Feniosky Pena-Mora may be the epitome of the new college dean. No longer middle managers with an inward-facing focus on academics, deans such as Mr. Pena-Mora, who leads Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, are stepping off their campuses to fill the roles of college ambassador, chief visionary, and major fund raiser. In one minicampaign last year, Mr. Pena-Mora added 10 endowed chairs to the engineering school, leading an effort that brought in $30-million, more private money than many small colleges secure in a year. Higher-education observers say the dean's role, which has undergone major changes in the past five to 10 years, is continuing its shift to an outward focus. As budgets grow tighter and colleges' ambitions swell, deans are taking on some of the fund-raising, strategic planning, and partner-seeking duties that were once the bailiwick of the university president. The switch from an internal focus to an external one for deans happened first at major research universities and colleges with longstanding fund-raising operations. Now smaller teaching colleges say they, too, are looking at the model. As deans spend more of their time off the campus, they are unable to play as close a role in the day-to-day operations of a school or in teaching students or conducting research as they did before, a change that some may find unwelcome. To compensate for a dean's absence, colleges are putting teams of support personnel in place to help run day-to-day operations when the dean is away. At Columbia, for example, Mr. Pena-Mora had a full-time vice dean when he started, in 2009, but decided that one support person could not cover all the needs of the engineering school. He created positions that include a vice dean for research; a vice dean for academic affairs, focusing on graduate education; an adviser for undergraduate education; a senior associate dean for industry, government, and global education; an associate dean for advancement; and a director of strategic communications. The positions included new full-time positions, new half-time positions that were given to faculty members, and redefined jobs from existing positions. The dean paid for them by reallocating money in the school's budget. Today, deans need not only expertise in their field, but also the business sense of a college president and the ability to communicate to external audiences what they are doing. While some deans enjoy meeting prospective donors and netting big gifts, others are less comfortable asking for money. For deans who are less comfortable chatting up potential donors, CASE holds its development conference for deans twice a year, an effort it started more than five years ago. The group expanded the program in 2008 to include advanced training for deans with basic fund-raising experience. The most recent conference, held last month in Tampa, Fla., attracted about 200 people. Part of the training focuses on how deans can find time to fit fund-raising into their already full schedules, and also helps them find easy ways to get started if they are nervous about asking for money. The next generation of deans may be able to skip right to the advanced training. As more colleges of all types increase their reliance on private dollars, fund raising and other external duties are trickling down from the top to the positions occupied by the people in line to be tomorrow's deans.