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One of my first roles in higher ed was in the office of undergraduate education (OUE) under the dean of an undergraduate college within a much larger university. My first interaction with the dean was at a small meeting with my new colleagues in OUE, along with staff from various academic support offices. He opened the meeting by paraphrasing the mission and vision statements of the college, extolling the value of a liberal arts education, and articulating the place of faculty and staff in that vision. I had never experienced anything like that and, as I looked around the room, I was surprised that my colleagues were so nonplussed by it, even though I came to realize that they had heard him give this spiel several times before. After a few months at the college, I, too, came to hear the dean recite the mission and vision statement many times, but I never grew tired of it. I drew great inspiration from that simple act of defining and centering our work around educating and supporting the future citizen leaders of the country. The dean happens to be an expert in sociology and organizational behavior, and, while I was too low in the pecking order to talk to him about it, I now understand why he adopted this practice of reciting the mission at every meeting and event, and I also understand why this simply act resonated so much with me.

In the Organization and Management course (and, to a lesser degree, the Politics of Education class), we discussed Bolman and Deal’s four-frame model for understanding and approaching organizational challenges: structural, human resource, symbolic, and political. Based solely on my experience in the field, I contend that many university leaders are inclined to approach their work through the structural and political frames. They are often reliant on processes and norms, and they create systems that optimize for allocating power and resources. The dean was the first leader I met who prioritized the symbolic and human resource frames, which are the perspectives that resonate most with me. Aside from exceptional events that occur with students, our daily work on college campuses is not about life and death situations. Many of the essential functions of a typical college office can be learned by a reasonably intelligent person within a few weeks or months, so why are we so reliant on processes and formal structures? The things that make colleges special places with unique cultures are the people – those who founded them and helped shape them into the places there are today over time – from the past and those presently working on those campuses. The aforementioned dean seems to understand this because, in articulating the mission and vision of the college, he creates a shared sense of purpose for the staff, students, and stakeholders who attend his meetings and events. He is also offering clarity about our overarching goals in a way that policy statements and memos are unable to do. Furthermore, by discussing our shared mission in the symbolic frame, the dean set apart his particular college from its many peer institutions by emphasizing its special strengths and goals.

Inspired by this dean, I have developed a particular interest in fostering teamwork and teambuilding skills with students and staff in recent years. For a while, I resisted accepting the role as a leader among students because of oftentimes fraught and sensitive dynamics that exist between faculty and staff. Even still, I struggle and fight to resist the temptation to simply describe myself as someone who is working to support the educational mission of the university by serving at the pleasure of faculty. A couple of my most regrettable decisions involve kowtowing to faculty in defiance of my personal values and judgment. A few years ago, for example, the parent of one of my international students passed away suddenly on a Sunday. Within hours of learning the news, I was at the airport with the student before the long overseas flight back home. The student informed me, her roommate and one of her professors about the incident, and I did not tell anyone about the situation because student confidentiality is incredibly important to me. When we arrived in class that Tuesday, the older, distinguished professor and department chair started his class and summoned me from my back office, directing me to tell his students about the death of the absent student’s parent. Against my better judgment, I made the announcement with the professor standing over my shoulder, and, when I returned to my office, I immediately wrote an email to my manager, the associate provost, to let him know my discontentment with the situation with the hope that he would relay this to the professor. Instead, the associate provost dismissed it as no big deal, even after I informed him that the student found out and became very upset with me for disclosing the information to the class without her permission.

In many ways, I can view this situation through the lens of the four frames. I am most comfortable with the human resource and symbolic frames, and I prioritize the needs of individuals within an organization. I work very hard to build trust and to create a shared narrative with students throughout the semester, little by little. This, however, can come into conflict with individuals who see people as secondary to the functioning and good working order of the organization as a whole. The professor and my manager were likelier to see things through a structural frame in which control of the classroom environment and the efficiency of the group are more important than the needs of singular individuals. This was also a learning opportunity for me to offer feedback and to advocate for students when I feel that instructors or administrators are failing to consider their needs holistically.