Report of the Academic Structure Advisory Committee

January 29, 2003

 

Members of the Committee:

Paul Barrett, John Kallend, Buck McMorris(Chair), Jamshid Mohammadi, Warren Schmaus, Ken Schug, Marco Saraniti, Larry Scott, Michael Young

 

Our Charge:

Discuss and recommend options for breaking up the present Armour College into smaller administrative units.

 

After much discussion and polling of faculty members and chairs on the Main Campus, no clear mandate emerged.

 

Three options for the new structure were considered and each committee member declared a first choice and a second choice. The options and votes are as follows. Placement of Computer Science was discussed as a separate issue.

 

Two Colleges A: Engineering College (CAE, CHE, BME, ECE, MMAE), College of Arts and Sciences (or College of Sciences, or ?) (BCPS, AM, MSE, HUM, SS). Psychology remains separate.

Vote tally: First choice 4, second choice 1.

 

Two Colleges B: Engineering College, College of Arts and Sciences including Psychology.

Vote tally: First choice 2, second choice 5.

 

Comments: Those in favor of the two college model point out that IIT is too small for three colleges and that the third one would be weak compared to the others. The stand alone Institute of Psychology seems to work fine now and they are opposed to changing this status. Others feel that folding it into A&S would not hurt Psych, yet add ÔheftÕ to A&S. No clear winner.

 

 

Three Colleges: Engineering College, College of Science, College of SS, Hum and Psych.

Vote tally: First choice 3, second choice 2.

 

Comments: This gives voice to the Sciences at IIT, and sets them up as more than service departments. The main negative is small size of the third college. It is noted that all CAE faculty like this option, as do most of ECE and BCPS faculty. The chair of MSE also reported that he favors this structure.

 

Placement of CS:

In a college of Engineering: 3

In a college of Science: 6

Comments: The chair of CS strongly opposes placement in Science and his views were articulated at two meetings of the committee. ECE has Computer Engineering already so placing it with Science seems natural. However, much of CS does function like engineering so placing with engineering is appropriate also. Many of the top departments of CS are in engineering schools, or stand alone enterprises.