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THE DEAN AND FAMILY
LIFE
by Jeffrey A. Brauch *
Dean and Professor of Law
Regent University School of Law
I found plenty of reasons to be afraid when I was asked to
become the interim dean five years ago. But one fear dwarfed all
others: how would the
job impact my family? I
was thirty-six. My wife
and I had four children, three girls then aged 9, 8, 5 and a son
aged 3. How much would
this new job interfere with my ability to be a good and involved
husband and dad? How
much stress would the workload place on my family?
The potential challenges to a dean’s family were and are
obvious. The job is
demanding, in many ways.
Deans travel a lot--to conferences, to see alumni and donors,
and to recruit students.
Even when not on the road, there are bar functions, Inns of
Court meetings, lectures, student organization banquets, and Board
of Trustees meetings.
All can take away from family life. And beyond the hectic
schedule, the deanship is emotionally demanding. Deans face difficult
personnel issues, wearying budget battles, and weighty decisions of
all sorts. It is hard
to just turn the off switch on these matters when we come home at
the end of a long day.
So, even when we are home, sometimes emotionally and
psychologically we are not really there.
Five years have now passed since, despite my fears, I
accepted the job.
Looking back--and after conducting a slightly less than
scientific poll of my children (now aged 14, 13, 10, and 8)--I have
concluded that my worst fears were not realized. Not only hasn’t being a dean
hurt our family life, I think we agree as a family that my job has
actually been good for us.
How can that be?
In part we have employed defensive strategies to ward off
some of the biggest dangers the job poses for family life. Perhaps the most important
strategy is that I leave work at a reasonable hour each day so that
we can have dinner together as a family. I try to leave the office
between 5:30 and
5:45pm each night. Naturally, there are some
evenings where I have to stay beyond 5:45 for an evening event at the school. And also naturally, I leave
work undone every day.
I have decided, though, that even if I left at 9:00pm I would leave work undone
every day. The job is
such that there is always more I could do. If there are particularly
pressing matters that I must work on, I will still go home at
5:30 , have dinner with
my family, spend a couple of hours with them, and then work in the
evening. But I need
that family time to hear what is going on in their lives, throw a
football, or just be with them.
The second strategy is that I have learned to be choosier
about events to attend.
It turns out that I don’t need to go to everything. I am better at knowing which
events are critical to the school and which really aren’t. I know better which events
require my presence and those at which another professor or
administrator could just as effectively represent the school. As much as possible, I
coordinate events with my family’s schedule. I have missed events or
arrived a day late if they are not critical and conflict with a
school award ceremony or some other event important in the life of
our family. Of course,
sometimes conflicts are unavoidable and I miss family events. Last year, I traveled over
my oldest daughter’s birthday, but we tried to make the best of it
by scheduling her party for when I returned.
A third strategy is to be careful about the scheduling of
trips. Like most deans
I travel a lot. How
that traveling is scheduled, though, makes a huge difference to my
family. In perhaps my
second year as dean, I had a month in which I traveled for most of
the week for three weeks in a row. It was too much--for all of
us. The timing on some
things, like conferences, is fixed. I go when the event is
held. But for others,
like donor visits or recruiting trips, the timing is usually more
flexible. I try to
schedule these to impose the least burden on family life.
A fourth strategy--and I have had varying levels of success
with this one--I try very hard not to bring work home
emotionally. When I am
home I need to really be there. So I save that last e-mail
check for after the kids go to bed and we generally talk about
family matters, not work concerns, over dinner.
As a final strategy, we have found it important to have
another aspect of our lives (not work related) in which we all
participate together.
For our family that is involvement in our local church. We not only attend there,
but we develop close friendships there, and we each try to use our
gifts and talents to further the ministry of the church. I think our church life is
another thing that protects us from my work taking over family
life.
So far I have mainly shared strategies for coping--how to
make sure that the deanship doesn’t damage the family. But those strategies don’t
tell the whole (or even most of) the story. My being dean actually has
great benefits for our family.
One of the greatest parts of the job is being able to visit
interesting places and to meet interesting and successful
people. In many ways,
my family has experienced these benefits with me.
As often as I can, I take my family with me to events I
attend. Conferences can
be great for families.
My kids, for instance, are huge fans of the AALS annual
meeting. They get their
own conference name badges and wander the exhibit hall shamelessly
looking for the best freebies.
While I am in a conference session on International Human
Rights, my kids are enjoying the AALS afternoon ice cream
social. And we always
take some time to visit area sites on an off morning or
afternoon. The
Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference likewise is
scheduled in a family-friendly way. Organizers place it at a
nice beach resort and schedule talks and receptions to allow for
both great substantive interaction and networking and time for
family life.
Of
course, I can’t take my family on all of my trips. Frequently the kids are in
school and my wife has responsibilities at home. But by trying to involve
family whenever possible, we have been able to experience
London together and my
wife and I have traveled to Hawaii
and Costa
Rica .
We don’t just involve family in trips to exotic places. This spring I had a Saturday
evening alumni reception in Raleigh
, North Carolina . I could have driven down
Saturday afternoon alone and returned Sunday morning. But we chose to make a
family event out of it.
We left on Saturday morning, spent the afternoon playing in
the hotel pool, attended the reception (my wife and oldest daughter
participated in the event along with me), spent Sunday morning back
in the hotel pool, and drove back that afternoon. What could have been another
time of dad being gone on business turned into a relaxing family
weekend.
Even more than the places, though, I am thankful for the
people that we have come to know through this job. In a slight exception to our
“don’t bring work home” coping strategy, we use our home to
entertain guests of the law school. So, over dinner, my children
are exposed to fascinating people and ideas.
A highlight of family life each year is the annual visit of
our Jurist-in-Residence, Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leroy
Hassell. Chief Justice
Hassell spends a week at the law school, teaching classes, and
meeting with student leaders and faculty. He also spends one evening
in our home. A devoted
family man himself, the Chief Justice has become a friend to my wife
and children, while offering to become my children’s advocate on
grievances they have with us.
His “clients” are delighted to see him each year. I don’t think they yet grasp
how unique is their opportunity to spend time like this with a
brilliant and powerful, yet humble, man. I am thankful for his role
in their lives.
I am just as thankful for the role students play in our
family’s life. My job
gives all of us an outstanding opportunity to know and interact with
students. This part of
the job is one of the most gratifying and the most fun. We host students at
receptions in our home, invite student attendees of our church for
dinner, and on occasion go to student events hosted in their
homes. We missed Janet
Jackson and Justin Timberlake during this year’s Super Bowl
Half-Time Show. Our
family was at a Super Bowl party organized by SBA leaders and
others. For our
half-time show I joined a group of only semi-sane law students in a
quick plunge into the February Atlantic Ocean as part of the
students’ “February Freeze.”
The event was lots of fun for the whole family. Some students we have grown
to know have remained friends of our family for years after they
have become alumni.
I am particularly gratified by the role of students in our
lives as my daughters have gotten older. Cyndi, Melissa, and
Christina have gotten to know women law students who have taken them
under their wings. As a
dad of teenagers, I can’t say how important it has been for my
daughters to have bright, capable, and committed women as role
models.
The ways we have chosen to involve our family in the life of
the law school in my job as dean of course reflect a couple of
things that are unique about our family. For one, among deans I have
relatively young children.
Undoubtedly, ice cream socials in the AALS exhibit hall
aren’t likely to produce the same thrill in a college student as
they are in my eight year old son, Jeffrey.
Most important, my wife Becky views involvement in the life
of the law school as part of her personal calling and ministry. She loves law students. She interacts with them in
many ways. Formally,
she is the faculty advisor to the Law Wives, an organization that
holds events for and helps build relationships among spouses of law
students. Becky helps
with some of the events, but mostly she encourages the spouses and
their families. Less
formally, Becky goes out of her way to build relationships with law
students. She mentors
them, encourages them, and challenges them.
Becky frequently participates in another part of my
job--networking. She
attends bar functions, trustee dinners, and student banquets. She has an outgoing
personality and naturally builds friendships. Within minutes at a banquet,
she will have a table of lawyers and judges laughing. I am much better at my job
because we do this part of it together.
So looking back after 5 years, I would have to say that,
while my fears were real, we have successfully employed defensive
strategies to address those fears. But more than that, my job
as dean has actually proved to be a benefit to our whole
family. The places we
have gone, the people we have met, and the way we have enjoyed them
together have more than compensated for the burdens we have
felt.
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