Any across-the-board advising change, for example, would have to go through the full Faculty, and longstanding tradition allows departments to dictate their own advising policy--so while Lewis says his report has raised awareness of the advising issue, it has not yet produced large-scale changes.
A Teacher First and Foremost
Although Lewis says he does not know how long he will continue on as dean, he says he still considers himself more of a professor than an administrator.
"I still identify myself as a computer scientist and a teacher," he says. "I get the most satisfaction out of my work with individual students."
Lewis has taught a computer science course--Computer Science 121, "Introduction to Formal Systems and Computation"--every year throughout his term.
"Absolutely the best part of the week is the three hours I'm working with students," he says. "I consider myself a teacher first and foremost before any of those other roles."
The Maull-Lewis report endorses the idea of Faculty working in the administration--its fifth recommendation is that the dean of the Faculty "recognize the various benefits of having professors serve, even part-time and briefly, in the administration of the Faculty."
But it also suggests that those Faculty members may serve the University best by spending several years in the administration and then returning to teaching.
"In serving under the dean of Faculty for a few years and returning to their departments to take up teaching and research, faculty would bring to their colleagues a better sense of the rationale and process for administrative decisions which affect them," the report says.
Lewis says he has not planned ahead far enough to tell when he will leave the deanship or what he will do.
"I am not a person who looks far into the future," he wrote. "I think the most interesting things in life are unexpected."
But Lewis, who has repeatedly refused to "personalize" his accomplishments, which he says are a result of a team effort, says he does not think he will settle into his administrative post permanently, as Epps did.
"Most of what's happened here is the work of lots of other people and not mine personally," Lewis says. "And I have other things to do."