Greetings – Dean’s Message June/July 2010

Dear all,

I would like to update you on some College news and changes occurring during the transitional summer months between the last academic year and the upcoming 2010-11 academic year.

Just after the annual spring meeting in May, we received good news about three faculty members who were up for promotion this year.  Our heartiest congratulations go out to Assistant Professor Kiel Christianson in EPSY, who will become associate professor with indefinite tenure effective August 16th; and to Associate Professors Fouad Abd-El-Khalick and Sarah Lubienski in Curriculum & Instruction, who will become full professors as of August 16, 2010.  Additionally, Dr. Johnell Bentz in Special Education was promoted to Clinical Associate Professor.  Well done all!

An announcement was sent out previously to the College community about Professor Jose Mestre’s appointment as Associate Dean for Research.  After a year and a half of distributed sharing of these duties among members of the leadership team, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Mestre to the team and hope you will work closely with him in fulfilling our collective strategic and research aspirations.

Some other changes relate to the reallocation of duties among the Associate Deans. Associate Dean Scott Johnson has been asked to oversee our international programs and activities upon the departure of Professor Fazal Rizvi.  With his extensive international experience as well as expertise in online learning and revenue generation, we anticipate moving our international programs to the next level.  As a consequence, Associate Dean Joan Tousey now has oversight for the College’s communications team, combining under the Advancement portfolio as a comprehensive integration of activities that raises our visibility and profile with all of our constituencies.  Please work with Lori Herber when preparing promotional material, news or public announcements so that we can ensure maximum impact of our College’s profile. As always, Scott and Joan, along with all the others working with or for the Dean’s Office, willingly accept additional assignments on behalf of the College, and for that we are deeply grateful.

Professor Chris Span is another notable colleagues who, like many of you this past year, has shouldered an extra set of duties on behalf of the College. We thank him for the diligent and thoughtful way he has worked with the tasks forces implementing the recommendations of our external review regarding our Graduate program (involving CODE & CEC) and Under Graduate Teacher Education programs (led by Professor Susan Noffke, Associate Professor Lisa Monda-Amaya, Dr Chris Roegge and Professor Stafford Hood).

Even over the summer months, the Committee of Department Executives (CoDE) and the College Executive Committee (CEC) have also been busy wrapping up discussions for the year and agreeing to a number of policies that will be implemented effective July 1, 2010.  Over the past year, CoDE and CEC have discussed, refined, and created several new policies related to our bylaws, third year review processes, the allocation of load and formal mentoring. They have also worked closely with me to sustain the quality of our programs, support our faculty and students, reach out to our local community and our alums, prepare budget reports, implement key strategies, monitor and meet our scholarly and financial goals, as well as engage with faculty about a wide range critical initiatives and developments that unfolded on campus.  Thank you to all the members of CODE and CEC for their friendship, astute advice and support in navigating the challenges of this last academic year.

In an effort to provide a convenient single source of College of Education governance documents, policies, and guidelines/procedures, we have created a password-protected website where documents may be found. These documents are specific to the College’s procedures for implementing many policies set by the University through other governance documents, such as University statutes and the Provost Communications.  In any instance where is there a guiding document, a link will be provided to that document as well.  We will plan to discuss these at the Fall Faculty Meeting, being scheduled for late September.  Tenure-system faculty are strongly encouraged to read through the policy statements and to contact your department head or chair if you have questions in the meantime.

I would also like to acknowledge all those who are providing educational programs over the summer,  including,  the Chancellor’s Academy, the Entrepreneurial Leadership in STEM Teaching and Learning, EnLIST Summer Institute, the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative Beginning Teacher Conference and O’Leary P-20 Institute on New Tools for 21st Century Leadership. It is wonderful to see so many students, teachers and faculty choosing to work together during this very hot summer with such focus and enthusiasm –  it is much appreciated.

Finally, I would like to share with you a quote from Charles Handy’s book ‘The Age of Paraodox’ that has influenced my own thinking about management and leadership in the complex and uncertain times that we work in. More than ever we need to jointly own our decisions and to actively shape our future. This takes people at all levels of our College to be actively involved in deeply understanding issues as well as thoughtfully influencing their direction. I know we all agree about this, but translating it into real practice is the goal – particularly next academic year as the university gears up to respond to the Stewarding Excellence reports and consider how we reposition our university for a strong and relevant future.

Handy talks of the power of ‘federalism and subsidiarity’ or the idea that people can work in contexts of devolved responsibility whilst still retaining strong bonds of institutional connectedness:

‘Federalism seeks to be both big in some things and small in others. It aims to be both local in its appeal and in many of its decisions, but national or even global in its scope. It aims to maximize independence, provided that there is a necessary interdependence; to encourage difference but within limits; it needs to maintain a strong center, but one devoted to the service of the parts; it can, and should, be led from that center but has to be managed by the parts. There is room in federalism for the small to influence the mighty.’

Subsidiarity, on the other hand, is the idea of ‘reverse delegation—the delegation by the parts to the center.’ Subsidiarity involves ‘leaving power as close to the action as possible.’ It depends on ‘mutual confidence’, not rules, which as often as not stand as a sign of mistrust and breed corruption. The mutual confidence on which subsidiarity is based encourages positive disagreement and argument. Subsidiarity is not like empowerment, where somebody on high has given something away. Subsidiarity is a matter of seeing to it that power is where it properly belongs, in the complex diversity that is the real world.’

Handy, Charles, The Age of Paradox, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1994, pp.110, 133-135, 143, 146.

Also, for a reflection on the prospects for public universities, see this article in Huffington post by Linda Katehi: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-katehi/the-emergence-of-the-nati_b_619408.html

All the best for a restorative summer with friends and family, and also for a time of productive thinking and research.

Dean Mary Kalantzis

Photo of granddaughter.
Bliss: granddaughter’s Champaign summer frolic