I thought seesaws were just for playgrounds. How are you applying them to academic leadership?

Jeanne Hey, Ph.D.: The seesaws for me sums up the idea of a balancing act. That academic leadership is not so much hitting a single point of strength, decision making particular trait but instead balancing the interests of the many constituencies you're working for students, faculty, staff, community, administration. Balancing your own leadership styles and priorities. Take a strong approach. Take a more empathetic approach. Be a really good listener. Lay down the law, all of those kinds of things and even balancing your own life between your professional life and your personal life.

For a while I thought about it being a tightrope walker but I thought you know tightrope walkers, they die when they make the wrong decision. So, I'm not going to go with that. A seesaw is a better one because you can fall off, in other words you can make the wrong choice but you get back on. Nothing in our world or very little in our world is life or death which we need to remind deans and chairs of on a frequent basis.

The seesaw just emerged as something that was really helpful in that and knowing that on some days I'm going to be up on one feature but on another day I have to be down.

How can the notion of seesaws help chairs and deans?

The seesaws are especially helpful to department chairs, program directors, and deans because they are the most commonly situated right in the middle of two fairly well known camps: the faculty and the administration. At many universities, unfortunately, there is a sense that it's the faculty vs. the administration and sometimes there's tension between those two groups.

So, they have a very special and important role to communicate the perspective of each camp to the other but they also have to decide on any given day, on any different issue, which of those interests they're going to represent? Which of those interests they're going to support? Which identity they're going to draw-on in addressing a problem and I think we err when we say, “I really need to be a faculty advocate as a dean,” or conversely, “I need to represent the administration in everything I do.”

Rather, you have to be able to move across the seesaw and choose the right approach for the situation at hand so that you're being the most effective for both constituencies.

So, as a dean, especially during these times of crisis really in higher education, I was often in the position of communicating those challenges to the faculty and delivering on addressing those challenges to the administration.

So, when I would walk out of my office, which often felt like my sanctuary, it often felt like I was moving into an environment where I was going to be pushed from above and from below.

From below would be the faculty communicating me their preferences, their priorities, their interests around liberal arts curricula, around faculty ownership of decision making, about advancing faculty salaries, time for research and everything else.

The pressure from above was about fiscal responsibility, increasing student numbers, increasing student retention, and adapting to the new environment where STEM education, professionally oriented education is increasingly more important and in demand from students but in the liberal arts college where I was Dean was often not exactly how the faculty saw themselves.

So, I was the person in the middle, and department chairs often find themselves here, in the middle of these two pressure points. The notion of me being at the fulcrum, I kind of imagine myself at the bottom of a big nail clipper and each side was moving in this direction or that.

But that helped me think more about the see saws and realizing that I was living in that space but that I didn't have to be immobilized in that space that I could move in each direction on any given day or any situation to address the priorities and needs of both constituencies.