UW Oshkosh is on pace to finish its academic restructuring plan by the summer as much of the work continues behind the scenes, UWO Provost Edwin Martini said.

The new academic structure divides UWO into six schools contained within three colleges: the College of Business, Arts & Communication; the College of Public Affairs and Education and the College of Nursing, Health Professions and STEM.

The university first announced its plan to redesign UWO’s academic structure in February 2024, proposing two models to improve efficiency and save money.

One of the models won out later that semester, and by June, a proposal for the realignment was sent to the Board of Regents, who approved it on August 22, 2024.

Work to actualize the plan carried on, and implementation of the new academic structure began in January with an effective date of July 1.

Martini said that a lot of the remodeling process has been occurring in the background.

“For the last little while, we’ve been in what I would characterize as quiet mode in terms of the public-facing stuff,” he said. “There’s been a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes.”

Martini said that one of the big ongoing changes behind the scenes is the rebuilding of TitanWeb so that it reflects the new academic structure by the time students sign up for classes later this semester.

“It’ll look the same for students,” he said. “Students will sign up for classes just as they do now, but all the architecture on the back end has been re-engineered to reflect the new structure.”

Another area of change, he said, is occurring in the Faculty Senate, where bylaws and policies are being reworked and crafted to reflect the upcoming changes.

Once they leave the senate, these changes get submitted to the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office of General Counsel to ensure that all the relevant statutes and guidelines are being followed.

They’re then sent back to the Faculty Senate to be voted on. Each individual college is also crafting its own internal bylaws.

Martini said this process is expected to be finished by April, and that all approval needed from the Board of Regents will come to pass by June.

UWO Professor Robert Wagoner, a member of the Faculty Senate, said that the senate is working to rewrite and recompose policies and bylaws that codify the new academic structures.

He said that these changes made by the Faculty Senate include changing the names of positions, correcting inconsistencies and updating language.

In one instance, he said, one of the university’s colleges required people up for review, such as a professor up for tenure or promotion, to submit some of their materials on a floppy disk.

“We took that out,” he said. “The effort, which has been underway in various ways for the past few months … is an effort to make ready all the necessary policies, rules, and procedures that will codify the structures, duties, expectations and procedures within the new colleges and schools that will replace [the current ones] in the summer.”

Wagoner said that the Faculty Senate is largely focusing on foundational policies, such as the university-wide policy on tenure, renewal and promotion (RTP); the faculty constitution and each of the six new schools’ bylaws and RTP policies.

But changes are occurring outside of the Faculty Senate too, as administrators adapt to new roles and responsibilities.

Anne Stevens, the dean of the College of Letters and Science (COLS), will become the dean of the College of Public Affairs and Education under the new academic structure.

She said collaboration has been a large priority for her and others involved in overhauling the university’s academic structure.

“The guiding principle for putting programs into these interdisciplinary schools is to find ways to put things together that are similar — that have either similar curriculum so that they can share and reinforce and collaborate, or similar needs and requirements,” she said.

In one example, she said that two classes in two different colleges utilized the exact same textbook.

 “[These classes are using] basically the same content, but they were two separate classes in two totally separate colleges that weren’t ever collaborating with each other,” she said.

She said that as COLS has grown, it has incorporated many health-related programs such as medical programs, laboratory science, radiologic science, sonography and kinesiology. These programs will all be moving into the School of Nursing & Health Professions, allowing for more collaboration with nursing.

“To have all the programs that are all health care and clinical together, I think there are new opportunities for partnership, for having stronger relationships with hospitals and healthcare providers,” she said.

Stevens said that collaboration under the new academic structure can also help students discover their path at UWO if they’re undecided or want or need to choose a different major.

“A large number of students who come in as pre-nursing don’t get into nursing because they have high GPA thresholds, they don’t have enough seats for all the students who want to be nurses, and currently, some of those students leave the university because they didn’t get into nursing,” she said. “But having nursing and health professions together provides the students a chance to see what other possibilities there are. Maybe you didn’t get into nursing, maybe nursing isn’t for you … so maybe radiologic science is better, or maybe you really love the lab and want to do laboratory science.”

As programs are shifted into their new colleges, each of the deans will have new departments under their control. Stevens said she’s looking forward to the changes to her college and working with new staff, faculty and students.

“We (the Deans) are all taking on some new programs,” she said. “For me, the biggest change will be working with the School of Education and Human Services, which wasn’t part of my responsibilities before. That’s exciting for me. It’ll be fun to get … to work more closely with the school districts, with our educational partners and grow into that role. ”

She said that building around students and advertising UWO as the right place for prospective students is one of the keys toward rebuilding a reimagined “UWO 2.0.”

“We really want to lean into [the message that] we’re a great place that really supports students, that provides a lot of opportunities for students,” she said. “There’s new programs on the horizon, but to me, putting students at the center … that’s really part of the vision.”

Martini said that the university will continue to focus on providing students with experiential and career-ready learning as it transitions toward UWO 2.0.

“When we think about UWO 2.0, we meant to signal — going back to August 2023 — that this was an inflection point for the university, that we we’re willing to make really hard, serious, transformative choices that were going to put us on a path toward long-term viability and sustainability,” he said. “Academic restructuring is absolutely a big part of that.”

He also said that creating a financially responsible university is still a primary focus that feeds into a reimagined version of UWO.

“At the core of [UWO 2.0] is making sure we’re fiscally sustainable, too,” he said. “What we’ve been discussing in Madison … is getting ourselves on that path to financial viability, and the signs there are looking good, and academic restructuring is a big part of that. We’re still on track to save $1.5 million in permanent savings just from the core restructuring itself.”