MARYVILLE, Mo. – When the 2016-2017 academic year begins, Northwest Missouri State University’s division of academic affairs will feature a new organizational structure that the University’s chief academic officer says reflects a 21st-century university and supports profession-based learning.
Effective July 1, Northwest Provost Dr. Timothy Mottet announced, the University will leave behind the academic college structure it has followed for decades and adopt one consisting of professional schools led by directors who will report directly to the provost. Deans who have traditionally led the academic colleges and other academic areas will become associate provosts.
“This restructuring flattens the organization and empowers academic units to develop new and innovative academic programming and to be more connected to the organizations who hire our graduates,” Mottet said. “It’s allowing us to be more nimble and interdisciplinary, which both students and faculty are requesting.”
The reorganization was set in motion last year, Mottet said, when a candidate selected to fill Northwest’s vacant dean role in the Melvin D. and Valorie G. Booth College of Business and Professional Studies rescinded his acceptance of Northwest’s offer. As a result, Northwest appointed Michael L. Faust as visiting dean of the Booth College and reconfigured that college’s three academic departments as professional schools as part of a pilot program.
Early success of the pilot prompted academic leaders to rethink Northwest’s former Department of Health and Human Services, which had been based in the College of Education and Human Services. That initiative led to the development of a new, free-standing, multi-disciplinary School of Health Science and Wellness, which the University launched last fall, officially making it Northwest’s first professional school.
Concluding the pilot program in preparation for the fall 2016 trimester, Northwest will officially dissolve the Booth College and retain its academic departments as professional schools, known as the Melvin D. and Valorie G. Booth School of Business, the School of Communication and Mass Media, and the School of Agricultural Sciences.
Additionally, Northwest will dissolve its College of Education and Human Services and reorganize the Department of Professional Education as the School of Education. The computer science unit, which currently is housed within the College of Arts and Sciences and an academic department that also includes the University’s mathematics programming, will form a new School of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Northwest will, however, retain its College of Arts and Sciences, which will house the departments of English and Modern Languages, Fine and Performing Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, and Natural Sciences.
Professional schools, Mottet explains, represent academic units closely aligned with a profession, while academic departments contain broader disciplines. Mottet said the restructuring is still evolving and faculty-driven.
“There was never a master plan,” Mottet said. “This has developed into an elegant organizational structure that all started with the rescinding of the Booth dean and faculty willingness. This is an example of faculty who have trusted the process, and I am deeply appreciative of that.”