Dean Hardscrabble

The Dean Hardscrabble (full name Dr. Abigail Hardscrabble ) is a character in Monsters University. She's a dark red dragon-like monster with millipede-like legs and red bat wings, she is the dean of the School of Scaring faculty at Monsters University.

Official Bio
"To Dean Hardscrabble, there are scary monsters and there are all other monsters. It’s no surprise she feels this way—she is, after all, a legendary Scarer and Dean of the School of Scaring at Monsters University. Aspiring Scare students must be up for the challenge to impress her, though she is convinced that her assessment of who is truly scary and who is not is never wrong."

Personality
A legendary Scarer, Dr. Abigail Hardscrabble is the strict and intimidating Dean of the School of Scaring at Monsters University. She keeps a souvenir from her old Scaring career in the form of a Scream-canister, which contains the scream she collected that broke the All-Time Scare Record, making it her most prized possession.

As a legendary Scarer and alumni of Monsters University, Hardscrabble's job, in her own words, is "to make great students, greater, not make mediocre students, less mediocre." In other words, she does not play around in educating her students and expects no less of them.

Her experience and knowledge enables her to easily determine one's potential in Scaring, which she states is how scary a monster is; for her there are monsters who are scary and those who are not. Even so, she still places value on academic knowledge in the study of Scaring. Both of these expectaions she holds for her students led to her relationships with Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan, two students she kicked out of her Program; Mike, whom she deemed to not be scary, Sulley for failing to take Scare studies seriously - She did not care for Mike's hard studying and commendable academic progress nor for Sulley's natural talent and family history of successful scarers.

However, she agreed on a wager with Mike: If his fraternity, Oozma Kappa, won the Scare Games, she would let the whole team into the Scaring Program. But if they lost, Mike would have to leave Monsters University.

She kept a close eye on OK during the games, and the night before the last event, she held to her professional opinion that Mike was not scary despite Sulley's advocation of his friend. She was impressed when OK won, but furious when Sulley admitted he'd cheated, demanding he depart MU campus by tomorrow and calling him a disgrace to MU and to his family name. However, she was horrified to learn Mike, and later Sulley, had entered the human world but shocked when they managed to repower the door from the otherside to get back.

While the two were still expelled from Monsters University, Hardscrabble saw them off, admitting they'd done something nobody else had, they surprised her, and encouraged them, particularly Mike, to keep "surprising", and indirectly gave them the means of working at a scare company, as well as allowing OK into the Scaring Program despite Sulley's cheating, and wishing the duo good luck.

The Dean Hardscrabble is a monster who is determined to teach her students and help them to be all they can be, but has a caring and benign side that she rarely shows, She cares for the well-beings of all MU students, and is humble enough to admit when she's wrong.

Trivia

 * Dean Hardscrabble’s character was modeled after a type of centipede called Scolopendra Gigantea, also known as the Amazonian giant centipede.
 * According to story supervisor Kelsey Mann, the dean was originally to be a male, who would scream and shout a lot. However, the team wanted to make the dean a scary figure, and found he wasn't really intimidating in this form.
 * In some ways, Hardscrabble appears to be the complete opposite of Waternoose: while Waternoose appears friendly and kind-natured but is actually cruel and ruthless, and is therefore an antagonist of the original film; in contrast, Hardscrabble appears stern and unpleasant, but is actually kind and helpful, and therefore is an ally to Mike and Sulley.
 * Dean Hardscrabble used to be a member of HSS.
 * As a student, she founded the Scare Games and won them four years in a row.
 * Her real name is Dr. Abigail Hardscrabble.
 * She is voiced by Helen Mirren who did Nyra who was the secondary antagonist of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.