Provost van Delden discussed with The Johnsonian how academic colleges at Winthrop may face potential restructuring in the coming years.
Caroline Smith
Staff Writer
News
Academic colleges at Winthrop University are at risk of being reorganized to allow for new majors, according to Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Sebastian van Delden.
“Part of the driving factor of this, too, is to try and more intentionally go into key areas that Winthrop is perceived to be missing from the academic portfolio,” Van Delden said. “And, there’s two specific ones. One of them is health sciences and the other one is engineering.”
These two potential additions to the academic colleges will require changing how the colleges are organized so that they are placed into a “parent college” with other majors they share similarities with.
“These thought processes has nothing to do with the people at Winthrop, so if you are faculty, our department chairs, our dean, one hundred percent amazing colleagues […] this potential restructuring has nothing to do with ‘oh this person isn’t doing a good job,’ so we need to change something, but that’s not it,” Van Delden said.
Van Delden said the potential redistribution of colleges will hopefully organize majors together in a way that makes them better connected with each other and provide them with a clearer identity.
“The question that continues being asked is ‘What’s wrong with our current college structure?’ […] if you look at the colleges we have now, and you look at the number of students in the colleges, and the faculty in the colleges, and the number of what we call ‘credit hour production colleges’, the number of all this kind of stuff,” Van Delden said. “Things are a little out of balance.”
Van Delden said that he has proposed adding a fifth academic college to the school, but the idea brings with it construction and hiring costs. Finding a donor could potentially soften the financial burden, but without a donor the proposal of a fifth academic college remains purely theoretical.
“We’re still working on a donor […] So, in the meantime, now fast forward almost two years, I think the reorg[anization] still needs to happen, but is there a way to do it with only remaining with the four colleges,” Van Delden said.
According to Winthrop’s website, the current organization of the four main colleges are as follows: the College of Arts & Sciences houses 12 departments, the College of Business and Technology houses three, the Riley College of Education, Sport & Human Sciences houses four, and the College of Visual & Performing Arts houses six.
The Provost and his team’s goal is to “cluster” together similar majors and fields more closely related to each other.
“This has been very transparent and we’re nowhere near making any decisions because this takes a lot of conversations and work, but one of the overarching goals would be to get the word ‘engineering’ in a college title,” Van Delden said.
Van Delden proposed changing the College of Business and Technology into something including business, engineering, and technology, as the department has recently launched an engineering degree.
The provost is also interested in inserting the word ‘health’ into a college name, such as a college of health and natural sciences. This would include biology, chemistry, nutrition, and exercise science.
Van Delden clarified that these potential changes would not affect anything in regard to Residence Life or the renovations of Dinkins Hall and the Dacus Library.
“College reorganization […] enables you to introduce new things like nursing and these applied health sciences, which then will hopefully help continue that measured enrollment growth over the next 20 years,” Van Delden said.
