Exemplifying the trend that dean positions open every four to six years, in the past 26 years, I have held dean and director positions at five institutions—an average a new position every 5.2 years (Henk, Wepner, and Ali 2022). During that time, I have been a finalist and successful candidate at least 15 times. Part one of this article reviewed lessons and experiences from 1998 through 2013. The following lessons occurred starting in 2017 through 2021. These experiences have informed other practices to consider in how to treat a candidate.
Beyond the Credential Factory: Why Higher Education Must Shift from Management to Flourishing
For decades, higher education leadership has obsessed over “student success” as a purely operational metric. We track retention and graduation rates and postgraduation outcomes with the same linear precision that
Yoshitaka Iwasaki
August 3, 2026
