College Restructure Taskforce

About the Taskforce

In Spring 2022, Provost Winningham commissioned a taskforce of staff and faculty to review WOU’s current college structure and make recommendations for any changes or reorganizations of WOU’s colleges and academic programs. The taskforce began meeting in Spring 2022 and will meet throughout Summer 2022, with the goal of presenting findings to WOU’s community in Fall 2022.

Recognizing this work is of great interest to all members of the Western Oregon University community, this page is a resource to provide updates and information as the taskforce undertakes its work.

Taskforce Charge

Provost Winningham provided the following charge to the College Restructure Taskforce:

Overview

At present, our academic programs are organized into two colleges, a structure arising more from history than strategy. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has eight divisions spanning traditional liberal arts and sciences along with professional and pre-professional programs. The College of Education has three divisions that encompass far more than educator preparation programs. This structure served us well once. But over time, and through the evolution of programs and student interests, this structure may have created silos and workload inequities for academic program leaders, faculty and staff. As we consider developing new programs at new degree levels (e.g., professional doctorates), now is the time to re-examine, re-align and re-balance WOU’s academic programs so that our structures serve our current needs and position us to thrive in the future.

This restructuring has the potential to:

• Create a home unit for new health-related programs
• Transform and make transparent how academic program leaders are equitably compensated in terms of release time and stipends
• Improve workload equity in advising and committee service by creating academic units that are more comparable in size and complexity
• Organize academic programs in a way that supports innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, and program sustainability

Participants in the College Restructure Taskforce will engage in this process with a workload equity lens, and will seek to align similar programs or programs that may be better able to collaborate.

Expected Outcomes

Research and report on how other universities structure their academic programs, and articulate common models for universities of a similar size and budget to WOU, including at least some of WOU’s peer institutions.

• Propose a new academic unit structure and formula for program leadership structure and compensation that uses existing resources (e.g., department head releases, program coordinator releases, division chair releases, division chair stipends, and all staff in the colleges).
• Propose a new academic unit structure that is more balanced, with the goal of making leadership, advising loads and service loads more equitable.
• Propose a new academic unit structure that could incorporate a possible home for health-related programs.
• Propose a new academic unit structure that considers aligning programs in a way that maximizes collaboration and synergy.
• Produce a report by September 15, 2022.
• Present the above at two campus town halls in the Fall of 2022 and share the taskforce’s information with students.