From counselor to dean of students?

Dear Itsmy,

I would encourage you to apply but there are parts of the dean's job that your description of your career doesn't necessarily indicate past experience but very well may include. You may want to think about ways to address that lack of experience up front or show how your past positions have actually given you some of the experience you will need because any search committee may have questions.

Our Dean of Students directly supervises a fairly large staff that in turn supervises others. You need to have some experience in employee laws etc and how to keep a large staff running smoothly. You should also have some experience in negotiating contracts as our dean also oversees the dining hall staff, as well as the other student deans, resident advisors, etc. You wiil oversee a substantial budget but one that is inadequate for what is needed. Our dean also handles all manner of issues related to Residential Life from programming of speaker series to handling the contracts with vendors of the soda machines. You need to be a good public speaker because you will be addressing student groups, audiences of parents and schmoozing at events with donors. A bit of a background in law would be helpful for handling judicial matters of students being disciplined for minor to serious infractions from roommate disputes to plagiarism to sexual assault charges. Since you mention that the school is small, you may find that the dean's position has some aspects of the job you never would have imagined and some deans often must become a jack of all trades. In fact, our dean became something of an expert in building construction when we built new dorms and she was put in charge of overseeing some of that process since dorms are part of residential life.

Be prepared to be a part of hundreds of meetings over the course of a year. Your schedule is completely booked most days but you have to be available for every crisis and student need or you will be labeled as being inaccessible and unavailable. Be prepared to be very much a presence on campus and obliged to attend all sorts of events to show support to students. I hope you live close to campus because your home life will suffer more if you have a significant commute involved since you may be expected to be on campus for things that happen in the early morning and late at night and you are definitely called to campus for any and every emergency, many that occur in the wee hours. You will live with a blackberry permanently attached to the end of your arm unless your school is still a pager campus. Your counseling experience may help you deal with some of the student issues as when a student commits suicide but not only do you have to counsel and deal with the grief of friends and family of the student, you also need to know how to protect the institution from liability and potential lawsuits.

I think the job of dean of students is one of the hardest on campus and it can often be a thankless one. The dean's office bears the brunt of all negativity when students are unhappy about almost any aspect of their life at college. You need to have a thick skin when students decide to attack you personally and publicly in the student newspapers, with flyers all over campus posted under the cover of darkness. Yet you may be stuck in the middle having to defend policies that you don't agree with but for which you are the public face. Previous deans on our campus have had very rocky tenures with many fired or asked to quietly resign from the job. The last job I would ever want to have on campus is to be the dean of students and I have great admiration for our current dean who does a great job of navigating some very tricky and sticky situations and has survived in the job longer than any previous person in the job. He has been dean for five years and this is about two years longer than the previous four or five deans. But once you survive past the first five years, you are probably on your way to becoming beloved and you may get to stay until you are ready to retire, or until students perceive you to be inflexible or out of touch with their issues.

The position at your school may be completely different but that's what you need to prepare for, all the myriad tasks you may find yourself in charge of as dean of students. But as millennialprof says many with less experience than you have gotten the job before. A lot may depend on the weaknesses of the person previously in the previous position. Often those areas are what a search committee may be focused on to ensure that the next dean doesn't have the problems that were faced by the retiring/fired/resigning dean.

Good luck and if you want a job of 10 to 12 hour days where no two days are similar, where much of your job will be rewarding but alot of it will be dealing with crap, definitely apply.

Chronicle Forums