Updates on academic reorganization: several department changes take effect

by ELLA CORDLE

Staff Writer

Since 2023, a committee has been working to reorganize academic departments across UMW. The reorganization plan aims to consolidate programs for financial and practical benefits.

Since then, several departments have already changed their classifications within all three colleges—the College of Education, the College of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences—and more are still in the planning stages or awaiting approval.

The College of Business now includes the computer science, economics and mathematics departments. It is led by Filiz Tabak, who was hired by UMW and appointed as Dean during the summer of 2023.

The departments of health and physical education, athletics and nursing are being moved to the College of Education, which Dean Peter Kelly heads.

Sociology and anthropology were previously a combined department, which has now been redistributed. Sociology has been added to the Department of History and American Studies, and anthropology has been moved into a department with art history, classics, philosophy and religious studies, known collectively as AACPR. Art history formerly shared a department with studio art, which is currently its own department.

“Our decision in AACPR was a faculty-led decision,” said Laura Mentore, chair of the AACPR department. “We proposed to come together and form a new department, and we have been very happy with our arrangement.”

Executive Director of University Communications Amy Jessee said that while everything stated thus far has been approved and put in place, more changes are awaiting SCHEV review. 

“The proposals for the School of the Sciences and School of the Arts are in progress with one submitted to SCHEV in March and the other pending submission,” she said. 

In order for the university to make large changes such as these, they require approval from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), which is a big part of why these changes are taking so long to arrange and implement. In a response to a request for information about the overall progress of this reorganization plan, UMW Provost Tim O’Donnell explained that SCHEV only accepts a limited number of changes per school and only allows submitted proposals for these changes three times a year.

Although these two schools have not yet been officially reorganized, related faculty appointments have been made. Lynn Lewis, chair of biological sciences, will become Director of the Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences. Chair of Theatre and Dance, Greg Stull, has been appointed Director of the Arts. Both of these appointments will officially take effect in the summer of 2025.

Although much is changing across various academic departments throughout all three UMW colleges, majors, programs and classes will all remain the same for students. The main areas of effect will be communication between faculty in programs that have been deemed more closely academically related.

“Our majors share a lot in common and we believe that being together in the same department has a lot of advantages for our students,” said Mentore. 

These changes are still ongoing and are not yet fully reflected on the UMW Website, Banner, or handbooks and catalogs related to the university. O’Donnell said in an email to The Weekly Ringer that “the hope is to make all of the changes for the AY26-27 catalog,” which aligns with the original timeline the committee had intended.