Juggling Multiple Roles Posted on February 28, 2008 Peter Salovey (bio) recognizes the conflicts and synergies of pursuing research while holding an administrative position.

My lab is called the Health, Emotion and Behavior Lab, and we have been funded by the National Science Foundation, by NIMH, and by NCI primarily as well as by some foundations in Connecticut and nationally, and that has been in pretty much continuous operation for the entire time that I've been a faculty member.

The big change was in 2000 I became the Chair of the Psychology Department. I did that for a couple of years and then some decanal positions at Yale opened up, and I was asked to be the Dean of the Graduate School in 2002. The Dean of the College position opened up in 2004 when Dick Brodhead became President of Duke, and I was asked to slide over from the graduate school to the college. And so my job now is to think about all aspects of undergraduate education and the undergraduate experience, but also to be heavily involved in co-deaning the faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The change in my lab and in my research career is not negligible. The Health, Emotion and Behavior Lab still operates. I get up to the lab primarily on Fridays, but Monday through Thursday I'm pretty much in the Dean's office now, and I've had to restructure the lab to accommodate that. I have some very good post docs and research scientists who are primarily supported on the grants, but who really conduct and direct the research team on a day-to-day basis. So people like Marc Brackett and Amy Latimer are good examples of researchers who if they didn't exist, I couldn't get work done.

But my goal is still to set the research and scientific direction for the lab, stay heavily engaged in overseeing the research, and in writing. But I ask Marc and Amy primarily to direct the day-to-day operations of the lab and the day-to-day operations of our team of research assistants and students in a way that I used to be able to myself, but can't since becoming Dean.

At the moment that works, and I miss being able to roll up my sleeves on a day-to-day basis, but we're talking to each other every day, and I'm able to juggle the multiple roles. I also miss not being able to teach. I used to teach the large introductory psychology class for nearly 20 years, and there is a kind of rush that one gets in the classroom that as a dean I just can't do.

But the decanal role is a lot of fun. I've been at the same institution since graduate school. So unless I'm constantly looking at the institution in a new way, I think it's hard to feel challenged and refreshed and becoming a dean did that for me. I look at this university from a completely different perspective, now, and it's an exciting one for me.

« Back to Article