98 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS committee’s work concluded with recommending a qualified candidate to the dean. Unfortunately, a sub-faction of one of the departments began agitating against the merger, which soured the negotiations. The leading candidate with- drew, and even though the dean was well aware the opportunity had been lost, he sent the issue back to the faculty for reconsideration. • The A&S dean of an urban research university believed “the silos needed to be torn down” between six loosely related disciplines. With little genuine consul- tation or discussion with faculty, he eliminated the departments, dismantled the administrative structure for the programs, and put all the faculty into a new school within the college. A coordinator was named for each graduate and undergraduate program but was given no teaching reduction or real authority; faculty met as a whole, but not within their disciplines; and schoolwide P&T procedures were rewritten so committees were comprised of members from multiple disciplines. This structure change was fraught with problems. Within a few years, fac- ulty realigned themselves for purposes of recruiting and advising students, to develop new courses, and to make hiring decisions. A new dean agreed that many decisions needed to be handled within academic disciplines and began allowing hiring of new faculty for specific disciplines, relocating faculty offices into disciplinary clusters, and increasing the compensation and authority of the program heads. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ This chapter illustrates various ways deans and faculty can reorganize within a col- lege, which sometimes involves cooperation and change among other colleges in the university. But what happens when a dean learns “the powers that be” are contemplat- ing reorganizing his or her college—or even the entire university? Chapter 7 offers several case studies on how these moves may impact deans.