The University has something administrators at other colleges want. Following the departure of three high-profile leaders to other institutions in the past year, it appears as though faculty members holding University administrative positions are ripe for the picking in today's higher education job market. As the search for permanent replacements continues, University officials have mixed opinions about why their colleagues are so sought after for leadership positions.
Creating leaders
"We produce people who know what they're doing and how to get there," University Provost Arthur Garson said. "This is a place that turns out leaders by the dozens if not more, as undergraduates, as faculty members and as deans."
According to Garson, who himself took over as provost this summer after the departure of former Provost Gene Block, it is still always difficult to watch great individuals leave Grounds, as there is always tension between trying to keep the absolute best and watching them move on.
This tension was evident when former College Dean Edward Ayers announced last fall he would be leaving the University at the end of the school year to serve as president of the University of Richmond. Some administrators noted the strain Ayers' departure would place on the University's second Capital Campaign. The $3 billion fundraising initiative had entered its public phase just weeks before Ayers' announcement.
Former Education School Dean David Breneman described Ayers' departure as "a particularly serious one," noting efforts to find a permanent replacement before Ayers' departure this past summer were not successful.
"There's going to be a two-year loss, at a minimum, of momentum," Breneman said. "In the middle of a campaign, that's not something anybody would wish to happen."
Only a month after Ayers' announcement, Block announced he had been similarly courted by another institution. When the Regents of the University of California announced last December that Block would become the new chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, the University lost another important academic leader.
"While I am pleased that those outside our community are looking for their next leaders from among our ranks, such changes put stress on our system, especially in light of our current campaign," University President John T. Casteen, III stated in a December 2006 e-mail.
A decentralized university
Breneman identified two potential types of institutions: a decentralized model, such as the University's method of allowing each dean to run his or her school with very little central direction, and one that has stronger controls in the Provost's Office.
"Taken to the extreme, this can make a dean almost kind of a middle-management flunkie that takes rules from on high, interprets them and doesn't have much say-so," Breneman said. "Here they give you the resources plus what you can raise on your own, and you darn near do anything you want with it."
According to Block, allowing administrators control of their academic duties is one of the benefits the University's administrative structure provides.
Both Ayers and Block were allowed to maintain their research and teaching careers while serving as administrators. This hands-on classroom experience makes a higher education professional more employable, Block said.
"There's nothing more important than being in the classroom and understand[ing] the issues that students are facing," Block said. "In my case as a scientist, being in the laboratory and understanding the issues that researchers are facing is also important."
Though Block said this kind of professional arrangement is not atypical for academic administrators, he said it is indicative of the supportive environment at the University.
According to Casteen, however, the University's decentralized academic controls are not necessarily common in higher education. He identified universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard as other prominent examples of schools with decentralized structures.
The University's administrative system has received attention from other schools. Administrators from across the country -- including the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, the University of California, Yale and Cornell -- all have completed projects profiling the University, Casteen stated in an e-mail.
"The principles are to hire top people, motivate them to succeed at what they do and hold them to account for results," Casteen stated. "Accountability, as we practice, is fairly rare except in top medical schools."
According to Leonard Sandridge, executive vice-president and chief operating officer, this level of accountability makes University administrators attractive to other institutions.
"Deans with strong academic backgrounds have an opportunity to exercise a broad range of management functions," Sandridge said. "U.Va. is a great place for excellent deans to make a difference, to develop programs and to develop leadership skills. These attributes are attractive to other colleges and universities that are seeking experienced and strong leaders to serve as provosts and presidents, for example."
When the University of California, San Diego needed a new vice chancellor for student affairs, it found a new leader in former Dean of Students Penny Rue. The UCSD search committee took note of the breadth of Rue's duties at the University.
"We were impressed by the school and by the range of responsibilities [Rue] had," said Gabriele Wienhausen, co-chair of the search committee that selected Rue. "You need a real leader in this position, and you need to be convinced through the interview process that you have someone who had demonstrated those skills. It reflects on how [U.Va.] allows a professional in a high-level position to operate."
U.Va.: really that special?
Some officials, however, are not so quick to point to the University's decentralized structure as one of its most appealing attributes.
"It happens in Charlottesville a lot," Block said. "There is this tendency to think everything is unique. It is obviously an impressive environment ... but it is a university. There are a lot of universities that produce leaders and administrators with similar experiences."
Breneman voiced a similar sentiment.
"When I was at Amherst College as a faculty member many years ago, you would have thought, to listen to people there, that the whole country revolved around what was happening in Amherst College," Breneman said. "There's a little bit of a tendency for that to happen at any campus that has anything seriously going for it."
While Wienhausen recognized the strengths of the University, she said a period of significant change in leadership at a particular school is not an unusual event.
"Sometimes turnover is deceiving," Wienhausen said. "I don't see [turnover] as an unusual event, it was just a normal cycle."
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