Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

FROM DEAN TO DEANTREPRENEUR: THE ACADEMICADMINISTRATOR AS TRANSLATORBy Abby R. Kratz and Dennis M. KratzThe academic title dean derives ultimately from theLatin word decanus, which refers to someone incharge of a group of ten. It was most commonly aRoman military term for the leader of a squad of ten soldiers.Caught in the crossfire of the changes sweepingthrough higher education, many current deans may findthe military origin of their title uncomfortably appropriate.It is all too tempting to apply metaphors of war to allacademic administrators, to think of them as the leadersof mercenary soldiers engaged in a noble crusade againstignorance or, less romantically, as under-equipped leadersof learned but unruly soldiers. Many colleges arestruggling to establish their niches or “beachheads,” arecompeting for increasingly scarce resources, and are discoveringthat they need to form strategic alliances to survive.Without question, the position of dean standsdirectly in multiple lines of fire.The challenges facing academic deans and thechanging nature of the position have spawned a significantcorpus of criticism and commentary, with suchinstructive and intriguing recent titles as The Dilemma ofthe Deanship, “The Academic Dean: An ImperiledSpecies Searching for Balance,” and The ChangingNature of the Academic Deanship. This essay addressesthe role of the dean in an environment of change. Wewill view that role through the lens of our experience asadministrators in a rapidly growing component of a largeuniversity system first in light of a conceptual framedeveloped by Rosabeth Moss Kanter with regard to corporatemanagement in what she calls our “post-entrepreneurial”age. Second, we will posit the emergence of anew model of the deanship, the deantrepreneur, and suggestthe implications of this model for the recruitmentand preparation of the next generation of academic leaders.Third, we will argue that these changes make translationuniquely relevant to the practice of administrationand, by extension, the education of administrators.At first glance, linking academic administration andtranslation may seem fanciful, if not perverse. After all,translators have expressed the belief that they suffer alack of respect in many academic settings. Nonetheless,recent developments in the nature of administration andin the theory of academic leadership, coupled with theemergence of translation as a model for understanding awide range of cross-cultural communication, suggest thatadministrators are in fact “translating” much of the time.Therefore, practical acquaintance with the process oftranslation could make them better communicators andmore effective leaders.As apt as battle metaphor may be for the life of thecontemporary dean, it is even more apt to apply to thisenterprise imagery drawn from play and game theory,especially as developed by Johan Huizinga and his successors.Game imagery has been applied productively tonumerous areas of endeavor. In her influential bookWhen Giants Learn to Dance, Kanter made use of thesame metaphor when she urged corporate executives tothink of themselves as engaged not in war but in aworldwide fiscal Olympics. To be sure, academic administratorsoften think of themselves as engaged in gamesof a particularly challenging variety, games more likecartoonist Bill Watterson’s “Calvinball,” with its endlessimprovised variation, addition, and subtraction of rules,than pastimes like baseball or basketball. In a comparisonthat works equally well for education, Kanter likensthe “game” of business to the croquet match in Alice inWonderland, in which everything, including Alice’s mallet(a flamingo), and the ball (a hedgehog with a mind ofits own), keeps changing and shifting. The game of highereducation in Texas, where we work, includes such newand elusive challenges as the pressures of externallyimposed accountability, fiscal constraints allied with anidiosyncratic formula funding system, shifting demographics,diversity initiatives that are often linked withretention goals, and, of course, the far-reaching thrusts oftechnological advancement.Indeed, Kanter’s research on new approaches tomanagement and the images she uses to relate her findingsseem particularly applicable to higher education.Contemporary education at all levels is often likened to abusiness. Many changes, for better and worse, in currentpractice have resulted from the application, not excludingthe misapplication, of business principles.The parallels between universities and businesses intoday’s environment of global economy, diversity, andrapid technological change are striking. Kanter’s analysisof the situation of business at the start of the last decadeas operating in a highly competitive global environment14 Translation Review