The Dean bears ultimate responsibility for everything in the College: enrollment, curriculum, finances, and the well-being of students, faculty, and administrators. The Dean may delegate parts of these responsibilities, but he or she cannot shirk the ultimate obligation for right action throughout the College. The most fundamental document of Jesuit education urges us to make every single student as successful as possible. Everything in the College must be ordered to this end.
The most important role of any dean is to secure and retain the best possible professors for the students. For Matteo Ricci College, this entails some particular criteria. These professors must be deeply learned, not only with respect to the human sciences but also with respect to the wisdoms of tradition and aspiration. They must love teaching as well as learning. They must want to help others to become all that they can be. They must be attentive to small signs and unclear ways of communicating if they are to reach the mind and heart of each student. They must age well, with an unquenchable intellectual curiosity and a healthy disrespect for the normal confines of academic disciplines.
In recent years, more like them have been added. Professors are not easily led. All, in many respects, are at least the equal of the dean, or they never should have been hired in the first place. The Dean’s task, at best, is one of artful invitation, so that these very talented, often colorful and idiosyncratic characters can continue, like the students, to grow to be the people that they themselves can best become, and so that they can continue to give the whole-hearted best of themselves to their students.
The Dean and the professors must know the students. You cannot really teach someone that you do not know. No formal or numerical assessment can possibly compare to the value of conversations over several years to see how the student’s education is forming him or her as a person. Every professor must embrace this commitment, and the Dean must exemplify it. The dean and the associate deans all teach so that we can be in daily contact with students at all levels of the College.
The Dean must be creative albeit prudent. The Dean must always be asking, “How could we help further? What needs could we meet?” As time passes, humanity asks new questions, and we see new ways to serve our students better. At the same time, the Dean must be the ultimate guarantor of the integrity of our courses. Neither ideology nor intellectual fashions should be tolerated in higher education.
Whoever you are, reading this, we'd like to meet you. Regardless of age or position in life, call or write; we'll be waiting to hear from you.