118 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS departments contained two dissimilar programs and the departments overall were unbalanced in size. Not wanting to lose the opportunity presented by a good crisis, the dean decided to fix the departmental organizational problems as the colleges merged. In agreement with the receiving dean, the department of computer science was moved to be a part of a new college of computer science and software engineering located on the smaller campus. The offices and classrooms of these faculty had to move. With the merger creating a larger faculty pool supporting each program, the department with unaligned programs was now large enough to justify splitting it into two departments. To achieve relative equality in the number of students and faculty at the two campuses, the dean needed to move the faculty from two additional departments to the smaller campus and the faculty from the remaining departments needed to relocate from the smaller to the larger campus. Like falling dominoes, a chainofofficemovementswasnecessarytoconsolidatetheprogramsoneachcampus; over 60 percent of faculty from these two colleges were required to move offices. (Imagine the frustration of some of the faculty who now were commuting longer distances from their homes to their place of work [Human Resource]). Furthermore, the consolidated university made the decision to preclude faculty overloads [Struc- tural]. Yet overloads were part of the culture and an expectation of faculty at the smaller campus. This led to further faculty disenchantment. The dean steered the faculty into and through the tumultuous merger. He made the decision to spend three days a week on the larger campus and the other two on the smaller one. Individual meetings were planned with faculty on the smaller campus to ensure they knew he would listen to their concerns [Human Resource]. He made every effort to be an attentive listener—even at times when the faculty used him as a verbal punching bag. In time, faculty and staff at the smaller campus commented that the dean was the only person who treated them like they were not a burden. The dean encouraged departments to use academic seminars to bring faculty from both campuses together, and the dean held regular college meetings and holiday parties for faculty from both campuses [Symbolic]. The dean established collaborative internal research grants for which faculty from both campuses were required to work together. It became apparent that university leaders were not aware, at times, of the impact their comments about the reorganization were having at the level of the faculty. For example, a university leader publically commented that faculty would be reimbursed for travel between the two campuses; faculty members were thrilled as this had been a large point of contention with moving offices. However, the dean brought up discretely to the provost that if the colleges needed to pay for such travel reimburse- ment, they would be beyond bankrupt. In the end, the proposed practice was never implemented. The dean needed to remain proactive in providing such feedback to the provost for her consideration; it was better to catch problems early than deal with the impact as a dean later on.