The University Council executive committee forwarded a reorganization of the College of Education to the full council after lengthy debate at its Thursday meeting.

The plan called for a dissolution of some departments and the of combination others. For example, the math and science departments in the College of Education would become one department under the proposal.

Provost Arnett Mace said the reorganization is necessary because the college’s composition has become too complicated.

“I asked Dean (Louis) Castenell to reorganize the college,” he said. “At the time, it had four associate deans and 19 departments.

“Given fiscal resources going into administration, we as an institution had been criticized internally and externally,” he added.

The highest ranked education colleges in the country had around seven or eight departments, Mace said.

Through the process of combining departments, the school reduced its administrators from 30 to 15, according to Karen Watkins, an associate dean of the College of Education.

But some committee members, like Janet Frick, an associate professor of psychology, said they worried the reorganization of the college would lead to similar actions in other schools.

“Are we going to put together psychology and biology because they both end in -ology?” she asked.

Mace said other deans are considering the same type of reorganization, but he declined to specify which schools would be affected.

Many members of the committee vocalized some hesitations about the lack of power the Council, the University’s faculty governing body, had over the process of reorganizing the College of Education.

Frick brought up her concern that the school already is operating under the new proposal, and the Council’s input in the situation is just a formality.

“(These departments) have been eliminated for a year,” she said. “I’m just concerned that our vote is somewhat meaningless.”

Mace said the process of reorganizing was sensible.

“You can’t think of a reorganization without discussing it with (the college’s faculty) first,” he said.

Frick said the University Council had been “circumvented,” but even more importantly she said she worried faculty in the College of Education had just voted to approve the reorganization out of “weariness.”

Watkins said 73 percent of the faculty voted to approve the reorganization.

Frick said she had talked to at least eight faculty members in the college who were extremely dissatisfied with the rearrangement.

“The fact that more than 25 percent of the faculty oppose it concerns me,” she said.

The University Council will meet on Oct. 21 at 3:30 p.m. in Room 101 of the Student Learning Center.