Starting today, Marywood’s college structure now consists of three colleges—Health and Human Services, Professional Studies and Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Mark Rodgers, James Sullivan and Dr. Frances Zauhar will lead the restructured colleges, respectively.

Previously, the structure was comprised of five colleges—the College of Health and Human Services; the Munley College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Insalaco College of Creative and Performing Arts; the Reap College of Education and Human Development; and the School of Architecture.

The Wood Word spoke to some of the current and previous deans at the end of the spring semester.

Dr. Teresa Peters, who served as the dean of the College of Education and Human Development, said she decided to retire at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year.

Peters said that she wanted to spend more time with her family, but “will miss everyone [at Marywood] dearly.”

Previous Dean of the Insalaco College of Creative and Performing Arts Collier Parker is returning to Marywood as a faculty member, according to Provost Dr. Susan Turell.

Turell explained the process used to appoint the deans to their respective colleges.

“So what we did is once we announced the structure, we put together some basically open times for all the faculty who would be part of the new college to meet with any of the dean candidates that were interested in that college,” Turell said.

She explained that faculty provided her with written feedback of the candidates, and she also met with candidates for “mini interviews.”

Turell said that working with departments to resolve budget issues will be one task of the new deans. She added that building relationships with faculty “is going to be crucial to help advance some of the work we need to do.”

Dean James Sullivan said that although the structure of the individual colleges does not define the university, he thinks the new structure will permit more collaboration and will allow the university to “run a little more efficiently.”

“My plan is to work with the faculty, the programs and the department chairs and figure out the best ways for us to achieve the goals that they have for their various programs,” Sullivan said.

The Wood Word previously reported that the Psychology and the Communication Sciences and Disorders programs will now fall under the College of Health and Human Services and Dean of the College of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Rodgers said this addition will benefit the Interprofessional Education (IPE) program between local colleges.

“For my mind, the addition of these other teams—Psychology and [CSD]—fit well within this IPE model. It’s not cross training…but it’s appreciating what each member contributes to the team,” Rodgers said.

Collier Parker could not be reached for comment.

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Twitter: @JBonacciTWW