The University of Texas at Austin is committed to providing all of our students access to a world-class education. That includes providing students with meaningful opportunities to engage with outstanding faculty and to pursue fields of study within a robust and vibrant student community. How we choose to organize ourselves and allocate the resources we steward impacts this important commitment. Our students deserve our best effort to organize thoughtfully and effectively to serve their needs, maintain public trust, and fulfill our public mission.
The College of Liberal Arts operates at around a 15-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio, but is divided into 26 separate departments with student-to-faculty ratios that range from less than 2-to-1 to almost 60-to-1. I asked our Provost and college leadership to evaluate the fairness and effectiveness of this organizational model, recognizing the important distinction between the structure of a department and the subjects we teach, which can exist in many departments. They considered a combination of factors, including size, scope, academic mission, student demand, student-to-faculty ratio, resource allocation, and other dimensions. The review revealed some significant inconsistencies and fragmentation across the college’s departments. The review also provided insight into fields that remain best constituted as stand-alone departments and others that can better serve as focused areas of study within expanded departmental structures that bring together faculty, students, programs, and curricular offerings in new ways.
Based on this review, we are beginning the process to combine seven academic departments into two new academic departments.
