Laws of Academic Administration

1. No one should have an administrative position who wants it.
2. Always be aware that a university has no memory and no conscience.
3. In searching for an administrator, what you find depends a great deal on what you are looking for, how you look for it, and who is doing the looking.
4. A new administrator must experience a full year’s cycle of events before being completely familiar with the operations of the unit.
5. Never handle the same piece of paper twice.
6. Never send a letter or memo written in anger.
7. Look carefully at every piece of paper that goes out of your office over your signature.
8. If a rule should not apply to you, it probably should not apply to anyone else.
9. Trust everybody, but cut the cards (courtesy of Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley).
10. It is easier to work with faculty who act like prima donnas if they sing like prima donnas.
11. Stay open to “new” ideas, even when they are old, because the world does change.
12. University governance, whether by administrator, faculty council, or committee, has to include decisions and action, not endless theoretical analysis.
13. Publication is the usual basis for evaluating research and creative activity, but merely counting titles is not enough.
14. Beware of student evaluations in which showmanship trumps intellectual content.
15. Research grants should primarily serve the interests of the research, not the researcher or the grantor.
16. No academic unit ever thinks it has enough resources. 
17. When you are told how big a piece of the resources pie your unit is getting, try to find out where the rest of the pie is going and why.
18. Democracy is the ideal in governance, but it is important to keep clear what exactly constitutes, or should constitute, the demos.