The legend of Dan Worrell - more from my "Tip of the Hat" series

In my time interacting with SIUC there have been two deans that I thought had real leadership skills - Dan Worrell in business (now departed) and Peter Alexander in law. Peter has only been here since 2003, but Dan left us a 5 year cycle as Dean before moving on that is worth discussing. The other deans I have meet are all gone now or leaving soon, but seemed like a bunch of pencil pushers to me (no innovation, no fire, no room for the people who worked for them to be leaders and demand the results that leaders bring). I haven't met the Dean of AG, who I hear good things about and we will get into Engineering soon enough.

I was trying to think about what accomplishments we could attribute to Dan's years as Dean and have come up with a list -
Replaced 3 chairmen in his first couple of years.
Created a Placement Center that should be the model for placement on campus, even though it is understaffed.
Rebuild the crappy classrooms into model classrooms by finding corporate sponsors.
competed on all levels to make the college better.

I blogged about this earlier and hopefully everyone knows this already, only by replacing or improving the performance and attitudes of the line managers (chairmen at SIU in the departments, but heck there are lots more lazy managers at SIUC who are not professors) can you improve the results or an organization. It is a lot simpler to replace the chairmen, especially the long serving kind, than to retrain. Clearly, the turnover of chairmen in business was a breath of fresh air in the college. I recommend it to any incoming dean at SIUC.

Dan got the funding and created a college placement center as his first move as the new Dean (I hear, I was still in Seattle when he came). The CoBA's placement center has only one full-time person (Donna Margolis - take a bow) and clearly they get it. SIUC should take a look at this center and convert the entire campus over. The SIUC Career Placement Center is mediocre and needs to be fixed. My company has gone to their job fairs and had success, so it isn't that they aren't doing anything. But clearly, the Placement Center lacks any clue about best practices, change, service and other little details that would make their service effective. I'm almost sure this is about civil service workers retired and allowed to do nothing by SIUC's administrators. A note to Career Placement - get more companies to interview on campus, even if you need to beg and lie.

The classrooms in the basement of Rehn Hall stunk when Dan showed up. The good news is they high ceilings and that was it. Dan raised corporate money to fix the classrooms and make them modern showplace rooms. Tiered seating, internet and power hookups for every seat, and computer access on a big screen for the teachers. This is what SIUC should be doing in existing buildings, it is the future. I recommend a tour next time you are in the area.

The great thing about Dan was he believed it was his job to make the college better. He sweet talked when he could, glared when he needed to. He was willing to move some chairmen out of the way to show he meant business. He was feared by the administrators because he was willing to come right after you if you got in his way or screwed around with this college. Dan is a competitive guy and it is a shame that SIUC doesn't have someone like him as dean in every college. His results speak well for is approach.

SIUC was Dan's first time as a dean and he has moved on to "The Sam Walton College of Business" at Arkansas. If you need verification of Dan's success, he now holds likely the best business dean position in "The South."

Not all the problems with the College of Business are solved in just 5 or 6 years. The new dean has a number of big problems (I'm on the college advisory board and the meeting is next week) and there will always be new problems. Dan provided a model of how to take a floundering college and start to turn it around. It has taken a long time and much mismanagement to ruin the fine university that existed at SIUC in 1970, the feeling of forward motion and community success that existed then. It is going to take a long time and many good works to get that back. I'm going to call Dan's time as dean here a best case example of what needs to be done at SIUC.

As always, your comments are welcome.