Howard Smith said he is stepping down as dean of the Anderson Schools of Management because of potential reaccredidation headaches in the coming years and to pursue other professional interests.
Smith will end a 10-year run as head of UNM's business school in May 2004.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, the accrediting body for business schools, will evaluate Anderson in 2005. According to the association's Web site, about 20 percent of the United States' roughly 1,750 business schools are accredited. Anderson last satisfied the standards in 1996, but Smith says keeping things that way will be a challenge.
"I don't think the school is in a good position for reaccredidation," he said. "I'm sure the chair(persons) and faculty will take every step to avoid losing it. But it's no slam dunk, that's for sure."
Most of Anderson's problems come in the form of a growing student population, which puts a strain on the schools' faculty resources, Smith said.
Enrollment has increased nearly 50 percent during his tenure, according to Anderson's Web site.
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The accrediting body's standard that presents a significant problem, he said, states that full-time faculty members must teach at least 60 percent of the school's classes.
"We've been cannibalizing full-time positions and hiring adjunct lecturers who have only a master's degree," Smith said. "That way, we can offer eight classes instead of five. It's quite easy to go down that slippery slope, it's how we cover the 50 percent growth in enrollment."
Anderson officials don't receive statistics on how many full-time faculty members teach what classes until three weeks into the semester, which Smith said makes it difficult to make any necessary changes to meet the 60 percent standard.
Recent changes in the association's standards will present questions of applicability and leave too much room for interpretation - a phenomena Smith says he has seen before.
Sweeping changes in standards in 1991 caused the early years of his deanship to be focused on accreditation, he said.
"I found myself more and more becoming the accreditation dean," Smith said. "I just don't want to be in that position again."
He said if Anderson does not get reaccredited, the schools would enter a five-year process to get it back. He added, though, that the effects on students' educations and the schools' reputation would not be "tremendously negative by any means."
Smith said though he has received numerous offers from other schools that would pay him more, he wants to stay at UNM.
"The average business dean serves about three and a half years," Smith said. "Isn't it time I did something else?"
He will return to his teaching position, where he says he has "about another 10 years as a professor."
Smith said he will also participate, to the extent it is appropriate, in the upcoming national search for his replacement.
UNM Provost Brian Foster, who is in charge of hiring the University's deans, said he has already selected a chairperson for the search, but would only say that it is "one of the other deans from one of our major colleges," because no official announcement has been made yet.
"We'll really get out and recruit aggressively," he said. "I'm of the opinion getting a good pool of candidates is the first, most important step in any national search, so there will be a huge effort to do that."
