After spending most of her Thursday in the Athletics Office, Mary DiStanislao walks across campus to the Inn at Penn's second-floor conference room.
She greets her colleagues warmly and makes her way across the room full of administrators dressed in everything from business suits to jeans and T-shirts. Penn's former business head Clifford Stanley is across the room, engaged in conversation. Others are welcoming each other with hugs and strong handshakes.
As the afternoon's session is called to order, one member of the group raises her hand and asks for a round of applause in honor of the new addition to the room: plush chairs complete with armrests and wheels.
After an uproarious round of applause and giggles, DiStanislao and everyone around the room put on their poker faces and are ready to get down to business.
But, instead of gathering for a typical meeting, DiStanislao and the other 21 administrators in the room are here to learn.
These senior-level university officials from across the country are all students in the Penn Graduate School of Education's Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management program, and they have gathered for a lecture and interactive discussion on the history of American higher education --which they are molding in their own day-to-day lives.
•
DiStanislao's interest and involvement in higher education is not new.
After graduating from Rutgers University and coaching college basketball for 13 years, she decided to earn her MBA and enter the business world.
Within a few years, though, she realized that academia is her true calling.
When a job opportunity at Wharton's Career Management Department became available in 1998, she jumped at the opportunity. Before long, she became involved in athletics and currently serves as Penn's associate athletic director.
But now that DiStanislao has developed a passion for university life, she is eager to advance her knowledge and possibly attain a more prominent leadership role in higher education.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
•
Once a month, DiStanislao and 20 other senior higher education administrators from across the country leave their jobs to gather at Penn for three days of intensive lectures, discussions and research.
Tackling everything from the hierarchy of university governance to the question of access for minorities, these student-administrators write four papers and read several books in between sessions in preparation for class discussions. They simultaneously work on dissertations and prepare for comprehensive examinations.
While students in a traditional Ed.D. program often need three or four years to earn their degree, these eager university officials earn doctorates in higher education management after merely two years of leading the double life of student and high-powered administrator.
The program was developed to give those like DiStanislao an opportunity to explore beyond the realm of their particular expertise and understand the evolving and complex nature of modern colleges and universities.
"During the 1990s... administrators in business services, finance, planning, development, student services and athletics were coming to play increasingly important and influential roles in shaping colleges and universities," said Marvin Lazerson, one of the GSE faculty members who conceived and developed ExecDoc.
But Lazerson said that these administrators often felt isolated from the academic community at their schools.
The program hopes to bridge that gap.
Acting Director Larry Schall, an ExecDoc graduate himself, said that career ambitions are also a high priority for ExecDoc students.
"Some want to move into college presidencies," Schall said. "Others just know they can be more effective in their current job or future job if they got a greater understanding of how the whole enterprise works."
The program boasts some very accomplished alumni. Vice President for Business Services Lee Nunery and Spalding University President Jo Ann Rooney have participated in the program. Also, Tim Ryan became president of the Culinary Institute of America three months into his ExecDoc classes.
•
The program also makes Penn and the GSE stand out in the higher education crowd.
Penn is one of few institutions with a degree program to train university officials and its executive, fast-tracked model is one-of-a-kind.
In addition, ExecDoc is an entrepreneurial, profitable endeavor -- students fork over approximately $90,000 in tuition.
"It's a big part of why one does something like this," former director Doug Toma said. "This program spins off enough revenue that we can put that money into financial aid for master's students. That's a real motivator for the faculty."
With revenue coming in, satisfied students and an eager pool of university administrators applying to the program each year -- ExecDoc has only a 30 percent acceptance rate -- Schall and Lazerson both said that they see the program going full speed ahead.
And neither would be surprised if more programs like it were established in the near future.
•
But there was a time when university administrators would not have seen the need to pursue a program like this.
In fact, there was a time when college presidents handled all or most of the administrative duties in their institutions.
According to Harvard Education Professor Julie Reuben, this is no longer the case.
"There has been now a several-decade trend toward expanding the size of administration and looking for people who have particular administrative skills and experience and who can combine that with an understanding of higher education as a particular kind of unique organization," Reuben said.
According to Penn History Professor Michael Katz, this is partly because educational institutions have become increasingly complex over the last century.
"The trend towards the development of bureaucracy and the importance of administration in universities really goes back to the 20th century with the creation of the first American research universities," Katz said.
"This trend... really accelerated after the Second World War with the emergence of... the multiversity -- the university that has several large complicated functions that it tries to implement all at the same time," he added, explaining that universities have taken on new roles in recent years, such as promoting social justice.
In this environment, administrators without Ph.D.s can be at a disadvantage.
According to Reuben, an Ed.D. is one way to compensate.
The degree "is not a prerequisite, but it's one of the paths that people take into higher education," she said.
Moreover, Reuben added that she does not have the impression that most Harvard administrators hold an Ed.D., but also said that it is "not uncommon" for an administrator to either earn such a doctorate or take classes in higher education management.
At the same time, administrators holding Ed.D.s have to compete with university administrators who have risen through the ranks of their institutions after becoming experts in scholarly fields and spending years writing Ph.D. dissertations.
Still, according to Toma, ExecDoc enables future leaders in higher education to understand this complexity.
"People came to us as specialists and left us having a more general understanding of their institutions and higher education in general."
•
For program participants, who must already hold one advanced degree, this has been a perfect match.
"It's already paying off in the sense that I know a lot more about how a university works and it's giving me some interesting insights into Penn," says DiStanislao, who began her studies this past August with the program's third cohort.
"My background is public policy and public affairs," said Laura Freid, an ExecDoc student who has worked at Brown and Harvard universities. "The program is allowing me to to study a range of issues -- financial, academic, governance, student life...."
Stanley transitioned from the Marine Corps to Penn last year and, like most of the other students, he is also looking for a solid background in higher education.
"What I really want is a good understanding of the entire system," Stanley said. "I want to really learn how you run a school so that if I can be in a position of leadership one day, I can do that."
But, they aren't only learning from textbooks and lectures.
"What I didn't expect was such an incredible cohort of students," Freid said. "My background has been in private elite education and my classmates come from state institutions, religious institutions, seminaries, adult education, corporate education and small liberal arts colleges as well as Johns Hopkins and Penn... I'm learning so much from all of them."
For example, Freid wrote her last paper with Roland Arriola, the former mayor of Waco, Texas, who is now a senior officer at University of Texas, Pan American. Arriola gave her a unique perspective on minority concerns in education.
Texas Pan Am is "such a different world than what I've been living in, a state institution with a Hispanic population," she said. "He had a real appreciation for what the problems in access and attainment of higher education are for minorities, and it made writing a paper much more interesting... and much more real."
While students are learning from their accomplished peers and from their coursework, they aren't forgetting their ultimate career goals.
Though DiStanislao is still in the initial stages of writing her thesis, fantasies of possible positions once she's earned her degree, such as administrative dean, dean of students and higher education consultant, are not too far removed from her reality.
Toma said that the program also inspired participants to rethink their own potential.
"The people who came into the program probably wouldn't have viewed themselves as college presidents," he said. "It kind of moved from the back of their mind to the front of their minds."
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.
