In early December, Missouri State University announced that two colleges would soon merge into one: the Judith Enyeart Reynolds College of Arts and Humanities.
The announcement came about four months after MSU President Clif Smart said two newly hired executives would lead efforts to address declining enrollment trends and realign structure to help address an academic budget shortfall.
The need to reimagine how MSU’s departments are shaped is widely understood by MSU faculty, a faculty representative said at the Dec. 15 MSU Board of Governors meeting. But MSU Faculty Senate Chair Michael Hudson said the speed with which the change came about has stirred some anxiety in him.
This past semester, Smart called for a modernization of academic affairs in the midst of “a fast-changing and uber-competitive market and sector.”
That has driven the pace of MSU’s reorganization initiatives and Smart said he understood why the swift process to merge two colleges would cause anxiety for Hudson or other faculty members. But Smart vowed the ongoing process of reimagining the arts and humanities college, and the shape of the university as a whole, will be ones with open lines of communication.
Anxiety, along with change, is expected, Faculty Senate head says
Citing Edgar Schein, an MIT professor who has researched organizational structure, Hudson said there tend to be two forms of anxiety that people go through during a transformative change — survival anxiety and learning anxiety.
- Survival anxiety, Schein said, is the realization that changes must be made in order to survive.
- Learning anxiety, he said, is the resistance to trying something new for fear of failure. Major changes, he’s said, only happen when people come to “the horrible realization that in order to make it, you're going to have to change.”
Hudson didn’t talk about horrible realizations but did say university leaders have addressed survival anxiety ever since Smart announced earlier this year that Interim Provost John Jasinski and Executive Vice President Zora Mulligan would be tasked with cutting $5 million from the 2024 budget and reinvesting about $1.8 million of it across a university environment in need of change.
Decreasing year-over-year enrollment trends have already resulted in the creation of a new full-ride scholarship for Pell Grant-eligible students and led to partnerships with new enrollment consultants at MSU, for instance. The Faculty Senate, Hudson said, understands the need for structural change for the university’s long-term health.
Addressing the learning anxiety, he said, remains a work in progress.
Hudson said he was speaking personally and not on behalf of his Faculty Senate colleagues. He said he believed his anxiety “stems from the speed at which this process is going,” and how the speed had limited channels to communicate about the work being done.
Hudson thanked Jasinski and Mulligan for speaking during recent Faculty Senate meetings, and said his conversations with them have made him feel more comfortable with the realignment decisions made so far. Hudson encouraged university leaders to consider ways to expand communication and involvement efforts with MSU faculty.
Smart said he understood that major changes would cause unease and require open lines of communication, and said Jasinski will be leading efforts to offer opportunities for faculty engagement next semester as the new college takes a more defined shape.
Smart said as university leaders address questions next semester about what the merger means for the two colleges — “What are the departments going to ultimately look like? Are we going to have departments? Or is it another form?” — faculty will have numerous opportunities for input.
“We are absolutely committed to doing this in a transparent way with significant faculty engagement,” he said. “People will see significantly more faculty engagement as we work to put the details together than you saw (during) the first semester, which (was where) we were putting the high-level framework together. I do appreciate that transformational change creates anxiety, and we are absolutely committed — all of us — to making sure that you, as a valued partner, and faculty as a critical group, are engaged in every aspect.”
Opportunities set for input from faculty, staff, others
Next month, MSU leaders will host an online town hall event in which participants will be able to discuss the Judith Enyeart Reynolds College of Arts and Humanities merger, as well as enrollment and academic realignment efforts underway at the university.
Smart wrote recently that the new college would take shape during the spring semester, with a transition team led by the deans of the two merging colleges.
“Between Jan. 5 and May 31, 2023, Deans Victor Matthews and Shawn Wahl will lead a transition team to prepare for the launch of the new college,” Smart wrote. “They will focus on strengthening faculty teaching, research and service collaboration across the arts and humanities.”
Jasinski said there will be numerous opportunities for faculty, staff and the MSU community at large to provide input from January through April. Then, he said, the deans’ team will provide recommendations in April for options about what the organizational structure of the College of Arts and Humanities could look like — and factor in feedback as the team makes major decisions in May.
On July 1, the new college officially opens its doors, exactly one year after Jasinski started at MSU.
