 "Photo: Erin O'Leary")
Restructuring of the university's eight colleges could be in MTSU's future, according to President Sidney McPhee's response to the Steering Committee's report.
McPhee's response suggested the restructuring of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences; the College of Educational and Behavioral Science; and the College of Liberal Arts into the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Education and Teacher Preparation; and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
This proposal would redistribute the art, English, foreign languages, geosciences, history, music, philosophy, political science, and speech and theatre from College of Liberal Arts into the College of Arts and Sciences. Sociology and anthropology would become part of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
The Jennings A. Jones College of Business, the College of Mass Communication, the University Honors College, the College of Graduate Studies and the College of Continuing Education and Distance Learning would not be restructured.
"At this point, it's rather early to try to assess any real impact on the particular departments," said Dean of the College of Liberal Arts John McDaniel.
McDaniel said that the idea of an arts and science college is not unusual, and other institutions like the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and East Tennessee State University have such an arrangement.
"It can make for some interesting complications in distribution of funding since the sciences often have more access and more need for funding, either from the university or from outside sources, as do humanities, fine arts and social sciences," McDaniel said. "But it's perfectly workable, and it could be a positive synergetic arrangement for some departments."
Department of English Chair Tom Strawman said the restructuring might provide difficulties in that some areas could find themselves a bit de-emphasized in the overall structure of the college.
"We're afraid that the humanities vision and the humanities values will get lost in the much vaster material and equipment needs of the sciences, that the temptation will be to buy machines and buy research equipment and whatever's newest and latest to compete with other science programs, and the humanities will be lost sight of," Strawman said.
Senior political science major Dean Andrews said his reaction depends on what the restructuring would entail if implemented.
"If the department is not going to be completely switched, just moved administratively but nothing else changes, I'd be happy," Andrews said. "But if it's more than that, if that means a much larger change, I'd be very upset with the current process as it is."
Strawman said that he disagrees with the consolidation of many dissimilar departments.
"Supersizing anything is probably not a good idea because that goes against the organic principles of nature where things have a natural rhythm of growth, and they grow in certain ways for reasons that are responsible to the entire organism," Strawman said. "To impose a huge organizational entity on dissimilar functions in the university doesn't seem to make good sense at this time."
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