Summary: A Dean's Perspective of Centers and Bureaus

The following paragraphs summarize comments made by C. David Billings, dean of the business school at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, at the AUBER fall 2003 conference in New Orleans.

A dean's perspective of a center (see footnote) considers its role in advancing the mission of the college and the university. For a particular dean, the perspective depends on his role as an inside and an outside dean. Hence, the perspective covers a wide range of center issues: mission of the center, relationship of the center to the rest of the college and university, the center's type of research, training programs, service programs, role of the center in economic development, the center's partnerships with other organizations, center and college personnel staffing (tenure/promotion) issues, and hard and soft money issues.

The center director's most crucial issue focuses on agreement with the dean on the center's mission and objectives. This agreement creates a common foundation for dealing with the other issues. The AACSB, the accrediting agency for business schools, adopted new standards in 2003 (http://www.aacsb.edu/accreditation/business/standards01-01-04.pdf). They provide center directors entrie to the strategic management of business schools, and directors should become familiar with them.

The mission and objectives of a center should be congruent with the mission and objectives of the college and university.

Usually a center exists to deliver defined mission elements of the college and university other than the core academic programs: training, not academic degree programs; sponsored research, not internally funded academic research; and service focused on economic development, not service to the profession or learned societies.

In this period of increasing accountability, universities and business schools promote their importance in economic development. Centers can apply traditional and new research techniques on economic development to their region. Cluster mapping is one such new research tool. (See Michael Porter, "Clusters of Innovation: Regional Foundations of U.S. Competitiveness;" Council on Competitiveness, 2001, http://www.compete.org/publications/clusters_reports.asp; Louis G. Tronatzky, Paul G. Waugaman, and Denis O. Gray, "Innovation U.: New University Roles in a Knowledge Economy," Research Triangle Park, NC, Southern Growth Policies Board, 2002, http://www.southern.org/pubs/pubs.shtml#tech; and Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Cluster Mapping Project, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, https://secure.hbs.edu/isc/login.do?http://data.isc.hbs.edu/isc/index.)

The center director, in consultation with the dean, should identify the center's stakeholders outside the business school and develop partnerships with those stakeholders. This includes forming formal partnerships with economic development organizations. Participate in local or state industry or technology councils. Serve companies in a variety of training, sponsored research, and consulting roles. Create an advisory board or council for strategic planning advice and as another vehicle for welding together center and external interests and perspectives.

The center director and the dean need to agree up front on the performance expectations of center staff to avoid messy personnel, staffing, and tenure and promotion issues. First, will the appointment be a staff or a faculty appointment? Will it be a joint appointment? Does the institution have a research or service faculty appointment category? If a faculty appointment, will it be a tenure track appointment? Do the business school and university incorporate service and applied research into the criteria for promotion and tenure consistent with the University of Illinois 1993 benchmark? (See "A Faculty Guide for Relating Public Service to the Promotion and Tenure Review Process," University Senate and the Office of Continuing Education and Public Service, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993, http://www.peir.uiuc.edu/pe/pandt.html.) The new AACSB standards provide incentives for deans and center directors to appoint academically or professionally qualified center staff as participating faculty in instructional programs.

During these financially challenging times, center funding is an issue. Specific issues need dean-center director agreement. Usually a center is budgeted some "hard" money and expected to generate some amount of "soft" money; what is the multiple? Some contracts and grants require matching funds; will the "hard" dollars be provided by the center, the academic department through reassigned faculty time, the vice president for research through waived facilities and administration?

In evaluating a center's performance, the dean uses metrics, benchmarking and refers to best practices. It is in a center director's own best interest to advise the dean as the dean develops a perspective on each of these issues.

C. David Billings
The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Dave is serving his 23rd year as the founding business dean at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. With regard to accreditation service, he currently serves on the AACSB-International Candidacy Committee. During 2000-01 he served as the editor for the revision of the AACSB Precandidacy/Candidacy Manual.

Footnote: The term center is used as a verbal convenience to refer to an administrative unit usually designated as a center, bureau, or institute that is within, affiliated with, or related to the academic subjects typically addressed by business schools, and is separate from the school's administrative units that deliver programs of instruction, usually referred to as academic departments. Back to article