The Senior Academic Business Administrator at Texas A & M University : a comparative study of a single personnel intervention

Abstract

On February 8, 1979, the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Academic Business Operations of Texas A&M University, sent a report to Vice President for Business Affairs, Mr. Howard Vestal, recommending the creation of the position, Senior Academic Business Administrator. These positions, placed in each academic dean's office, were intended to be responsible for all the academic business operations of the college, relieving the dean and associate deans of these matters to allow them to pursue the academic agenda for which they were trained. This study compared the role definition of the Senior Academic Business Administrator in seven academic colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture and Environmental Design, Business, Engineering, Geosciences, Liberal Arts and Science, with the printed "Administrative Position Description" on file in the Department of Human Services. Taped interviews were made with the dean and current senior academic business administrator in each of the colleges listed above, and compared each of these with the printed role descriptions. Current information was compared to the report of the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Academic Business Operations (1) to determine if the positions were accomplishing the intent of the original recommendation, and (2) to see how the positions differed across the colleges.