The challenge of leadership

So, I begin the 2012-2013 school year in my first mainly-administraive role. Monday, I accepted an invitation to become the first-ever Associate Director of the ISU School of Education. It's a big task--daunting--as I'm caught between many aspects of who I am, professionally speaking. I have to maintain an active research agenda (PHEW, that's the reason I'm here), I'm supposed to play a role in evaluating my peers while being one of them, I'm supposed to focus on undergraduate education while teaching in a graduate-only program, and I'm supposed to raise the standards of research throughout the school...while doing everything else I was already doing! Sigh...

Stay tuned for adventures in administration, in Iowa research, in national-level service and in some of the original intents of this blog. I'm looking forward to pushing the envelope, to sharing my uncertainty and to documenting our successes and failures as a new school. We have fantastic people, we have great ideas--we just need to make it all happen.

Here we go.