Thanks, Jean

Since 2008, Jean Quam has been dean of the College of Education and Human Development, leading the college from its initial merger to greater and greater levels of success and recognition. After 12 years, she is stepping down August 1, 2020. She plans to take a sabbatical, return as a full professor in the School of Social Work, and begin a phased retirement. We sat down with Jean to talk about some of her memories during her tenure and her vision of the future.

In your mind, what have been some of the highlights of your tenure?

When I became dean, one of the first things the provost talked to me about was balancing the budget. We were in a serious deficit, so that was probably one of my primary accomplishments—we have a financially sound college now. 

I’m proud of all the work I’ve done with fundraising. We’ve exceeded all of our goals. When we started we were around 30 million dollars in endowments and demand funds. We’re now almost up to 100 million dollars, so we’ve increased by over 70 million dollars in endowments. That really builds the future of this college. 

I also think about the work we’ve done infusing more technology into our teaching and establishing Educational Technology Innovations as a place to be an incubator to develop products. We’ve also developed a strong research infrastructure. The number of our research projects and the number of dollars that are coming in for research have increased dramatically. 

I feel really good about how we’ve encouraged study abroad with our students, helped raise funds to be able to pay for more students to study abroad, and to have our faculty do work internationally. 

Finally, increasing the diversity of our faculty and staff. It’s been a very conscious effort on our part to look more like the students we have coming in.

What are some things that you wish you could have accomplished, but didn’t, either because of a lack of time or resources?

I would have loved to have taken over Eddy Hall. It frustrates me to no end that that building, which is one of the oldest and most interesting buildings on campus—and right next door to Burton—sits empty. I’m frustrated we didn’t get that done. The School of Kinesiology is in one of the worst buildings on campus—Cooke Hall—and I would love to see it either get out of that space or significantly renovate that building. They’re a very strong school and a growing program and they really deserve better space. I was very concerned about the Institute on Community Integration—Pattee Hall is another horrible building. I frequently say that we’re blessed and cursed with the oldest buildings on campus. You get a building like Burton Hall and when you renovate it, it’s beautiful. But Pattee—We’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars into it and it’s still not a very healthy building. I’m very excited that they’re going to be moving out of that building and into the new brain institute space. But that’s probably been my biggest frustration. Space is critically important to us getting our work done. 

It’s obvious that assuming the role of dean, especially for a new college, comes with a sharp learning curve. What are some of the things about the position that you just didn’t expect?  

I didn’t realize what a serious financial hole we were in at the time and that it was going to take time to get out of that. We really had to make some very tough decisions about closing programs. 

I don’t think I ever fully realized how much fundraising I would be doing and that I would like doing it.

What are some of your predictions for the future of education?

If you look at the higher education landscape in the state of Minnesota, we are way overbuilt. Not all of the educational programs and institutions we have in the state can survive. If you’re a small town and you have a community college or you have a state university and they start cutting programs or even eventually cut the whole campus; that has a profound effect on the community. Those are the tough decisions that are going to have to be made. In order to keep costs down we’re going to have to look at ways to combine programs, colleges, and institutions. 

An interesting thing happening now is organizations are moving into the education realm. Let’s just use teacher education as an example. Organizations are coming into the state saying ‘We can teach teachers. We don’t have to be affiliated with a university. We know what it takes to be a good teacher. Why would you spend all that money on tuition?’ We’re going to see more challenges from organizations that think they can offer things more effectively, more efficiently, cheaper. Would that put colleges out of business? I personally don’t think so but it could challenge a lot of the programs that we have.

If you ask most academics what an undergraduate should know, we talk about things like music, art, health, science, math; all traditional areas important to building a well-educated, civic-minded adult. Pressure is coming from corporations and businesses saying ‘We don’t care about that anymore. We want somebody who can think creatively, who can problem-solve, who can manage people.’ I worry we’ll get students focused on exactly what it is they need to know to get a high-paying job and not wanting to take anything extra. 

What do your foresee for the educational fields under CEHD’s purview?

Social work and family social science are both fields that are very old and very well established. Unfortunately, there will always be social problems, there will always be kids who can’t live in their family of origin for whatever reason, there will be older people who will need help as they become frail and older—you could go through the litany of all the problems. There’s always going to be a need for somebody to help individuals and help their families and deal with the social problems of the day. 

Kinesiology to me is a really exciting, growing field, particularly now with its emphasis on health and wellness and wanting to grow an undergraduate major in that area. I think that’s very important. 

The Institute on Child Development. I’m proud of the fact that we’ve worked hard to have a new building for the institute which will be amazing in terms of research and teaching. Historically, they’ve always been the number one child development program in the nation and I just see it getting stronger and better. 

Educational psychology has a lot of very strong programs within it. I would single out particularly special education. They started offering opportunities to become special education teachers at the undergraduate level and that program’s growing very fast because of the need out there for more teachers. 

Organizational leadership, policy,  and development is particularly known for the impact it has on higher education programs around the world and I see that continuing. The programs that were merged into that department are business and marketing education, and human resource development; those are two of our fastest undergraduate majors. We attract a lot of diverse students into those programs and I think those have a strong future. 

Curriculum and instruction. One of the things that’s exciting there is trying to develop more ways for people to become a teacher. Our MNGOT [U of M Grow Your Own Teachers] program takes paraprofessionals and people with bachelor’s degrees currently working in schools but aren’t able to stop working in order to come get a teaching license. We’ve been able to find them support for tuition and design a program around their schedules so they can get licensed. Another new program is Teacher Scholars of Color to try to get more teachers of color into the system. I think that’s a strong program and will hopefully continue.

In terms of your roles as dean and as a faculty member, what motivates you?

Relationships. It’s all about relationships. I interview every candidate who comes in for a faculty position. Getting to meet those faculty and hear about the research that they’re doing is very exciting. I love meeting students and hearing about what they’re doing in their programs. I love meeting with alumni. One of my favorite things is talking to somebody who’s 85 years old and still remembers a favorite teacher they had when they were here. I love talking to donors about why they are investing in students and in the college. What motivates me is really the relationships and hearing what’s important to people. 

What keeps you up at night?

Nothing. (laughs) I sleep like a log. I can’t think of anything actually, other than the dog when the dog has to go out. 

Now it’s your turn to be sage. What piece of advice would you like to leave the next dean? Your colleagues? Students? Alumni? 

For the next dean I want to say fully appreciate the diversity and the breadth and depth that’s in this college. There was a president at the University who came up to me once and said ‘Oh, you’re from the college of education, you educate teachers.’ And I said, ‘Well, yes, but also social workers, counselors, school superintendents, brain researchers, people who are going into physical therapy, people who are in special education…’ I could go on for 15 minutes about all the different people that we educate here. It would be very short sighted to think of our college as just for teacher education.

My advice to colleagues would be the same. We tend to get in our own little niches or silos. For the most part, faculty in the Minneapolis campus don’t know the people who work in St. Paul. One of the things that we’ve tried to do over the years is try to get people together across the programs, across the departments, across the campuses. I would even love to see us work more with the campuses like in Duluth, Crookston, and Morris. I would say meet other people around campus. 

For students I would say this is an amazing place full of lots of opportunities, whether its sports or arts or music or all the different classes that you could take. The same goes for alumni. There are a lot of opportunities here for alumni to come back on campus, whether it’s mentoring students or going to a football game. The University is a real remarkable place when you look at all the corners and all the parts of it. It’s a gift for me personally to have been at the University of Minnesota for 40 years and all the things I’ve gotten to do, all the places I’ve been able to travel, and all the people I’ve been able to meet. And I feel I’ve had fun with my career. I’ve had fun being a dean. Now I’m ready to have fun being a grandmother and a part-time faculty member, and then retired faculty member. It has been a great career. 

Story by Kevin Moe | Photos by Erica Loeks; Courtesy of School of Social Work; Courtesy of Jean Quam | Spring/Summer 2020

For more information on how to donate to the Dean Quam Fund, visit z.umn.edu/quam