Vol. 38, No. 18

10-22-2008
By: Jeff McCallister

Arts and Sciences reorganization moves ahead

Joan Leitzel understands that there’s a certain anxiety felt by many of the people who work for her in this, her second go-around at Ohio State.

As the person brought in specifically to oversee the restructuring of the old Arts and Sciences Federation into a streamlined, vibrant, purposeful unit, Leitzel will be making decisions in short order that will affect people’s jobs.

As interim executive dean of the arts and sciences colleges, she has budgetary authority over the organization that teaches more than 40 percent of the courses offered by Ohio State. And as interim vice provost for the arts and sciences, she has the ear of Provost Joe Alutto on matters of promotion and tenure for 1,000 faculty and is the overseer of 8,000 staff.

“There has been a tremendous level of cooperation from everyone involved, but anytime there’s talk about creating a more efficient administrative structure, a few people may begin to wonder, ‘what happens to my job?’” Leitzel said.

“To answer that, I can’t assure people they’ll necessarily be at the same desk a year from now, but I can assure everyone that this university does not want to lose its productive support people,” she said. “We’ve been working closely with the Office of Human Resources and we’re assured that Ohio State is big enough and flexible enough that the valued, highly productive employees we have, there will be work for them.”

Leitzel was a professor of mathematics here from 1965 until 1990 (including time as associate provost for curriculum and instruction) before stints as a divisional director at the National Science Foundation, as provost at the University of Nebraska and as president of the University of New Hampshire—where her tenure drew rave reviews.

She was called out of retirement by Alutto and President Gordon Gee to handle the second reorganization of the arts and sciences colleges here this decade.

When those colleges — Arts, Biological Sciences, Humanities, Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Social and Behavioral Sciences — organized into a federation in 2003, it was with the notion that the federated structure would build strength within and across those colleges.

But a committee chaired by vice provosts Randy Smith and Martha Garland concluded the federation had limited financial authority and lack of control over personnel policies so was unable to provide either a unified voice or increased visibility for the colleges.

Part of the new structure already is set, with the five colleges combined into three units — Arts and Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences and Biological, Mathematical and Physical Sciences — each with a divisional dean.

So Leitzel’s charge, which will be aided by an advisory committee of 10 faculty and five staff currently being formed, is threefold.

First is to strengthen the academic programs within the colleges, and Leitzel said that will result from the synergy that comes from combining five colleges.

“Knowledge grows not only within the discipline departmental structures but increasingly across disciplines,” she said. “I’ve been very pleased with the faculty’s initiatives, suggesting ways to put things together in better ways. It’s been reassuring to me to see how engaged people are in coming up with new ideas, putting proposals on the table.”

The priorities will be guided by the strategic plans each college is working on with the Office of Academic Affairs, as well as by the doctoral reviews that were completed during the last academic year.

“We have lot good work that’s been done in recent times that gives us a foundation for making changes,” Leitzel said. “That helps us figure out what we have and how to knit it together more effectively.”

At the same time, the reorganization will aim to position the arts and sciences for strong leadership within the university.

“We have in Arts and Sciences most of the basic areas of knowledge, the foundations for applications made in other colleges, so we need to be well-connected to the other colleges and have a strong voice in institutional decision-making,” Leitzel said.

The third goal is to organize the administrative structure and business practices improve efficiency and reduce redundancy—and that’s happening quickly, with a consultant’s report expected by December. The model for centralizing budgets must be ready to go by June.

She stressed that the work of the reorganization will be largely invisible to students, but that doesn’t mean the work doesn’t matter to students — on the contrary.

“Our academic programs will be better positioned for excellence in a more coherent structure. We will serve faculty research and student learning better in a structure with fewer barriers between programs,” Leitzel said. “So it’s important we get the structure right.”

And Gee reinforced the importance of the reorganization in his semiannual speech to faculty last week.

“We are forging what I fully expect will become the most powerful academic core in the country,” Gee said. “Evidence of the colleges’ influence is everywhere – from Ann Hamilton’s recent Heinz Award to the physics department’s huge contingent working at the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Joan Leitzel’s good judgment and strong leadership will help us to build on that exceptionally strong foundation.”

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