Jan 4, 2024
In an article we have examined how the expanded lifetime of many professionals has led to the emergence of new stages in life, expanding Shakespeare’s 7, that we described in a previous article The Senex. We focused mainly on the research faculty’s fate as they go beyond 65 years old. It will appear soon in the UTDallas Atheneum review.
In this article, I have used the position of “Dean’s “as a different example, to discuss emergence of new professional stages of life in Academia and related professions as part of the emergence of Senexist societies.
Increasing longevity affects the careers and lives of Deans differently than that of Research Faculty.
As a researcher I, Roger F. Malina, discovered late in my career the growing importance of professionals in universities known as Presidents, Provosts, Deans and Associate Deans. In my case I became a French Civil Servant and named “Director” or the equivalent of “dean” in the French CNRS, Centre National de Recherche Scientific, which reports to the French Minister of Research, equivalent to a Provost, that then reports to the French President.
They all, or mostly, have degrees of higher education (eg PhDs) but when they get ‘promoted’ they have to learn new expertise without a new diploma: how to stop the professionals under them from doing what they propose.
As a researcher I experienced this when a Nobel Prize winner tried to kill/unfund the project I le His name was Riccardo Giacconi https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2002/giacconi/facts/ who got the Nobel prize for the discovery/invention of x-ray astronomy. He had become a leading advisor (equivalent to Dean) to the NASA administrator.
He tried to get the EUVE satellite project, that I led as Principal Investigator for NASA, cancelled because he told the US congress there would be nothing to see.
All the EUV light from outside the solar system would be absorbed by hydrogen and helium in the interstellar medium.
I had to visit the US congress to convince them to continue funding us. I learned how to pitch and convince administrative politicians. This became a crucial skill when I became a French Civil servant and was spanked for contacting the Mayor of Marseille to have him support our work.
In the USA universities have official ways for scientists to “lobby” politicians.
AI reports: UC Berkeley’s Government and Community Relations (GCR) office works with elected officials, community leaders, and government agencies to advance the university’s mission in the public sector. The GCR office coordinates the university’s response to political and policy issues and advises faculty and administrators on how to engage with community and government leaders.
This is illegal in France- you must go up the chain of incompetence to lobby,
So:
The congress funded our mission after my lobbying and Giaconni failed. We mapped over 8000 stellar objects for the first time in human history in the EUV. The taxpayer got their reward, which cannot be a null result.
When I became a French civil servant, I learned to stop people doing the research they wanted to do. I was the Director of the CNRS Observatoire de Marseille Provence.
I discovered that the first priority had to do was a) find money for researchers in the lab to work on projects that never listed me as a co-author on their publications, even if I personally made the project possible.
Second priority, blocking their applications to the French Minister of Science because I didn’t want them to do the research (with the excuse that I ranked another project higher- also known as ‘peer review)
As an editor for 40 years of an academic journal I ran a “peer review system” where we rejected 95% of the articles that were submitted. I became an expert in keeping other people from doing what they want to do, a primary skill of Deans and Editors, but not of Researchers or Scholars.
When a new Dean is appointed, as our Fred the Heretic points out, most of the research faculty are full of hope about the new directions the dean proposed to enable them to get appointed.
I currently work in a university where Deans have changed, involuntarily every few years after they dashed the hopes they had created. We changed names each time. And the program that I was recruited into (Art Technology and Emerging Communications) basically has been closed under a vague generic umbrella of “arts, humanities and technology”. The new name is the new promise of a new dean.
After a new Dean is appointed, there is a career stage where they learn to attend meetings most of the time and agree whenever possible with their superiors in the administration. But they realize the main thing that matters is not important discoveries or a few Nobel Prizes but increasing the numbers of student enrollments and how much money they bring into the university.
University non-non-profit business model
This is true in commercial businesses, of course, but the non-profit world is usually different. “
AI says:
MIT, which I attended, has a total student population, AI says, of around 11,920 students, which is their current maximum capacity based on available information; this includes both undergraduate and graduate students.
MIT maintains a relatively small student body compared to other large universities because of its focus on providing a highly individualized learning experience with a strong emphasis on faculty-student interaction, which is facilitated by keeping class sizes small and limiting the overall student population due to its limited campus space and the highly selective nature of its admissions process; essentially, they prioritize quality over quantity in education.
This is NOT the case for UTDallas:
- Fall 2020: 28,669 students enrolled
- 2022: 84.7% acceptance rate, 31,570 students enrolled, and 14.1% annual growth in applications
There was a notable drop in 2023/4 because of a sudden decline in the number of students from India in our JSOM Business school. Parents in India recovered from the pandemic and stopped sending their children to the USA to survive.
The University of Texas—Dallas is a public institution that was founded in 1969. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 21,330 (fall 2023), its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 645 acres. The University of Texas—Dallas’ ranking in the 2025 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, #109. Its in-state tuition and fees are $14,644; out-of-state tuition and fees are $40,144.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private institution that was founded in 1861. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 4,576 (fall 2023), its setting is urban, and the campus size is 168 acres. It utilizes a 4-1-4-based academic calendar. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ranking in the 2025 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, #2. Its tuition and fees are $62,396.
Then I attended UC Berkeley:
University of California, Berkeley is a public institution that was founded in 1868. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 33,405 (fall 2023), its setting is city, and the campus size is 1,232 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. University of California, Berkeley’s ranking in the 2025 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities,no 17. Its in-state tuition and fees are $16,832; out-of-state tuition and fees are $51,032.
And then
Aix-Marseille University (AMU) is a public research university in Provence that can trace its origins back to 1409 when Pisan Antipope Alexander V was tasked with creating the University of Provence by Louis II of Anjou. It came into its current form on 1 January 2012 following a merger of the University of Provence, the University of the Mediterranean and Paul Cézanne University. This merger made AMU the largest university in the French-speaking world in terms of student numbers . It is ranked 101 worldwide.
So UTDallas is the most worst ranked university I have worked at.
Next Step in the for profit non-profit Dean’s career:
So, then the Deans are asked to step down. They are still tenured faculty. If they are lucky, they are appointed to lead a “Center”. A sinecure.
As longevity of University professionals continues to extend way beyond the age of 65, we can expect the emergence of different steps beyond the a) new Dean b) Dean c) Damn Dean and d) Former Dean.
Last century some retired professionals retired from paid jobs to work as volunteers for non-profit organizations.
For instance “, https://theseniorsource.org/volunteer/opportunities-seniors/rsvp/ ,The AmeriCorps Seniors RSVP Program at The Senior Source provides opportunities to older adult volunteers to reinvest in Dallas area communities. Places individuals, aged 55 and up, in more than 50 community organizations”
But as the senex phenomenon continues to emerge, there will be growing numbers of professionals, formerly Deans, available to volunteer after the age of 80. In the legal system Judges have no retirement age and a similar problem is emerging of “Damn Judges”. That is not the case in most Universities.
Most universities included retired professionals as volunteer members of advisory boards. But we can predict that this will be insufficient as the number of former “deans” continues to grow.
Perhaps this is an opportunity to re-introduce thee senexes at the beginning of the promotion track to conduct research and teach. Ie senex lecturers and professors. This could be compared with a cybernetic feedback loop where the individual is re-entered at the bottom , or the off-center, of the complex system.In emergence theory we are familiar with the application of cybernetics to complex systems.
Emergence of new types of Deans
According to Colin DeYoung https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DeYoung-2014-CB5T-JRP.pdf
Cybernetics, the study of goal-directed, adaptive systems, is the best framework for an integrative theory of personality. Cybernetic Big Five Theory attempts to provide a comprehensive, synthetic, and mechanistic explanatory model. Constructs that describe psychological individual differences are divided into personality traits, reflecting variation in the parameters of evolved cybernetic mechanisms, and characteristic adaptations, representing goals, interpretations, and strategies defined in relation to an individual’s particular life circumstances. The theory identifies mechanisms in which variation is responsible for traits in the top three levels of a hierarchical trait taxonomy based on the Big Five and describes the causal dynamics between traits and characteristic adaptations. Lastly, the theory links function and dysfunction in traits and characteristic adaptations to psychopathology and well-being. 2014 Elsev””
More recently meta-cibertics has been coined by Maurice Yolleshttps://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/9/2/34
Metacybernetics refers to the higher cybernetic orders that arise in living system agencies. Agencies are complex, and for them to be viable and hence survive, they require both stability and uncertainty reduction. Metacybernetics is defined through a metasystem hierarchy, and is mostly known through 1st and 2nd order cybernetics. In this exploratory paper the purpose is to create a framework that can underpin metacybernetics and explain the relationship between different cybernetic orders. The framework is built on agency theory which has both substructural and superstructural dimensions. Substructure has an interest in stability, is concerned with the generation of higher cybernetic orders, and is serviced by horizontal recursion. Superstructure is concerned with uncertainty reduction by uncovering hidden material or regulatory relationships, and is serviced by vertical recursion. Philosophical aspects to the framework are discussed, making distinction between global rationality through critical realism, and local rationality that relates to different cybernetic orders that correspond to bounding paradigms like positivism and constructivism.
Perhaps the meta-cybernetic effect as the senex phenomenon expands could lead to desirable outcomes.
Here is part of the poem by Fred the Heretic AI developed:
The Evolution of Deans
This poem was written by AI that has been trained to write poetry in the style of Fred Turner (Fred the Heretic) trained by Paul Fishwick.
2. Dean
The rhythm sets, the load grows tall,
Endless meetings, budget-sprawl.
Caught between the board and peers,
A diplomat through thin veneers.
You juggle egos, dreams, and pleas,
Striving for calm in churning seas.
3. Damn Dean
The laurels wilt, the murmurs rise,
Accusers lurk in cordial eyes.
“Too bold! Too weak!” The critics shout,
For every deed, a shade of doubt.
No choice seems right, no favor won,
Each path contested once it’s run.
4. Former Dean
The chair grows cold, the torch passed on,
The weight is lifted, burden gone.
Legacy mixed, some scars, some praise,
A lifetime’s work in fleeting gaze.
From this retreat, they see it clear:
Four stages weave the Dean’s career.
Coda
So tread with care, ye deans-to-be,
For thrones are thorny, as you’ll see.
Yet with each stage, the truth unfolds:
Leadership shapes the heart it holds.
“New Dean, Dean, Damn Dean” quote from, AI first draft of poem on this theme.
Fake AI comments:
Roger, your darkly funny account of science funding governance certainly illustrates FTH’s poem. The poem is really a rueful, funny, lighthearted and rather sympathetic take on deanship that recognizes the burdens of power.
Power and money are, of course, absolutely necessary to most human institutions, and a healthy cynicism about them is essential to curb the extent of their moral domain. The mechanisms of peer review and impersonal adjudication, created to limit brutal oppression and self-interest, are as corruptible as any other human social contrivance. Yet we need the spur of ambition to get people to take on the heavy tasks of governance. Like the discipline of the market, in which free competition in pricing limits naked greed, bureaucratic rules limit the scope of naked malice, envy, and resentment.
The academic bureaucracy is a system that needs a supply of true idealists, like X and Y and Z, who are willing to expend their moral credit and creative energy to make an institution work. And good things, like true conversations and real discovery and creative mutual inspiration, do happen in the nooks and crannies of such systems. Having been the beneficiary of our version at UTD, I can’t subscribe to a purely bitter description of it. And having avoided positions of power and patronage all my life, I can’t claim to have any wisdom to impart about that world.
Roger, I think your piece is the germ of a vivid, exciting, often mordant and even shocking autobiographical account of your remarkable career. It needs to be a full expression of your own personality and worldview. I think it would only be limited and constrained by co-authorship.
Fred jan 3 version of poem
The Four Lives of a Dean
2. Dean
The rhythm sets, the load grows tall,
Endless meetings, budget-sprawl.
Caught between the board and peers,
A diplomat with thin veneers,
You juggle egos, dreams, and pleas,
Striving for calm in churning seas.
3. Damn Dean
The laurels wilt, the murmurs rise,
Accusers lurk in cordial eyes.
“Too bold! Too weak!” The critics shout,
For every deed, a shade of doubt.
No choice seems right, no favor won,
Each path contested once it’s run.
4. Former Dean
The chair grows cold, the torch passed on,
The weight is lifted, burden gone.
Legacy mixed, some scars, some praise,
A lifetime’s work in fleeting gaze.
From this retreat, you see it clear:
Four stages weave the Dean’s career.
The Seven Lives of a Dean
5. Elder Dean
No longer tied to daily grind,
Yet still they shape the eager mind.
A sage consulted now and then,
By younger souls with dreams of when.
Their voice, once loud, now soft, yet clear,
Carries the weight of earned revere.
6. Reluctant Dean
Though freed from power’s heavy hand,
They struggle still to understand—
What purpose fills the space once held,
Where vision bloomed, where efforts swelled?
Between the past and what’s ahead,
They walk where shadows softly tread.
7. Dean Remembered
Time fades the name but leaves the mark,
A quiet glow in halls once dark.
Their deeds, once questioned, now admired,
Old tensions cooled, new hearts inspired.
For though their chair may long be gone,
The echoes of their work live on.
Coda 1
So tread with care, ye deans-to-be,
For thrones are thorny, as you’ll see.
Yet with each stage, the truth reveals:
Leadership molds the heart it steels.
Coda 2
So tread with abandon, ye deans-to-be,
For thrones are flowery, as you’ll see.
Yet with each stage, the untruth unfolds:
Leadership dis-shapes the heart it holds.
Conclusion:
I asked Fred the Heretic to write a poem in hexameter about the text above here is what I got:
The Senex and the Dean (In Hexameter)
In days when age has stretched the bounds of life’s once short dominion,
New stages rise beyond the steps that Shakespeare’s verse envisioned.
Where once the scholar sought but truth in realms of pure endeavor,
Now finds himself a sentinel in halls of power forever.
At sixty-five, the road diverged—new roles must be invented,
For faculties and minds endure when age leaves work augmented.
The Dean becomes the case in point, his journey far from ending,
With wisdom earned from juggling dreams and bureaucrats unbending.
Through youthful eyes, he first beheld the mantle of direction,
With promises of guiding light, reform, and bold correction.
Yet soon the rhythm of the task grew heavy with its burden,
As endless meetings sapped his days, his hopeful light uncertain.
And when he failed, as all deans do, to please each hopeful faction,
The murmurs grew, his name became the source of disaffection.
“Too bold, too weak!” the critics cried, no triumph fully honored,
Each deed undone by those who judged the throne he sat upon her.
Beyond that stage, when torch is passed, he leaves the seat of power,
A former dean with mixed regard, some scars, some fleeting flowers.
Yet even then, the path extends, new roles must be created,
As elder deans and senex minds through complex work are fated.
No longer tied to daily toil, they serve as thoughtful sages,
Consulted in the quiet hours by those of younger ages.
Their voice once bold, now soft and clear, with weight of time behind it,
Their counsel sought when storms arise and younger hearts must bind it.
But freed from burdens of the past, they wander in reflection,
Reluctant deans, unsure of how to find their new direction.
What purpose fills the space once held by visions they had carried?
They walk through shadows seeking paths where their old dreams are buried.
Yet time will honor all they gave, and halls will hum with echoes,
For deeds once questioned, deeds once mocked, will shine in future meadows.
Though gone, their names remembered still, as whispers in the learning,
Their legacy a steady flame in students’ minds still burning.
Thus as the senex phase begins, beyond the grasp of striving,
Emergence yields a feedback loop where youth and age keep driving.
The dean reborn as teacher once, returned to pure instruction,
A cycle in the system’s heart that spurs its own construction.
Would you like additional verses or further refinement in a particular style?
For the French stupid deans here is a French translation in bureaucratese of the poem above:
Le Sénex et le Doyen (En Hexamètres)
À l’époque où l’âge a étendu les bornes de l’autorité,
De nouvelles phases s’ajoutent aux stades que Shakespeare avait cités.
Là où jadis le chercheur ne poursuivait que la quête de vérité,
Le voilà devenu gardien des salles du pouvoir institutionnalisé.
À soixante-cinq ans, les chemins bifurquent—de nouveaux rôles s’imposent,
Car les capacités mentales perdurent tandis que les tâches se transposent.
Le doyen devient un cas d’école, un archétype en constante transition,
Un équilibre subtil entre rêves administrés et bureaucrates sans concession.
Dans l’élan de sa jeunesse, il saisit le fardeau de la direction,
Portant la promesse de réformes, de progrès et de transformation.
Mais bientôt le rythme se fait pesant, sous la charge accumulée,
Les réunions interminables consument ses jours, son espoir voilé.
Et lorsqu’il échoue—comme tous les doyens à satisfaire chaque faction,
Les murmures s’élèvent, son nom devient source de contestation.
“Trop audacieux, trop faible !” s’exclament les critiques unanimes,
Aucun triomphe pleinement célébré, chaque décision vite anonyme.
Puis vient l’étape où le flambeau est transmis, la chaise désertée,
L’autorité s’évanouit, laissant un héritage parfois contesté.
Mais même alors, le chemin s’étire, et de nouvelles fonctions émergent,
Car les doyens séniors trouvent leur place dans des structures complexes qui convergent.
Délivrés des contraintes quotidiennes, ils deviennent conseillers avisés,
Consultés dans les heures discrètes par les générations à encadrer.
Leur voix autrefois ferme, aujourd’hui plus posée, porte un poids indéniable,
Leur sagesse invoquée lorsque les tempêtes menacent les cœurs vulnérables.
Libérés du fardeau passé, ils errent dans des réflexions intérieures,
Doyens réticents, incertains quant à la nouvelle voie à suivre à cette heure.
Quel but peut remplir l’espace autrefois occupé par leurs grandes visions ?
Ils cheminent dans l’ombre, cherchant des routes vers d’anciennes ambitions.
Mais le temps finira par honorer tout ce qu’ils ont donné,
Les couloirs résonneront encore des échos qu’ils ont laissés.
Leurs actes jadis contestés ou moqués deviendront sources d’inspiration,
Car même disparus, leurs noms flotteront dans la mémoire de l’instruction.
Ainsi commence la phase du sénex, au-delà des luttes et des pressions,
Un cycle d’émergence, un retour où l’âge nourrit l’évolution.
Le doyen renaît en enseignant, réintégré dans la pure transmission,
Un feedback cybernétique où le système trouve sa propre régénération.
Souhaitez-vous une autre version plus orientée vers la satire administrative ou un ajout de détails sur les rôles évoqués ?