To Make Magic Happen: Deans' Job Description

I just spent a few days hanging out with a surprising number of deans. I was on an ABA inspection team that consisted of 3 deans and a vice-dean, plus the president of a small state college. Then me, and a federal district attorney. It actually was an amazingly nice time. In the course of one conversation, Rudy Hasl, who has been dean at St. Louis University, St. John's, Seattle and now at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego, made a pretty cool little quip. Rudy said he thought the job description for a dean was:

To Make Magic Happen

Wow! Does that sound like he's having a great time or what?!

Rudy said, think about it, sometime in every day, a dean has the opportunity to make magic happen in the life of somebody. It could be a student, it could be a faculty member, or an alum, a donor, a trustee.

What about a librarian???

PS. Alert readers may recognize Rudy Hasl's name from the recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, detailing how the excavation at the site of the Thomas Jefferson Law School's new building turned up the remains of a Columbian Mammoth. Since then, the work has turned up more prehistoric creatures: a baleen whale -- ancestor of the blue whale, and a giant sloth. OOTJ refuses to take cheap shots by speculating about mascots for the law school, and instead, thinks it's just darned cool that they keep digging up more mega-fossils!