The latest change coming to AU is the restructuring of several academic departments on campus; including professor offices shifting around campus. The 2024-25 academic year for AU has been full of major announcements to the changes coming to campus. From President Pistole’s retirement to several majors being phased out, the AU community will have a whole new look when students return for the 2025 fall semester. These changes will begin during the summer term in May 2025 after the spring semester concludes.
“The primary objective of this restructuring is to enhance the effectiveness of our academic organizational structures at the departmental level. By realigning programs into slightly larger groups, we aim to foster collaboration and community among faculty and streamline shared responsibilities,” wrote AU Provost Courtney Taylor, Ph.D., in a memo discussing the upcoming changes.
Deborah Miller-Fox, Dean of the College of Humanities, Education, and Social & Behavioral Science, spoke of the small departments combining as both a strategic move but also a growth move for students and faculty alike.
“We become isolated in our specific discipline or in our specific department or in our specific academic program. [By restructuring] We can eliminate redundancy in use of faculty time, and that means the resources we do have can be used for greater benefit.” said Miller-Fox. “Now, the challenge is learning to share limited resources, right? There has to be more collaboration and cooperation.”
For the Falls School of Business, the only change is in the location out of Hardacre Hall and into the southwest corner of the third floor in Decker Hall. Other departments are combining with similar programs that follow three organizational principles: strengthening academic identity, enhancing faculty collaboration and improving resource stewardship.
“The question was how we can create a community for students and faculty and how it can be more interdisciplinary in our majors.” said Stefanie Leiter, Ph.D., Department Chair of Communication & Design Arts and Associate Professor of Public Relations.
“Now, there will be more opportunities for community and more opportunities to get to know different faculty.”
Computer science, data science, cybersecurity and mathematics will combine into the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics. Under the department of social sciences will be criminal justice, social work, political science and national security programs. These departments will be found in Decker Hall beginning fall 2025.
Provost Taylor, who was also the former Chair of the Department of Mathematics from 2012 through 2022, assures students that despite these changes to campus and the restructuring of the majority of departments he ”hope[s] that they recognize that the excellence of their programs is not affected.” Instead, “their education really in some ways is enhanced because now there’s just more possibilities to interact with faculty and one another.”
The Department of Humanities will house cinema and media arts, English, communication, modern language and history. Most of these programs currently reside in Decker Hall and are in separate departments, but this relocation and restructure will see the department of humanities moved to Krannert Hall.
Other departments, including teacher education, kinesiology, natural sciences, engineering psychology as well as the schools of nursing, theology and Christian ministry, and music, theatre & dance will not be relocated or restructured.
“ We [people] can get really excited about change if we don’t see any downside for us. I think that doesn’t make us terrible people. That’s just part of our human nature. But when it changes what for us has always been familiar – what’s been known – it can be disorienting and anxiety inducing,” said Miller-Fox.
In wake of other major recent changes to campus, another shift begs the question of “what next?” However, Miller-Fox sees this from a different perspective. “One of the things that I hope will come is an opportunity to imagine a more vibrant future for the programs that are within these new departments. I hope that it will create a greater, richer opportunity for collegiality.”
As the spring semester comes to a close, only time will tell if the hopes of the administration are fulfilled for the students and campus. After graduation in May of 2025, a phased approach will be used over the course of the summer in the moving of faculty offices. Once students begin returning to campus for the fall semester of 2025, further announcements and signage will be posted to help students get reoriented to where they will be able to find their departments and professors.
“ I’m hoping that students will see all the hard work that went into this when they come back in the fall,” said Leiter. “Because it’s been a lot of work to make sure that we take care of them – they’re our first priority.”