Another Kansas University dean has announced he’ll return to the classroom at the end of the school year.

Jack Fincham, dean of the pharmacy school, said Tuesday that he would end his 10-year tenure in May.

Fincham, who took his post in 1994, is the second KU dean in the past month to announce he’s stepping down. James Gentry, journalism dean, announced in July he also would return to full-time teaching and research.

Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, senior vice provost, said the increasing demands on higher education administrators were making the tenures of deans increasingly shorter over time.

“We’re not concerned about it,” she said. “We don’t think we have a dean drain or anything.”

Fincham, 52, said after 10 years as an administrator he was looking forward to going back to the classroom and research lab. His research focuses on the ways patients comply with directions from pharmacists and how to get people to quit smoking. He also is working on two books about patient compliance and the third edition of his book, “Pharmacy in the U.S. Health Care System.”

“This has been a fabulous place to be a dean, and it will continue to be a fabulous place to be a dean,” he said. “I want to resume some things that are very, very important to me — teaching and research.”

Fincham said budget reductions in the past two years were not a factor in his decision to step down. When Gentry announced his resignation last month, he said he had grown frustrated with the budget situation.

KU administrators plan to begin a national search for both positions this fall and have new deans in place by July 1, 2004.

¢ Pharmacy dean finalist for provost (12-17-02)¢More about Jack Fincham¢KU School of Pharmacy¢ Meet the deans (8-16-03)¢ KU journalism dean to resign (7-25-03)

During his tenure, Fincham led a surge in research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The school conducted more than $10 million in NIH research during the 2001-2002 fiscal year, the most recent data available, and was ranked third among the nation’s 85 pharmacy schools.

Fincham also led a transition from a five-year to a six-year doctor of pharmacy degree program that added technology training to the curriculum.

Long tenure

Fincham’s resignation means KU has lost one of its longest-tenured deans.

Only Ann Weick, dean of KU’s social welfare school, has been in her position longer. She started in 1988. Both Fincham and John Gaunt, dean of the architecture school, started in 1994.

The deans of nine of KU’s 14 schools have been hired since 2000. The biggest turnover in recent years came in 2002, when new deans were hired to lead the schools of engineering and medicine and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

‘Harder to be a dean’

McCluskey-Fawcett said budget concerns probably have convinced some faculty not to delve into university administration.

“I think it’s harder to be a dean, as it is to be in any type of higher education administration at the moment,” said McCluskey-Fawcett, who was interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2001-2002. “When the money’s tighter, the decisions are harder, and sometimes there are no right decisions.”

That has led to shorter dean tenures among administrators across the nation, she said.

Weick, KU’s longest-serving dean, has noticed the trend in recent years.

“When I became dean, the pattern was one of much longer tenure as dean,” she said. “Many of those who were active when I was hired had been dean for 15 or 20 years.”

She said she understood her colleagues’ decisions to step down.

“I think the challenges are very substantial, and they’re becoming more critical all the time,” she said. “I think, also, because deans are people who are originally faculty, they miss the opportunity to concentrate on teaching and research.”

Keeping the focus

Gaunt, the engineering dean, said because being dean involved so many meetings and so much paperwork, it’s sometimes difficult to keep the focus on students.

“It’s a fairly high-pressure position,” he said. “As deans, we’re managing organizations within the larger organization of the university, and we’re doing it on much scarcer resources than our counterparts. It comes with a lot more stress than before.”

Despite the turnover in recent years, Gaunt said he wasn’t concerned about losing too much institutional memory at KU.

“I take it at face value,” he said. “Jimmy and Jack are two people who are capable researchers and teachers. They’re stepping down for the best of all reasons, looking at it from an education standpoint.”