Academic Policy  1100.40 

Academic Administrative Structure: Housing and Supporting Programs and Faculty

The College or School (with the exception of the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, the School of Human Environmental Sciences or HES, and the School of Social Work or SSW) is the major subdivision of Academic Affairs, and its constituent departments, offices, and centers are typically aggregated by discipline. Colleges and Schools (except for Nursing, HES, and SSW) are administered by deans. They receive and allocate funding to all units in their sub-division, provide direction and counsel, and perform general oversight and record-keeping functions (through the dean’s office and its staff) for faculty, students, degree programs, and courses and for research and service functions. Like the College or School, the Library houses faculty and is administered by a dean.

The primary organizational unit of the college or school is the department. Only departments house and support faculty (as the home department for tenure, for example). Departments also house degree programs and courses. They support the assigned teaching, research, service, and advising efforts of faculty and staff. They serve as the main budgetary units in colleges and schools and are allocated the funding for faculty and staff salaries and maintenance (operations) to support their programs. They maintain records in the areas of their official responsibility. They have the main responsibility for faculty appointments, assignments, and evaluation. They develop, maintain, and evaluate programs and curricula. Departments are administered by chairpersons. Each college or school (except the School of Law, the School of Nursing, HES, and SSW) is made up of departments. These three schools perform department functions, with the School of Law also performing school/college functions. Each department is identified by a name and an alpha code reserved for such units, and the set of departments may be defined by listing these names or codes. Departments are the only entities to which the name “department” is formally applied in Academic Affairs.

Colleges and schools function for some purposes as departments (or department of record), including the purposes of accounting and enrollment aggregation and budget and costs allocations, even though they do not have faculty appointed to them in tenure-track positions (as the home department). Functioning as department of record, they may house inter- or multidisciplinary programs for which the direction and oversight is provided by program faculties made up of faculty shared with (and housed in) departments. Inter- and multidisciplinary programs leading to both majors and second majors or graduate degrees will be provided departmental support (as described above) either by a department or more than one department or the school or college functioning as a department. Examples of programs supported by more than one department are the following: Comparative Literature (supported by English and Foreign Languages), Environmental Dynamics (supported by Anthropology and Geosciences), and Pest Management (supported by Entomology and Plant Pathology). Fulbright College functions as the department of record to provide support to several additional programs housed in the college and provided services through two non-department units: the Office of Humanities (HUMN) and Fulbright Institute of International Relations (FIIR). Each individual program housed in the college and supported by a department of record (programs such as Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Middle East Studies, and Russian Studies in Fulbright Institute and the minors in Religious Studies and Gender Studies in the Humanities) is recognized as an individual program for accounting, enrollment, and reporting aggregation, is supported by required staff and material resources, and is directed by a program faculty (shared entirely with home departments elsewhere) of sufficient size and FTE in the program to ensure program direction and quality. This is also the case with inter- or multidisciplinary programs spanning more than one college or school. The Graduate School is the department of record for the doctoral program in Public Policy and the programs in Micro-electronics Photonics, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Space and Planetary Sciences, as well as the graduate certificate in Gerontology. It will also house other interdisciplinary programs except that it does not house faculty as their primary department.

Academic units whose main function is support, research or service do not house tenure-track faculty (as a home department), programs, or courses. They typically exist as budgetary units, have staff and may have non-tenure track research or service faculty, and have the responsibility to provide support to other units or Academic Policy Series 1100.402 to carry out specific research or service missions. They may share tenure-track faculty (with home departments elsewhere). They are most commonly called centers or offices. Each, to achieve named status and a separate identity, should have sufficient budgetary and physical resources and sufficient FTE in staff and faculty, as well as sufficient responsibility and productivity, to warrant status as a center or separate office. Centers must be housed in schools, colleges, or departments.

The Graduate School, University Libraries, Army ROTC, Air Force ROTC, the School of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach (SCEAO), Summer Sessions, Enrollment Services, and Institutional Research have specialized support roles and individual functions in Academic Affairs which do not lend themselves to a similar general categorization. All but the ROTC units function more nearly as support centers than as schools, colleges, or departments. However, the University Libraries function as a home department for tenure-track but non-teaching faculty. The Graduate School shares faculty, as do SCEAO and Summer Sessions, with school and college departments. It also houses interdisciplinary programs. The Graduate School, SCEAO, and Summer Sessions share courses and degree programs with departments, although in different ways. SCEAO and Summer Sessions offer or cooperate in off-campus offerings of schools and colleges or summer offerings. Army and Air Force ROTC are more auxiliary units than departments, although they have faculty members and offer courses, because their faculty are non-tenure track and are supported by external agencies. Institutional Research and Enrollment Services have related functions involving records, analysis, and reporting, but each has additional specialized support responsibilities.

Note: An official list of organizational units and degree programs is available as policy 1100.40A. The policy is maintained on-line and is updated for each academic year by the Office of Institutional Research, consistent with actions of the campus, Board of Trustees, and the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Reformatted for Web September 29, 2014
7/15/14