June 29, 2022
To Our Campus Community:
We’re excited to announce the official launch of our new academic unit realignment on July 1, a bold change initiated as part of UMKC Forward.
Far more than unit names and program homes will change as a result of this initiative. Our students will be immersed in exposure to different disciplines and a new philosophy on what a college education is. It will change the way our students think, the way they act and accelerate their potential. For faculty and staff, this change will create new opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation and discovery and will generate renewed energy and inspiration.
On a more practical note, many faculty and staff have worked for months to get ready: setting up new faculty governance structures, moving programs into their new academic unit homes, updating course catalogs and so on. On July 1, the websites for these new units will go live online and you will begin to see changes in signage and other physical indicators of the changes.
This is the beginning of a new generation of Roos!
The realignment created three new schools:
The School of Education, Social Work and Psychological Sciences will incorporate these units: Education Leadership, Policy and Foundations; Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies; Social Work; Counseling and Counseling Psychology; and Psychology. Carolyn Barber, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation/Missouri Endowed Faculty Chair and professor will continue as interim dean for the upcoming academic year while a national search for a new dean is conducted.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences will incorporate these units: Media, Art and Design; Communication and Journalism; English Language and Literature; Foreign Languages and Literatures; History; Sociology and Anthropology; Economics; Political Science and Philosophy; Race, Ethnic and Gender Studies; and Criminal Justice and Criminology.
The SHSS inaugural dean is the newly appointed Tamara L. Falicov, Ph.D., who previously served as associate dean in Arts, Humanities and Area Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas.
The School of Science and Engineering has been reorganized into four divisions, with these programs in each:
- Division of Biological and Biomedical Systems: Biology, Biomedical Engineering
- Division of Computing, Analytics and Mathematics: Computer Science and Information Technology, Mathematics and Statistics
- Division of Energy, Matter and Systems: Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Astronomy
- Division of Natural and Built Environment: Architecture and Urban Planning, Civil Engineering, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Kevin Truman, Ph.D., current dean of the School of Computing and Engineering, will take the role of dean of SSE. The following schools will retain their existing structure: Henry W. Bloch School of Management, Conservatory, School of Dentistry, School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Health Studies and School of Pharmacy.
This process began in 2020 with the formation of UMKC Forward, a collaboration of faculty, staff and students from across the university charged with developing a new vision for the university’s future. In addition to the academic realignment, the resulting plan also called for investing more than $50 million to $60 million over the next five years in five key strategic areas - Student Success, Faculty Development, Research Excellence, Career Expansion and Community Engagement - plus an additional $5 million in new tenure and tenure-track faculty over the next three years.
As with all UMKC Forward initiatives, our goal for this realignment is expanding excellence. The realignment will allow us to create synergy and innovation in the essential elements of our mission of teaching, research and service, and promote collaborative research and student success.
Sincerely,
C. Mauli Agrawal, Ph.D.
Chancellor
Jenny Lundgren, Ph.D.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
