Published Monday, April 11, 2005
A Dean's Decision Prompts Search for a Successor
By Andrew K. Mandel
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

It was a Sunday afternoon along the banks of Lake Michigan when Phil Jackson, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, turned to his companion and told her to quit her job.  Take time off, he said.  Pursue your writing.

Did Ellen Condliffe Lagemann really want to keep being Dean Lagemann, spending the next phase of her career planning her school’s relocation to Allston?

“If I don’t leave now,” she realized, “I won’t be able to leave for another 10 years.”

While she said she has enjoyed leading the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)—and gave herself “an A-plus” when asked to grade her tenure—Lagemann was inspired by the notion of writing a biography of Lawrence Cremin, who became an expert on the history of education, served president of the Spencer Foundation, and led a major school of education (in his case, Teachers College) a generation before she did the same.

After her conversation with Jackson in Chicago, “every day at the dean’s office became too long and too hard,” she recalled. “If I had two lives to live, I would stay as dean of the Ed School and go on sabbatical to write my book.  But since I don’t, I chose the more important life to me.”

That life will begin on June 30, when Lagemann will vacate her office on the first floor of Longfellow Hall and head to the airport for a vacation in France.  

Faculty and administrators indicated that this departure is relatively sudden.  Not only do deans typically stay far longer than three years on the job—Lagemann’s most recent predecessors each served for a decade—but they also usually give more long-term notice before resigning.  Former Dean Jerome Murphy announced in June 2000 that he would step down in June 2001.

“Ellen did catch us, to some degree, by surprise,” University Provost Steven Hyman said at an HGSE community meeting in Askwith Hall last week. 

As a result, it is unlikely that Hyman and Harvard President Lawrence Summers will have located a successor by July 1. Instead, an acting dean—potentially a person from outside HGSE if “no one can be dragooned [from the faculty],” Hyman quipped—may lead the school until Massachusetts Hall can make a permanent appointment.  Professors John Willett and Judith Singer served as acting co-deans before Lagemann’s appointment.

At the community meeting held on Wednesday, April 6, several doctoral students expressed concerns about diversity, asking Hyman if the new dean would be someone other than a white male. 

“Whoever is dean, and we all want the right dean for this school, we will make sure we look really hard at every qualified candidate and make sure we don’t overlook women and minorities,” Hyman said.

Student Government Association President Cheng Zhu asked if there would be a student representative involved in the selection process.

Again, Hyman promised nothing concrete, saying instead, “I will make sure that you have a voice.”

During the community meeting, which focused on urging those in attendance to e-mail their suggestions about the search process and the direction of HGSE to a to-be-determined address, a handful of concerns surfaced.  For one, Hobbes Professor of Cognition and Education Howard Gardner noted that a striking number of faculty and staff had either left HGSE or lost their jobs during Lagemann’s tenure.

“It’s been very demoralizing,” said Gardner, asking for reassurance that “there is a reason to stay.”

The cutbacks were unavoidable, Lagemann replied, reminding the audience that she had inherited a school with significant financial troubles.  But the school is now in the black, having secured over $22 million in donations, and she did not foresee any further layoffs.  Bill McKersie, associate dean for development and alumni relations, further reported that donors continued to express support for the school’s future after the dean's announcement to resign.

Speaking on behalf of himself and Summers, Hyman reaffirmed the University’s commitment to HGSE.

“This school is at the crossroads of so many things that are so important to us here at Harvard,” Hyman said.

In an interview with The Appian, he and Lagemann spoke of plans for an interfaculty initiative currently titled the Harvard Institute for Educational Excellence and Equity, an umbrella that would sponsor the Center for Urban School Research to be led by Thomas Kane, the Initiative on Diversity and Achievement led by Ronald Ferguson, and other centers yet to be announced.

This initiative, “based in the Ed School but larger than the Ed School,” will have formal connections with programs and professors at places like the Business School and the Kennedy School of Government, and alumni donors affiliated with those schools will feel connected with these pursuits and more likely to donate, they said.

Disagreement Over the Doctoral Program

Perhaps because Lagemann asked her audience to focus on the future, noticeably absent from the community meeting was talk of HGSE’s many recent administrative changes--“in many ways…more changes in the past three years than there were in the preceding twenty,” wrote Senior Lecturer and HGSE veteran Terrence Tivnan in an e-mail message.  

Faculty members contacted by The Appian appear to disagree when assessing the impact of these changes—particularly when talking about the elimination of the school’s three academic areas in favor of a centralized doctoral program.

Pforzheimer Professor of Teaching and Learning Susan Moore Johnson said the new approach has strengths that outweigh its kinks—and is far preferable to the former arrangement that segregated members of the faculty from one another by area of expertise.

“We didn't know enough about each other's research and experience to inform and improve our own work,” Johnson said.  “As an interdisciplinary education school, we need to integrate the very best of what is known about an array of topics in order to improve public education.  The new doctoral program promotes that.”

Further, Shattuck Professor of Education Catherine Snow noted that, while the dean offered her support for the changes, it was the faculty who asked for reorganization.

“The academic cabinet had made recommendations designed to produce a more coherent, more integrated doctoral program, and those have now been implemented to good effect,” she said.  “I think doctoral study at HGSE will be characterized by a cross-fertilization of deeply understood research, practice, and policy perspectives that is unique among doctoral programs in education.”

But if the new doctoral program is intended to bring people together, not everyone is convinced that it has done so.

“The new proposals have not yet produced the hoped-for benefits, as some people feel more isolated than before, and the school needs to think carefully about how to keep a wide range of faculty involved with doctoral students early on and then providing the guidance and support for them throughout the program,” Tivnan said.  “I hope that we will avoid a system in which a small core of faculty end up providing most of the guidance and help to the doctoral program, while other faculty end up with limited involvement.”

So while Snow advises the new dean to “stay the course,” others hope for a new track.

“Ellen´s departure presents a major opportunity for the faculty of the School to refocus, consolidate its efforts, and situate itself in a more powerful strategic position in the field,” said Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership Richard Elmore, who has expressed concerns over the direction of the school’s reorganization.  “I have, from the beginning, argued that the faculty should play the decisive role in restructuring the school and that any structure that results should reinforce and support the faculty’s work, not the administrative control of the dean’s office.”

With these diverse perspectives on the future of HGSE, what is the most important characteristic for Lagemann’s successor to possess?

The current dean replied without hesitation: “stamina.”

For previous articles on the dean’s departure and the faculty’s opinions on the doctoral program, please see:

http://gseacademic.harvard.edu/~theappian/articles/spring05/lagemann0305.htm

http://gseacademic.harvard.edu/~theappian/articles/spring05/doctoral0305.htm

Andrew K. Mandel is an Ed.M. candidate in Technology in Education program and a member of the Appian Board of Editors.