Deans are expected to deal with a wide variety of constituent groups. The deanship is complicated, in large part, because ofthe myriad demands that are a part of the role. Matczynski, Lasley, and Haberman focus on how faculty members evaluate the effectiveness of a dean. A previous study assessed university administrators' perceptions of the dean's role. In this study, the authors examine the significance of the faculty data vis-a-vis a dean's effectiveness and discuss implications for future research endeavors. he role of the dean is a complit cated one. It necessitates t bridging the gap between a variety of faculty interests and constituent group demands. Some deans appear to succeed because they are able to make adjustments, offer appropriate compromises, and communicate a clear sense of institutional purpose. Others fail because they misread situations and commit themselves to irrelevant issues or weak programmatic endeavors. The reasons for failure are often subtle and contextual.Learning to work with significant others, whether faculty, university administrators, or school administrators, is one of the essential tasks of deans. In a previous related study (Lasley and Haberman, 1987), conflicts of interest inherent in the dean's role were presented. In that study, those in university central administration positions (i.e., vice presidents, vice chancellors, etc.) were asked to identify how they evaluated a dean's effectiveness. They indicated that deans were expected to serve the interests of and deal effectively with the schools and the community, even though such a &dquo;servant&dquo; perspective was not necessarily reflected in the university administrators' evaluation of a dean's overall performance. To central administrators, a truly successful dean was one who could attract and retain high quality faculty and who possessed an ability to articulate an institutional norm that represented the best interests of the institution.Understanding how deans are evaluated by faculty is a relatively unstudied phenomena. Researchers have been interested primarily in identifying the critical functions and role norms of deans (Denemark, 1982;Morris, 1981;Morsink, 1987) and in delineating the effective leadership qualities demonstrated by successful deans (Sivage, Bryson, and Okum, 1982). Some of the first conceptual work on the deanship was prepared by Cyphert and Zimpher (1976). They surveyed education deans and attempted an indepth analysis of the deanship role. Their work has been extended by others (see Dill, 1980) who examined the dean's role as a middle management position and focused on the implicit conflicts involved in efforts to resolve the inherently complex problems of higher education administration. In this study the authors sought to build on previous research efforts and examine how faculty members assess the performance of their deans. More specifically: 1. What criteria are used by faculty members to evaluate a dean's effectiveness, and 2. Is the ability to foster collaboration an attribute that fa...