Ask LINA: Spring 2024

April 2024

Dear LINA, I am the director of a humanities center at a large, public university in the midwest. I’m tenured but haven’t ever been department chair or held any other major leadership role, though in the past two years, I’ve been tapped for several committees related to our strategic planning process. We also convene a couple of interdisciplinary working groups at the center, focusing on public humanities work and graduate education. The beginning of this year felt full of promise, but the reality has been challenging. My students are struggling. I’m struggling. The institution is struggling. The strategic planning process has been slow because of constant fires that need to be put out, and none of the working groups we convene at the center have met as often as we intended. Everyone has actually been very kind and understanding, and I’m grateful to work with colleagues who are both brilliant and humane—but it is frustrating to feel like so little progress has been made. Now it’s April, and I’m looking at summer. Summer tends to be very quiet, as most of our students and many of the faculty are not present on campus. In past years, I relished this, but this year it seems like a missed opportunity to actually get things done. Are there ways that I can use summer to advance the institution-building work that didn’t happen this year? I don’t want my colleagues to resent me, and I definitely don’t want to contribute to burnout… but it feels like a waste of 25% of the calendar year to do nothing, especially since I am on a 12 month contract. Sincerely, Summer (Not) Slacker

Answer #1

Dear Summer (Not) Slacker,

Frustration from lack of progress in a center’s work and at the institutional level during the academic year can bring a sense of urgency to accomplish as much as possible during the summer months. Yet our faculty colleagues are unlikely to feel the same urgency about the humanities center’s work as they do about their own research and vacation goals. In considering how to advance institution-building over the summer, I recommend three approaches.

• Begin with your staff. Whether the center staff is a shared administrative assistant or a team of four, if you feel frustrated, there is a good chance they do also. First, do something fun together (we like to go out for ice cream). Taking a moment to relax and celebrate the end of the year makes it easier to tackle what still needs to be done. Discuss with them obstacles that came up this year that hadn’t been there in previous years and new opportunities to make things happen that you want to make sure to remember. In what areas can staff members contribute to institution-building? Staff who see the big picture and have a role in creating it are more engaged.
• Remember that university staff are on campus during the summer. Humanities centers often do their work with institutional partners across campus—graduate division, university library, a campus museum or performing arts center, and others. Consider where your institution-building goals intersect with or directly engage with these units. Make appointments to meet with a librarian or museum curator or graduate division program director you’ve been working with or would like to connect with. They too are less busy in the summer—and will have time to learn about your center, talk about ideas for collaboration, and start making plans.
• Focus on key conversations with faculty members and ask them now if they can be available during the summer. Talk to the chairs of the working groups about the difficulties in scheduling meetings. Identify strategies to make it easier to get the working group members together. Clarify the goals and objectives of the working group and make sure these are re-communicated to the members at the beginning of the academic year. Are the right people still on the working group? Faculty go on sabbatical or change their roles in a department or in another university role. Determine who might step down and who should be invited to join.

Take advantage of the relative quiet of summer to connect with people who are on campus. Build relationships with these partners who can support your institution-building goals and help you be prepared to move forward as soon as the academic year begins.

Signed,
LINA in California

Answer #2

Dear Friend,

It sounds as though you began your directorship with a general mandate (or desire) to do strategic planning to set the future course for the Center. It also sounds as though you may have been expected to continue most of your other duties at the same time. I’ve offered a few thoughts responding to both of those topics.

First, I wonder if there is an office on your campus that has experts who can help with strategic planning? This isn’t something many of us know how to do. One of the first things I did at my center was to reach out to a colleague in Business whose research area was in organizational psychology. He’s led lots of strategic planning projects. He identified a talented facilitator (from off campus in my case), and the three of us carefully planned a daylong retreat. (I paid the facilitator out of gift funds.) We invited about 20 people to attend—a combination of administrators I wanted to educate about the center, the director of another center on campus where I saw potential for partnering, and a group of faculty members. The faculty were a combination of recent advisory board members and energetic, visionary leaders I hoped to involve more actively in the Center. The day was thoughtfully designed to move us through a series of conversations. The facilitator held a few focus groups in advance to assess what people knew about and wanted from the Center, but holding a daylong event to do deeper thinking and planning had the advantage of bringing diverse people into the room together to make genuine planning progress.

Then, you could work with your staff and/or an advisory board to follow up the retreat with a mission/vision statement and an action plan to share publicly and guide your work.

Re summers—other than something like an early or end of summer retreat as described above, I wouldn’t expect faculty to do much work for your center over the summer. That could be a valuable time for you and your staff to do some research on what other centers support and do. Offering examples of types of programming and funding to people in a retreat could help them to be more ambitious for the center. In a perfect world, you might have the retreat right after school ends and then you and your staff and the person you report to could work on taking the retreat ideas and developing concrete proposals or plans and to seek funding for them.

I also think you might find it wise to see if your university has executive coaching type people who can help you develop your own plan for balancing the probably competing parts of your work, setting priorities, collaborating with and delegating to staff thoughtfully, setting up some goals and benchmarks for yourself, deciding what you can’t do (due to time and your other demands), etc. Again, in the humanities, most of us don’t learn how to manage our own work lives, much less manage a group, and too often we dismiss all the structures that come from business. When I find the “closet humanists” in the college of business or in HR, I’ve really benefited from some of their approaches to leading a center and helping support staff at my center. You don’t need to learn “how to lead” through a trial and error process alone. Everyone no doubt wants you to succeed (if only for their benefit).

By the way, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) is developing mentoring for new center directors. That will be very helpful, and most seasoned directors I’ve met are happy to jump on Zoom with new directors to share ideas and strategies they’ve developed. They’ll likely be flattered that you reached out to them.

Finally, take a real vacation this summer! A little distance (and sleep) go a long way.

Signed,
LINA in Iowa