counted on to concoct one.
Years ago, I had a department chairwoman who created a policy to address faculty bathroom breaks. (I am not making this up.) The gist of the policy was that, if a faculty member needed to use the facilities during scheduled office hours, he or she had to find a colleague who wasn't currently holding office hours and ask that person to sit in the faculty member's office for a few minutes.
I once asked that distinguished chairwoman, during a discussion about hiring substitute teachers for faculty members on leave, if we could hire them to sit in our offices while we went to the bathroom, too. My suggestion was not well received.
Trust-challenged administrators are also notorious micromanagers, which in a community-college setting usually takes the form of constantly checking up on faculty members to make sure they're where they're supposed to be. (And not someplace subversive, like the bathroom.) These are the department heads and deans who spend their time roaming the halls, scanning posted office hours, peering into offices, and sauntering by classrooms five minutes before the end of a session.
The worst thing about administrators who don't trust their colleagues, however, is the credence they tend to place in every negative comment or bit of gossip. Such administrators constantly call faculty members on the carpet because a single student (or another faculty member) has made an unsubstantiated complaint -- even if the complaint itself is risible or if the faculty member's history at the institution suggests that he or she deserves (at a minimum) the benefit of the doubt. Their attitude: If someone said it, there must be some truth to it.
Such a lack of trust has a devastating effect on faculty morale. And although some administrators apparently don't care about faculty morale, my experience suggests that it's the most important factor in creating a dynamic learning environment, a place where both students and faculty members want to spend time.
The question you should ask, then, as a new or prospective two-year college administrator, is, How can I foster an environment of trust in my department or division, or on campus?
The first step: Recognize that faculty members are highly educated professionals and treat them as such—and not as if they were conscripts or low-wage hourly employees. Don't insult them by constantly checking to make sure they're where they're "supposed" to be. Don't go to their classrooms or offices unless you have a good reason.
If you have problems with specific faculty members consistently not fulfilling their obligations, deal with those individuals directly—and privately. Don't take their behavior as evidence of general laziness on the part of all faculty members. Above all, do not institute policies that penalize everyone just to address the bad behavior of a few.
Speaking of policies, if you want to be known as an administrator who trusts faculty members, throw out the policy manual. OK, maybe you shouldn't literally throw it out; some policies are necessary, after all, like the ones mandating pay raises and vending-machine restocking. But at least recognize that policies are not "one size fits all" and that they are not, in the final analysis, more important than people.
To the extent that policies are a necessary part of academic life, do your best to craft and/or support policies that are pro-faculty, that give faculty members more freedom, not less. Whatever you lose in terms of immediate control will be more than offset in the long term by gains in productivity as faculty members feel empowered and morale rises correspondingly.
Another good idea is to be careful how you respond to complaints, gossip, and intradepartmental sniping. Although some complaints, such as those involving charges of sexual harassment, require immediate attention, the vast majority don't.
In fact, many complaints from students -- regarding grading standards, rigor, fairness, etc. -- are baseless and deserve little more than a few moments of quasi-sympathetic head-nodding on your part. The last thing you want to do is start an inquisition every time a student drops by with some petty gripe.
If such complaints are frequent in regard to a particular faculty member, or if they suggest a pattern of unacceptable behavior, then it might be time for you to have a conversation with that individual. Otherwise, assume the best. If you have no reason to believe a faculty member might be guilty of something beyond an isolated complaint, he or she probably isn't guilty.
Departmental gossip and sniping from other faculty members can be treated in much the same way. In fact, you might just want to dispense with the head-nodding and politely tell the sniper you're not interested. But if you choose to let the person vent, remember: Don't believe everything you hear. Your own experiences with a faculty member should weigh more in your judgment than what someone else says about him or her.
Finally, if you want to demonstrate trust for faculty members and earn theirs in return, do everything in your power to support them. Go to bat for them when they're proposing new initiatives that you believe will benefit the college. Nominate them, when they deserve it, for campus, state, and national awards. As much as possible, help them find travel money to attend and present at conferences.
After all, becoming an effective two-year college administrator isn't exactly rocket science. It's just a matter of trust.
Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English and director of the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College. He writes regularly for our community-college column. For an archive of previous columns in The Two-Year Track series, click here.
