54 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS conducted. We all have people with whom we enjoy working and there are always peo- ple whose mere presence in a room drops the temperature to below freezing, but a survey can provide other details about performance of the dean’s office. In talking to colleagues, we found it surprising how few deans survey their units on a regular basis. Likewise, you might assume meetings and communication in the college func- tions as well as it can in the current structure, and it is the structure itself that needs to change. Are you sure this assumption is accurate? As anyone who has served on external review teams for departments, colleges, or universities will admit, “commu- nication problems” are always one of the top three difficulties identified by university stakeholders. Having fellow deans or external colleagues review how your office operates will reveal improvements that can be made without changing structure. The question you can then ask is: Will those improvements be sufficient to overcome the identified problems that must change? If a different office organization would require additional resources (e.g., a divi- sional structure often requires the addition of one additional associate dean and a support staff member), how would your office function if you added these people to the existing structure and simply changed the division of labor in the office? Chang- ing structure takes a great deal of time and effort. Hiring an additional staff member and rearranging personnel responsibilities is quite simple by comparison and may solve your identified problems. If the purpose of reorganization is to identify a model requiring fewer resources (e.g., in response to budget cuts or to demonstrate financial prudence), what goals need to be met? Are you looking for the most painless way to accomplish this change (e.g., get past this while minimizing political repercussions)? Do you need the fastest way to do this (e.g., meet a deadline set by a superior)? Are you interested in how you can take advantage of the reorganization to improve services to students, faculty and other stakeholders simultaneously? Unequivocally, if time and politics allow, the latter perspective is the best approach. Assessing the Responsibilities of Dean’s Office Staff As mentioned in earlier chapters, academic and staff members in the dean’s office provide support for a wide array of activities. In fact, the breadth of responsibili- ties in the dean’s office is dizzying. In conversation with deans at Oklahoma State University and with deans of Arts and Sciences on the Board of Directors of CCAS, we developed a comprehensive suite of responsibilities often found in dean’s offices (see Appendix B). While not every activity will be done in every college (e.g., many professional graduate colleges are unlikely to be concerned with general education) or on every campus (e.g., some campuses do not conduct animal research so would not need an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee), your office may be The breadth of responsibilities in the dean’s office is dizzying.