ORGANIZING THE FACULTY WITHIN A COLLEGE 91 and 750+ majors). After a process lasting several years, the School of Humanities is now constituted of seven (7) departments, each with its own chair. Three of the largest of the original 12 areas became independent departments; the other nine were merged into four newly named departments that combined two or more related disciplines. Similar reconfigurations played out in the other A&S schools. The dean of humanities attributes the success of this change to making it a facul- ty-based process that was not rushed. Consideration was given to necessary changes to the Faculty Manual regarding issues such as the role of the chairs in faculty eval- uation, to the naming of the founding chairs who are now being given released time and compensation for the new duties, and to funding for chair training. 8. Reorganizing departments into disciplinary clusters/schools Merging departments into clusters (and doing away with the departments) had a short heyday a few years back when deans and provosts viewed this as a way to “break down the silos” between disciplinary faculty. The other reason this move is popular is budgetary (as seen in the case below), as it reduces the monetary sup- port (mainly in the form of release time) necessary to support multiple chairs. At a medium-sized comprehensive institution, a university-wide reorganization in 2012 was driven by the need to address a substantial budget shortfall over a 12-month period. Within Arts and Sciences, this led to the consolidation of four- teen departments into four schools (each comprised of faculty in related disci- plines) within the College. Each school is now led by a director (the budget unit head, with responsibilities similar to those of a department chair) and an associ- ate director. The director, as leader of the school, is responsible for managing the school’s budget and for the annual evaluations of faculty and staff in the school. Each degree program has a coordinator who serves essentially as a point-person for faculty and students. The director and associate director each have a two- course reduction and receive a small administrative stipend. The coordinator has a one-course reduction, but does not earn a stipend. For P&T, the first level of review is conducted by faculty in the applicant’s field. Then the school director, not the program coordinator, reviews the portfolio at the second level. Faculty generally understood the change and agreed it was better to make ends meet by reorganizing the College than by eliminating degree programs. It helped the College address a substantial part of the budget shortfall (because fewer ad- ministrative stipends and administrative course releases had to be awarded) and it provided for a more effective running of the College and its programs. Bringing similar programs together under one school umbrella also provided greater op- portunities for cross-collaboration. A weakness of the model, reports the associate dean, is “many faculty feel their programs have lost some of their identity. They identify more with, say, the biology program than with the School of Sciences.”