The Division of Academic Affairs will soon undergo reorganization partly in response to the State's recent budget cuts, but also geared towards a growing effort to increase enrollment and retain students. Dr. Mark Lender, Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, proposed the final document for this academic reorganization on May 16, 2010; the document, which highlights key areas of the university in need of progressive action, is the product of long-standing evaluation and Lender's initial recommendation for reorganization given in May of 2009. Students might take notice in the proposal's most apparent change to the Division of Academic Affairs with its consolidations within the colleges. Certain departments within the colleges will either become a school solely or conjointly. In the College of Education, for example, the current Departments of Early Childhood, Elementary and Bilingual Education, and Middle and Secondary Education will consolidate into a single entity called the School of Curriculum and Teaching. In contrast, the Department of Psychology, "given its large and growing number of majors" will become a school without the joining of any other department, according to Lender's proposal.
Not all departments are expected to change, however. The Department of Communication, for example, will remain a department presently as any reorganization to it seems "problematic", according to the proposal. The document states that "The Department of Communication is in a state of flux, still adjusting to the re-integration of Media and Film. Moreover, the Communication curriculum has moved rapidly away from the humanities and is now much closer to the social sciences." The department is, however, under a year-long study to determine if any change is needed in its reorganization. Earlier drafts of the reorganization proposal joined the Communication Department with English.
In reorganizing the Division of Academic Affairs, an executive director would be assigned to each school instead of the current department chair. The change in the amount of needed positions is expected to generate almost two million dollars in savings.
The reorganizing plan will not only generate strategic groupings of departments, but will conversely "phase out" departments that have overtime dropped significantly in new enrollments. The proposal states that the reorganizations are a "normal and necessary part of academic planning" and will "bring new, modern and fresh perspectives to curriculum that can become stale, dated and, in some instances, obsolete." Graphic Communication is an example of one of the programs that is the process of being phased out due to consecutive low
enrollment rates.
Students should not worry, however, about the current state of their enrollment if they are in the in one of the majors being phased out. The proposal states, "Students will not be adversely affected by the program consolidations. In programs phased out during reorganization, the University will make arrangements to assure all students currently matriculated in these programs will be able to complete their degrees." In addition, students should not be concerned that the phasing out of these programs is concrete and final. The affected programs are, in most cases, in a state of hiatus. If the circumstances of needing these programs change in the future, they can be reintroduced.
One crucial area that the document calls attention to is general education (GE) courses. The courses often taken by freshman within the first two semesters, such as English Composition and college algebra, are going to be monitored and aided to produce better success results. Currently, data for these courses indicates a troubling failure rate. For many students, these GE courses are the stepping stones to a successful college career, and the success or failure in them paves their continued route. The effects do not only remain with the students; as the document states, the university suffers in these cases, as well. "Failure in GE courses not only affects the overall student outcomes, but it is the primary contributor to student attrition, especially from freshman to sophomore status."
One solution to the general education concern is already in motion; in fact, it has been for two years now, and the results are favorable. The "A-Team" initiative is a pilot program that was launched to tackle general education failure by building better guidance and advisement standards from the course's instructors, as well as limiting those instructors to teaching only the specified course. The program "Adjuncts Teaching English and Math", or A-Team, utilizes adjunct professors and trains them on how to provide tools of success to their students. The adjuncts in this program must be available to their students through office hours and can only teach courses in either English composition or college algebra. The students chosen to sit in an A-Team classroom were completely random; the courses were available for registration under no additional title and were open to all students. Since the data of this program has been a great gain to the university, the program will serve as a foundational model for the general education focus of the academic reorganization proposal.
This change from departments to "schools" should not be taken as a temporary condition to fade out with a bettering economy, and its development is not positioned to adversely affect students at all. In fact, a large part of the mechanics in this reorganization is geared towards bettering scheduling and proper enrollment management, two areas largely aided by helpful advisement. Two common errors in enrolling are the sequence of which courses are taken and taking courses that are incompatible with some degrees. How the reorganizing will improve upon the academic advisement system is yet to be seen, but the proposal acknowledges and urges the need for improvement in that area.
