Realizing the Distinctive University: Vision and Values, Strategy and Culture

by Mark William Roche

Overview

In Realizing the Distinctive University: Vision and Values, Strategy and Culture, Mark William Roche changes the terms of the debate about American higher education. A former dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, Roche argues for the importance of an institutional vision, not simply a brand, and while he extols the value of entrepreneurship, he defines it in contrast to the corporate drive toward commercialization and demands for business management models. Using the history of the German university to assess the need for, and implementation of, distinctive visions at American colleges and universities, Roche's own vision benefits from his deep connection to both systems as well as his experience in the trenches working to realize the special mission of an American Catholic university. Roche makes a significant contribution by delineating means for moving such an institution from vision to implementation.

Roche provides a road map to creating a superb arts and sciences college within a major research university and offers a rich analysis of five principles that have shaped the modern American university: flexibility, competition, incentives, accountability, and community. He notes the challenges and problems that surface with these categories and includes ample illustration of both best practices and personal missteps. The book makes clear that even a compelling intellectual vision must always be linked to its embodiment in rhetoric, support structures, and community. Throughout this unique and appealing contribution to the literature on higher education, Roche avoids polemic and remains optimistic about the ways in which a faculty member serving in administration can make a positive difference.

Realizing the Distinctive University is a must read for academic administrators, faculty members interested in the inner workings of the university, and graduate students and scholars of higher education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268101497
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	302
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Mark William Roche is the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of German Language and Literature and concurrent professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. From 1997 to 2008 Roche served as dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters. His books include Why Choose the Liberal Arts? (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), which received the 2012 Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Mark William Roche is the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of German Language and Literature, concurrent professor of philosophy, and former dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of many books, including Realizing the Distinctive University (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017) and Why Choose the Liberal Arts? (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), which won the Frederic W. Ness Book Award.

Read an Excerpt

If I were to step back and ask what are the most compelling personal or philosophical insights I developed during my time as dean, I would name the following three.

First, do not waver from vision. Central to this book is the idea that everything revolves around vision and setting priorities according to vision. Without an overarching vision, motivation is weakened and clarity of purpose diminished. Certainly, a vision can be complex, and at times choices need to be weighed with a great deal of ambiguity. Some mistakes I made derived from weighing conflicting goods and misjudging which decision would most support the long-term aspirations of the institution.

Serving in administration has little purpose if one does not have a vision of what one hopes to accomplish, even if that involves simply providing greater support for students and faculty. Still, one can shoot higher and imagine ways in which one can greatly enhance academic community and provide truly new opportunities. Most importantly, one needs to ensure that all decisions, especially those affecting the use of one’s time, the appointment and evaluation of personnel, and the allocation of budget, serve the overarching vision. The adjustment of my responsibilities halfway through my tenure was strongly effective, not least of all because it clarified the importance of priorities in support of vision. Not losing time on what is unimportant or inessential is an important principle. And here vision can run counter to tradition, that is, to established pro- cedures and expected practices.

Effectiveness in response to a higher vision, not business efficiency in support of instrumental goals, should shape a college. Economic and business principles are essential, but they cannot themselves be a telos. Developing a distinctive vision is not one and the same with marketing a brand. Entrepreneurship is essential, but that need not mean elevating the corporate drive for the commercialization of research over its intrinsic value or its capacity to address social problems. Vision should drive business plans and business strategies, not vice versa. A blurring of vision is likely to mean at the very least a weakening of donor support and a redirection of precious resources to tangential areas.

Administrators serve briefly in comparison with the long life of an institution and so have the responsibility to prioritize long-term flourishing. The long- range perspective that governs the management and payout of college endowment should drive administrators as well. I recounted above how tenure decisions, even if they create immediate conflict, need to be made in the institution’s long- term interests. One is serving more than the present, and one needs to keep in mind one’s responsibilities to the future. Leaving mistakes to one’s successor, while inevitable, should be curtailed as much as consciously possible, even when that means difficulties in the present. Vision can give one the strength to face conflict.

I could add under advancing vision any number of related but subordinate principles. Listening closely as other persons enhance or challenge the vision, spending extensive time in informal conversations, communicating the vision effectively to multiple audiences, investing in priorities, using resources efficiently, ferreting out and confronting gaps, and developing practical means for measuring competency and success—all are examples of further important principles, but almost all valid administrative principles, these included, are subordinate to and part of either forming or realizing the vision.

Second, round out your weaknesses. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. An academic leader receives a position on the basis of strengths (and despite recognizable or as yet unseen weaknesses). At some institutions at certain stretches of time, an administrator may be able to help advance or maintain a university without the full repertoire one wants to see. A chairperson, dean, or other academic leader without vision or without strong communication skills or without the capacity to listen or without efficiency or without organizational skills or without mentoring capabilities or without a willingness to face conflict may well survive but is unlikely to succeed as well as he or she might on behalf of the institution. I could almost divide chairpersons into those who used cogent critical feedback to reach a still higher level and those who turned away from the advice and either stayed in place, struggled, or exited more quickly than they had intended or wanted.

Helped by a bracing review, I was able to reflect on ways to stretch my repertoire and shift some of my emphases. In my case, this involved, after first having focused on standards and structures, devoting much more time to the social and emotional elements of leadership. The voluntary review that sharpened my priorities gave me the capital to hire an additional person, delegate more, and focus on essential issues. These changes were crucial to my reaching a higher level of effectiveness. In the case of the external review, the weaknesses identified were as much structural as personal. Just as a college moves forward by focusing on its gaps, so my own work improved when the lens was turned inward—to me and to my office. One can identify weaknesses in oneself or one’s office in many ways—through introspection or with the help of trusted staff and candid faculty members, by undergoing obligatory or voluntary reviews, and by assessing progress made in targeted areas. The number of ways to identify gaps and develop strategies to address them is countless, which brings me to my next point.

Third, identify best practices. It makes little sense to reinvent the wheel on every issue. Most institutions wrestle with analogous issues. One can visit other campuses and consult other leaders. One can reach out to those on one’s campus who might have faced analogous problems. One can ask faculty for their ideas, engage in brainstorming sessions with staff, skim relevant literature on higher education puzzles, and draw on one’s own creativity. One can question faculty who have arrived from excellent universities, asking, from what aspects of your previous university can we learn and what do we do that strikes you as deficient. Although I have stressed distinction, all universities can learn from one another concerning their common challenges—from recruiting and mentoring faculty to fostering peer learning and intellectual community. This commonality, I hope, will allow my book to appeal to administrators and faculty members at a diverse array of colleges and universities.

(Excerpted from the Conclusion)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction, or How I Almost Managed to Become Someone Else

PART I. VISION AND CHANGE

1. The Idea and Reality of the University, or How We Got Where We Are

2. Vision, or What No Administrator Can Do Without

PART II. EMBODYING AND FUNDING THE VISION

3. Embodiment, or Why Not All Meetings Are Dull

4. Resources, or What a University Needs Besides People and Ideas

PART III. STRUCTURES, STRATEGIES, STRUGGLES

5. Flexibility, or How to Juggle Just about Anything

6. Competition, or How American Universities Have Always Embraced the Market

7. Incentives, or What the Second-Best Way to Motivate Faculty Members Is

8. Accountability, or How Criticism Can Be a Gift

9. Community, or How Something Can Be Both an End and a Means

Conclusion

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

Roche offers a guide to present and future administrators by analyzing the core issues institutions face and illustrating them with personal narratives from his seventeen years of academic administration. The combination of anecdotes and scholarship provides an engaging and approachable outline for how best to define, pursue and sustain an institution’s mission.” —Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society

“The book is intended to be a visionary yet highly practical manual of advice for senior academic leaders—deans, provosts, presidents—for how they might seek to lead and improve their own universities.” —The Cresset

"Realizing the Distinctive University is about change, improvement, and leadership in higher education. Realizing the Distinctive University is incredibly useful for anyone serving or hoping to serve as an administrator." —Planning for Higher Education Journal

"For principles and strategies for moving from vision to implementation, read this book." —Commonweal

“Roche’s academic operator’s manual delivers the following message to college administrators: Work with your faculties and other constituencies to conceive and pursue a driving vision that distinguishes your institution from peers and competitors, and steer your course with distinction.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Roche sets his insights on two goals for successful administration of higher learning: identifying what makes a university distinctive and establishing a vision for leadership.” —Catholic Library World

From the Publisher

While much of the book is about vision, and in particular a vision shaped by the value of the liberal arts, it is no less about generic strategies that can help any institution realize its vision. Every vision must be linked to its embodiment in rhetoric, support structures and community . . . The best practices I introduce along with the personal missteps I discuss can be a source of learning for all kinds of administrators.

Inside Higher Ed

"[This] book is intended to be a visionary yet highly practical manual of advice for senior academic leaders—deans, provosts, presidents—for how they might seek to lead and improve their own universities. It is, Roche says, 'about intellectual principles of administration and strategies for moving from vision to implementation.' . . . Roche movingly describes what I think is one of the central virtues necessary to creating and leading a genuine academic community: 'To take joy in the success of others is a privileged and often neglected virtue, one that tends to surface only when one has a meaningful sense of collective identity; and the exercise of that virtue as one assumes a leadership position further reinforces one’s identification with the community.”'

The Cresset

"[Roche] draws on his experience as an academic administrator at Notre Dame, where, under his leadership, the quality and quantity of faculty hiring notably increased. This success, Roche emphasizes, is owed equally to a confident acceptance of Notre Dame’s mission to be the leading Catholic university in America . . . and to a smart and pragmatic approach to institutional politics and bureaucratic maneuvering. . . . of interest to ambitious and embattled academic administrators who face the issues Roche confronted as a dean at Notre Dame."

First Things

"Mark Roche in his eleven years as dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame fulfilled the responsibilities of the office with perception and style, contributing thereby to the significant advancement of the university in research, scholarship, education of students, and reputation. To the benefit of all deans—and other stakeholders in higher education—Roche has written a revealing account of the ins and outs, ups and downs of decanal life. Administrators at other aspiring universities will benefit immensely from following Roche’s decisions, admitted mistakes, revisions, and strategies."

George Dennis O'Brien

"Roughly put, how many of the two hundred fifty or so Catholic colleges and universities in the United States are really, substantively Catholic in their curriculum and student life? How many, more precisely, are distinctive, in the two senses Mark William Roche uses this term in his critically important new book: both different from their secular peers and excellent in themselves? . . . For principles and strategies for moving from vision to implementation, read this book."

Commonweal

"Mark Roche has written a splendid book proposing and demonstrating that, in order to flourish, a university must articulate and embody a distinctive vision, drawing on his rich experience at two distinctive and quite different universities: Notre Dame and Ohio State. The reader will gain valuable insights about the role of 'institutional saga' in higher education and at universities, in particular."

Bruce A. Kimball

The former dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters and current professor has a lot to say about moving from an institutional vision to implementing the desired concepts. He discusses best practices and strategies, from motivating faculty members to facilitating a sense of community. ‘Vision should drive business plans and business strategies, not vice versa,’ Roche notes.

Notre Dame Magazine

Roche, former dean of the College of Arts and Letters and the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of German Language and Literature and concurrent professor of theology, argues for the importance of an institutional vision in higher education, not simply a brand.

NDWorks

"[Roche's] book is far from the jeremiad that has become common during recent decades; it is an optimistic paean to American higher education’s accomplishments and opportunities. Echoing the arguments he made in such books as Why Choose the Liberal Arts?, he says that offering intellectual challenge amid a fostered sense of community, rather than mere jobs preparation, reaps such rewards as lifelong alumni loyalty."

The Chronicle of Higher Education

"I can’t think of another book about higher education so astute and persuasive about the importance of an institutional vision, and so clear-sighted about practices that help administrators as they struggle to attain it. Roche comprehensively discusses vision, hiring, advancement, curriculum, and perhaps most importantly, the development of internal processes that support collaboration, efficiency, and achievement." Richard Finkelstein, dean of Arts and Sciences, University of Mary Washington

Richard Finkelstein

" Realizing the Distinctive University is about change, improvement, and leadership in higher education. It provides the reader with the historical background necessary to understand why American education is the way it is and what challenges it faces over the coming decades. Roche is able to make the case that institutions, if they want to flourish in the future, need to be distinctive, with strong identities that set them apart from other institutions and unify the campus around a vision. . . . With the ability to lead change that adapts and evolves institutions becoming a necessary skill for higher education leaders, Realizing the Distinctive University is incredibly useful for anyone serving or hoping to serve as an administrator."

Planning for Higher Education Journal