Administrators will announce a decision on the college restructuring process after spring break, acting on a recommendation from last year’s Strategic Resource Allocation (SRA) process.

According to Provost Dr. Susan Turell, the plans for the restructuring are nearly complete.

“There’s just a few other pieces to it that I have to make sure I have good information about before I would make a final decision,” Turell said.

The final SRA report released last semester included information about a change in the structure of Marywood’s individual colleges. The original plan included reducing the number of colleges to three and merging academic programs.

Currently, the university has four individual colleges—Insalaco College of Creative and Performing Arts, the College of Health and Human Services, the Munley College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Reap College of Education and Human Development—plus the School of Architecture and the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.

According to Turell, five additional models have been developed through collaboration with deans and the president’s executive cabinet to determine the new structure of the university.

“There’s been some dialogue,” Turell said. “I’ve also met with departments that are slated to be merged, so I met with those department chairs to talk to them about what will need to be there to help support them be successful in that merger.”

Turell added that students will not be significantly affected by the restructuring.

“As a student, it shouldn’t really affect you daily as [to] what college your department is in,” she said.

Turell also explained that once a decision is made, the new university structure “will come into effect probably around the start of a fiscal year, which is July 1” of this year.

At its meeting on March 3, the Faculty Senate voted on a model that they felt would be best for the university.

“We forwarded the models that we thought were the better ones…to the provost,” Faculty Senate President Dr. David Palmiter said.

Palmiter declined to comment on which models the Faculty Senate sent to the provost, but shared that he felt there was a “genuine interest in hearing from [Faculty Senate] once the models were generated.”

“I’m hopeful that the feedback we’ve offered will carry the weight it should carry,” Palmiter said.

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