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Welcome Message from the President
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A Question of Style
I was never an orthodox manager. I had very little regard for organizational structure. We never published one of those charts that shows who reports to whom. As far as I was concerned, everybody worked for Cooley.
I assumed that as president, I was welcome anywhere on campus, and I frequently got involved in the nitty gritty of peoples' job. Most folks took my overtures pretty well. If they thought I was interfering, they kept their complaints to themselves, knowing that in due course, I would go away and bother someone else.
The introduction of the Nutshell data base was a prime example of my hands on style. I had read a book by a guru of corporate success which described a system called 'skunk works.' Originated during World War II at Lockheed Martin and named for the fictional moonshine still in Al Capp’s cartoon, Li'l Abner, a skunk works was a team of people assigned to a particular task. They operated outside the corporate organizational box. No rules, no protocol; everyone contributed to the project however they were able. It was a style later associated with the burgeoning computer software business; CEO's of the Bill Gates generation, wearing blue jeans and working side by side with their employees.
While I never succumbed to donning blue jeans, I did get involved in inputting data in the Registrar’s office, and with the patient cooperation of Sherida Wysocki, the Registrar, we developed a workable electronic filing system for that important office.
That led me to look into the operation of the Admissions office. The Admissions office had migrated to the school building from its location in the administration building and was located across the lobby from the Dean’s office. Cynthia Kruska, the Assistant Dean for Admissions was a competent person with excellent academic credentials. She worked well with the Dean, who required detailed statistics about the numbers and quality of our applicants.
Unhappily, all of her reports had to be laboriously prepared by hand. There was no data base in the admissions office. The solitary computer, an early PC, had only word processing software and the form letters it produced had a habit of kicking out one blank page for every printed page.
I visited Dean Kruska on several occasions and tried to persuade her to use the software we had installed in the Registrar’s office. No doubt I came on too strong. In any case, every time I stopped by her office, I would shortly get a call from Dean LeDuc urging me not to interfere with his staff.
Dean LeDuc and I had a number of conversations after that, but never agreed on changes in the admissions office. Understandably, Dean Kruska felt uncomfortable, and tendered her resignation.
That’s when I decided to move the admissions function back to the administration building and hire someone to run the office. I advertised for the position of Director of Admissions. I didn’t see the need for an academic title.
One of the applicants was a tall, attractive woman named Stephanie Gregg. She was then employed at a local advertising agency. I knew her employer, and had dealt with his firm. We met over breakfast and I was impressed with her enthusiasm and moxie. She had minimal academic credentials, having completed only two years of college, but I thought she would bring a sales and marketing approach to the admissions process. And that was what we needed.
Our enrollment was down. We had lost 25% of our student body. Law school admissions officers, even in those days of shrinking applicant pools, had a way of acting like academic gatekeepers rather than salesmen. I wanted aggressive marketing, and I thought Stephanie could do it. She would work directly for me, and I would install the data base which would tie into the Registrar’s system.
Of course, she would also be working for the Dean and the faculty admissions committee. It would not be easy to take orders from so many bosses, especially when there would be differences of opinion about who should be admitted and how many students we should have.
I sent her to see Dean LeDuc. She reported that he was less than enthusiastic. I told her not to worry, that he would expect her to do a good job and would judge her fairly and reasonably. So she came to work at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
That was twenty years ago. Being decisive if not impulsive, I have made a lot of mistakes in hiring through the years. Stephanie was not one of them. Today, Cooley is the largest law school in the nation. Its brochures and other marketing materials are without equal. The welcoming atmosphere of the admissions office earns high praise from applicants and students.
Stephanie has grown in the job, completing her baccalaureate work at Michigan State University and assuming a position of leadership among her colleagues from other law schools in the national association of law school admissions officers. More importantly, she has earned the respect and affection of the Dean and the faculty at Cooley.
She is no longer the Director of Admissions. She is now the Assistant Dean of Admissions. Things are back to normal on Capitol Avenue.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004