A three-day research development seminar planning a comprehensive research program on the deanship in educational administration featured papers and responses to the papers delineating the domains of inquiry. The topics of the papers and responses summarized (1) suggest a framework for analyzing the growth and development of a field of study--higher education administration; (2) provide baseline data on characteristics of deans of schools and colleges of education; (3) reveal demographic data from 1,377 schools, colleges, and departments of education; (4) attempt to clarify the place of theory in research; (5) advocate studies of comprehensive case analyses; (6) view schools of education as organizations within environments; (7) stress the functional diversity of the deanship; and (8) seek to identify optimal organizational strategies for the study. (Author/MLF)