In the past year, SAIS celebrated the 60th anniversary of its first class, the 50th anniversary of the Bologna Center, and the 20th anniversary of the joint degrees between SAIS and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Einhorn said there are also important changes under way at her school. For example, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, now in its 20th year, is preparing to offer a new master’s of arts degree in international studies. In Washington, the international policy program restructures the previous energy, environment, science and technology program and adds an international health component to the concentration. An international development program has also been created.
Einhorn noted that SAIS offers an abundance of speakers, conferences and special events, providing opportunities for students to interact with political leaders, scholars and professionals engaged in a variety of global issues (see Dec. 15, 2005, column of the Diplomatic Pouch).
Einhorn said the school’s key strength ultimately comes down to its faculty. “The faculty is the heart of the school. It is the continuity, the direct interface with the students, the deliverer of the educational component of the school.”
During her four years as dean, Einhorn said she has seen no need to impose a new agenda on a school with such a storied history. “You need to discover the great strengths of an institution and then see what you can build from there and not come in with an agenda for change,” she explained. “My own philosophy of managem
ent is that change and innovation are not ends in themselves, but very important means to achieving ends. You need to come in and see where the strengths are and if there are unacceptable weaknesses and introduce change for those purposes.”
Einhorn said she and her management team are always looking for ways to improve SAIS and to “brand” it as distinctive in important areas. For example, Einhorn and her staff decided to make the 2005-06 academic year “The Year of Energy,” arranging conferences, lectures and meetings with students and alumni who are experts in the field of energy.
“We have made our management team into a strong group that exchanges views, thinks together about planning priorities, and pulls together to achieve things,” she said.
According to Einhorn, the organizing premise of her work is the importance of the current group of students at SAIS. “Our top fiduciary responsibility is to our current students. They only come through once. We might do great things in the future for the school—but they are here now. They are paying the heavy fees and incurring the debt, sometimes, to pay it off,” she said. “So you need to make sure that every day of every year for every student, you are doing the best you can to provide them the education that will serve them for a lifetime of professional engagement. That’s where it starts and you would be surprised how much flows from that.”
She added that it’s also important to support the faculty’s teaching and scholarship, expand financial aid, boost career services, and help find internships and jobs for students.
Friendly, focused and approachable, Einhorn said her schedule is driven by the academic calendar. “The academic year is so operational that you hardly have a moment to breathe. You just have to run to get things done for the students and faculty. Everyone’s job is 90 percent operational,” she said.
After SAIS’s graduation each June, she assembles her team of deans to review the state of affairs at SAIS and come up with a handful of new initiatives that can fit into their workload.
“I’m a big believer that you shouldn’t let your life be supply-driven. In other words, you have to take initiatives and not just respond,” she said.
Einhorn said that in addition to the senior leadership of SAIS, her partners in ensuring the school’s success are members of the SAIS Advisory Council. This board of 40 alumni and other interested leaders advise the dean on everything from curriculum development to strategic partnerships with other institutions.
Another important part of Einhorn’s job is ensuring the philanthropic support on which the school depends. She likes to describe philanthropy as a marketplace where generosity rewards performance and promise, and she said she enjoys her work in raising funds for the school.
Einhorn meets frequently with faculty and students, reads books written by the faculty, and participates in special programs at SAIS. As an example, she recently traveled to Ireland on a trip that was organized by professor Eliot Cohen to study the 1916 Easter rebellion and the broader phenomenon of urban warfare.
She retains her interests in public finance, but also enjoys exploring other areas, namely international relations, political and military issues, and regional studies. She said it is important for her as a dean not just to gravitate toward her personal areas of strength and interest, but to expand into other directions.
Einhorn has written several major essays in Foreign Affairs magazine on the World Bank, her former employer. She believes the bank is suffering from a mission expansion, noting that its work has become so complex that it is difficult to describe the bank as a manageable organization.
Einhorn argues that the bank has been adding tasks to its mandate for years, from Balkan reconstruction to education for girls in Muslim countries to the fight against AIDS. Its mission has grown so complex that it has become unwieldy. To make the bank more effective, she said the countries that own it—its shareholders—must streamline its many functions and even devolve certain tasks to other institutions.
In addition to her work at SAIS, Einhorn is director of the Institute for International Economics, the Center for Global Development, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, as well as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In the private sector, she is a director of Time Warner and chair of the global advisory board of J.E. Robert Cos. She is also a senior member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Energy Policy.
“I’ve tried to structure my outside relationships to be supportive of my work as dean,” she said. During her free time, she enjoys opera, ballet, theater, museums and swimming. “Swimming is essential,” she noted with a smile.
Looking to the future, Einhorn said SAIS will face competition from schools in Europe and Asia that will be modeled after SAIS. But she feels confident about SAIS’s distinctive features.
“In a five- or 10-year horizon, I don’t expect SAIS to fundamentally change. I expect it to keep building on its strengths. We need to always reexamine our strengths and make sure they are forward looking. But I still believe that economics, languages, international relations and regional studies are the building blocks of a great school of international affairs.”
John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.
