A new dean for a brand new college
by Patty Mattern
When her parents gave her a stethoscope for her ninth birthday, Darlyne Bailey, who always wanted to be a doctor, started seeing patients immediately.
“We had a hatch in the backyard that led to the basement, and I had the kids come down for their appointments,” Bailey remembers.
When her mother asked her what was going on in the basement, Bailey explained she was doing “physicals” and mental health exams, “all based on this book I read about the relationship between our bodies, minds, and happiness.” But her mother told her that she couldn’t give exams until she learned much more in school and became a real doctor.
From that point on, Bailey began a goal-oriented educational journey that, 45 years after she began her “medical practice,” has brought her to the new College of Education and Human Development, to what she believes is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Her tenure as dean began Oct. 2 and makes her the first African American female dean at the University and the first female dean and first African American dean of the college.
“While I have many ideas, I will be asking my colleagues to join me in co-creating our college,” Bailey says. “I will constantly ask people to do a ‘faith walk’ with me on some of the ideas I have for building a national and international model of a truly multidisciplinary institution of higher education.”
It will take time to build the new college, and Bailey says she aims to create a good—even joyful—work environment.
“It doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be challenges and dilemmas where we have competing needs, but we’re going to struggle through this together,” Bailey says. “There’s going to be a lot of uncertainty because we’re pioneering here. We’re actually making this road as we’re walking on it.”
The road she has been on since those early days with a stethoscope in her family basement has followed her early aspirations in many ways. Bailey originally went to college intending to become an emergency room psychiatrist—uniting that body and mind work that she had wanted to do as a nine-year-old. But then she took a fork in the road and instead earned a master’s degree in psychiatric social work from Columbia University.
She joined the start-up of a mental health center, returning to the city where she grew up, Englewood, N.J., adhering to a personal philosophy, “To whom much is given, much is required.” “To go back to the place where I had lived many years felt like the right thing to do,” Bailey says.
Not surprising to anyone who knows her now, she soon felt a need to expand her horizons. She went on to earn a doctorate in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She stayed in Cleveland, becoming dean and associate professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western in 1994 and was promoted to full professor in 1998. During her time at Case Western, Bailey earned the title of “rainmaker” for her highly successful fundraising record.
In 2002, Bailey returned to her birthplace in Harlem, as vice president for academic affairs and dean of Teachers College at Columbia University. While at Teachers College, Bailey helped to develop several strong university-community partnerships, including the Teachers College Education Partnership Zone—a collaboration of the college and a range of corporate, not-for-profit, and faith-based organizations to address the needs of elementary schoolchildren, their teachers, and families in Harlem. It’s a project for which she maintains passion.
In fact, Bailey is a passionate academic, which to some may sound dichotomous. She fills a room with her presence, which includes inspiring speech and energetic gestures. She doesn’t hold back when she expresses herself and often reminds people, “What you see is what you get!”
“Each one of us has a calling,” Bailey says. “This is something I’ve said to my students in New York, and I’ll share with my students at the U. We only have two missions in life. It’s first figuring out what your own gifts and talents are and then finding ways to use them to meet the needs of the people around you.”
"This is a great opportunity for us all."
At this point, Bailey says she and her college leadership team haven’t fully mapped out their priorities, but developing the best plan for freshman admissions and freshman learning communities is one of the items at the top of her list. “We want to make sure we attract and maintain—through graduation—a very strong freshman class,” Bailey says.
Recruiting, mentoring, and retaining talented faculty and staff rank as high priorities as well. Bailey’s participative and inclusive leadership style already permeates meetings with faculty and staff. She is confident the vision and mission of the new college will begin to unfold through this collaborative work.
The transformation will be grounded in thinking about how to best serve students, she says. As they move forward, Bailey and her colleagues will examine the college’s academic programs and make sure they have minimum redundancy and maximum coverage, “so we really can look at ways to enhance the quality of human development across the lifespan,” Bailey says. “And we want to make sure that the courses we are offering are appropriate to the different developmental capacities of our students.”
They will examine the admissions process, too, she says. “I’m hopeful that we will not simply look at GPA and test scores, but that we would be taking more of a portfolio approach to admissions. This is critical because not everyone can take a test well, and not everybody writes the most profound essay. We need a multi-varied approach. Not everybody is going to be a student with a 4.0 GPA coming in the door,” Bailey says.
“What I’m looking for are those students who clearly show the potential to excel at our college and who can then go on into the world as well-rounded, inquisitive leaders in their chosen areas.”
Giving multiculturalism close attention is second nature for Bailey. “I am not just speaking about the ‘usual areas’ of diversity—race and gender and ethnicity. We will also be thinking about pluralistic or divergent schools of thought. When we do our faculty searches, for example, we’re going to be looking for faculty who will broaden thinking that’s present in their chosen department,” Bailey says.
The former College of Education and Human Development had long been among the top public education schools in the country, ranking fifth in the 2007 U.S.News & World Report survey. This year Teachers College was ranked second in the same survey. The July 1 creation of the new college has raised expectations that it can be an even bigger player on the national scene.
“You can expect those ratings to go up,” Bailey confidently told hundreds gathered for a press conference announcing her as dean last spring.
Bailey envisions great things for the college. Some have told her the first large challenge she will face is getting everyone “rallied and marching in the same direction,” Bailey says. “Yet, from my conversations with my new colleagues, I believe there’s enough hope and enough energy and enough good ideas that we can together harness and focus.”
Why did Bailey decide to leave New York and a job at a prestigious private institution to come to the Midwest— fly-over land? People began asking that question—in New York and here—when her appointment was announced. Bailey explains it as a gradual sort of awakening to possibilities.
The job intrigued her, first of all. It was a unique situation because the University’s General College and the College of Human Ecology’s Department of Family Social Science and School of Social Work were going to be joined together with the existing College of Education and Human Development to create a new college as a part of the University’s strategic positioning. Nothing like it existed in the nation.
After being told about it, Bailey recommended others for the deanship, but people kept telling her that she should apply herself—she was heavily involved in K-12 issues at Teachers College, had degrees in social work and organizational behavior—it seemed like the perfect match for the new college.
“When that started happening I knew that I needed to pay attention to this,” Bailey said. She flew to Minnesota for an interview and then agreed to a public forum. Excitement about Bailey swelled on campus.
With her background and experience in education, social work, and community partnerships, Bailey looked like the best person for the job, says J. Brian Atwood, dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, who co-chaired the search committee.
“When we saw her in person, she had a spark that nobody could ignore. We knew immediately that she was the person,” he says.
Atwood, Provost Thomas Sullivan, and others worked to persuade Bailey to come to the college. Bailey felt conflicted. It would be difficult to leave the people and the projects at Teachers College and in Harlem. She would be leaving programs that she had put her heart and soul into. Atwood persisted. Those programs will continue, he told her.
Here was an opportunity to construct a new multidisciplinary college from the ground up, be involved in fundraising, and to serve as an assistant to University President Robert Bruininks in the oversight of two systemwide groups—the Consortium on Children, Youth, and Families; and the Consortium for Postsecondary Academic Success. She also was offered an endowed chair, the Campbell Leadership Chair in Education. Sullivan and Bruininks assured her that the new college would be well-resourced with funds and people to give her what she needs to make it an international leader.
Gradually it all came together, and Bailey realized that “this is exactly what I have been preparing to do.”
Since Bailey accepted the job in May, colleagues, faculty, staff, and students have been getting to know her. Bailey exudes energy—spewing ideas at 100 miles an hour, smiling widely, listening with intensity.
“I have a true joy for life. I believe that this journey is way too short,” Bailey says. The experience of losing several close friends in one year further deepened Bailey’s appreciation for life. “I am blessed. I believe every day is sacred. I wake every morning and say thank you. That’s what makes me tick.”
Bailey wants people within the college, University, and the greater community to know that this is a new day. “We have healthy skeptics out there who are not sure that we’ll actually be able to pull everything off. I invite them to join us in this work,” she says.
“The heaviest lifting for our college and for me personally, is to be able to get out there to spend quality time with folks, to let them know what’s going on, and to help them see how this college is here to align its resources with the needs and the resources of the community in ways that, as separate units, the colleges and even the U weren’t able to do in the past,” Bailey says. “We’re not our forefathers and our foremothers. We’re a brand new entity. I hope people hold us accountable, but give us time. This is a great opportunity for us all.”