I’ve been a dean for one month now, and I’m happy to report that there were no big surprises in the first stage of my transition to full-time administration. I am attending a lot more meetings than I did as a department chair, and I have a wider variety of opportunities and challenges to engage, but nothing has been unexpected. Reading a big stack of books, attending multiple training sessions, and speaking with lots of folks about academic leadership was well worth it!

There have been minor surprises in the first month, however. On the positive side, the first month in the student apartment complex was quieter than I expected (and there are many students living around me!). Send vibes that this continues, please! On the negative side, it’s been a bit frustrating adapting to a Microsoft cloud computing campus after several years on a Google cloud computing campus. I’ll write more about that next week…