Interim dean a hard position to fill, as Whaton's Harker knows

Those who have served in a temporary capacity say the job can be tough. Yale School of Management Deputy Dean Stanley Garstka, for instance, harbors negative memories of his 16-month stint as interim dean of Yale's School of Management and insists that the position of interim dean can actually have adverse effects on a school. "The worst thing in the world is to be a 'pretend' dean," said Garstka, who served as interim dean of the Management School from June 1994 to October 1995 while the search for a permanent chief sputtered along for nearly two years. "Any institution suffers if there is not someone clearly in control." And Peter Byrne, associate dean of Georgetown Law School, said appointing an interim dean doesn't seem desirable. "I think it's a problem," said Byrne, who sat on the search committee that appointed current Georgetown Law Dean Judith Areen in 1989. But the interim deans of three of Penn's top schools have all recently insisted that their schools' agendas will not be hindered or adversely affected by temporary leadership. Interim Law School Dean Charles Mooney, Interim Wharton School Dean Patrick Harker and Interim Engineering School Dean Eduardo Glandt agreed that their schools, as a whole, have enough skilled faculty members and detailed initiatives well underway that they can survive -- and even prosper -- without permanent deans in place. Glandt, for instance, has served as interim dean since July 1998 and says he has since been evaluating the school's priorities and has tried to obtain collective goals that were established even before he took the position. "These schools all have a very well-defined plan," Glandt said. "We have a script. We have something that comes from the faculty bottom-up. The mandate for an interim dean is very clear." Physics Professor Walter Wales, who served as interim dean of the School of Arts and Sciences twice in the past 10 years, agreed that it is often the faculty members -- and not the actual dean -- who can steer the direction of the school. "One hopes that the agenda that one is fulfilling is the school's agenda, not the deans'," Wales said. Still, the resignations of former Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity and Law School Dean Colin Diver leave the University without two if its most renowned administrators, both of whom individually helped elevate their respective schools to unprecedented financial success and top-rate national status. Though Mooney acknowledged that Diver's shoes would indeed be tough to fill, he, like Glandt, said the school had a planned trajectory that could guide him while in office. "Colin has left us with a plan. We know what we want to do, we know what we need money for, we have targets for the money we need," Mooney said. But for some interim deans, maintaining intense fundraising initiatives -- an area in which both Gerrity and Diver were particularly successful -- is a top priority, and a challenging one at that, given that successful fundraising often requires a close relationship between the donor and the institution. Glandt, for example, said a "new kid on the block" might have more trouble soliciting donations if he has not yet established a direct bond with the potential donor. And Clark Havighurst, who has served as interim dean of Duke University's Law School since July 1, said it was "expected that some donors will adopt a wait-and-see attitude," though he did not anticipate any "permanent harm" being done at his institution. Harker, though, claimed that donors are often more connected with the individual school than they are with an individual person. "I think at the end of the day, donors, particularly alums, give to Penn. They give to Wharton," Harker said. "The dean is very important in articulating what the mission of the place is but I don't think [donors] give to a person. It's not a political campaign." And though most interim deans say they're willing to serve until the end of the search -- regardless of how long that process might take -- many also say they're always ready, even eager, to be relieved of their duties and see the school function under stable, permanent leadership. "I am doing the job because I was asked to do it, but I have never aspired to this kind of work," Havighurst said. "I will be glad to hand it over." And at Penn, Mooney said his "main interest" has always been to return to his scholarly work and writing. "I would be very surprised and very displeased if I had to serve beyond this academic year," Mooney added.