Exploring Academic Department Clusters
from Call for Faculty Proposals, Fall 2015
Mount Holyoke has received a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation to engage in a pilot project to explore academic department clusters, and potentially de-clustering and re-clustering. The Dean of Faculty is issuing a call for proposals to members of two more more departments who wish to plan and participate in an academic department cluster pilot project in 2016-17.*
Our beginning definition for a department cluster is the combining of two or more departments under a single faculty chair, but many formats are possible. We are interested in what faculty can imagine as a cluster. We anticipate that department clusters may increase opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration, enhance the engagement and continuity in collaborative governance, and create opportunities for increased administrative support and career opportunities for staff.
The Davis Educational grant will support a year of planning (2015-16*) for the pilot project. Participants will:
- Form a cluster group (2 or more departments)
- Hold several meetings of your cluster group during Fall 2015 and Spring 2016;* groups will receive a budget of $2,000 for meals, books, and materials.
- Be eligible to participate in a faculty seminar on academic department clusters chaired by Sonya Stephens; the seminar will meet three times between December 2015 and March 2016; participants will receive a stipend of $500 each; the goal of the seminar is to develop a plan for those departments participating in the planning process to test department clusters in 2016-17.*
The Davis Educational grant will also fund a speaker series that will take place in the spring of 2016 relating to the role of faculty chairs and faculty leadership, and to the themes of community, collaboration, and connection. We will hold a campus-wide forum in March 2016 to share a draft of the plan to test academic department clusters.
*The call yielded two proposals for academic clusters–European Studies and Ancient & Medieval Studies. Funding was granted to these clusters officially in Spring 2016, and planning has subsequently been pushed back. In AY 2016-17, the two clusters will engage in a planning process through two concurrently held faculty seminars to discuss faculty research, and to re-imagine governance and student curriculum. The projected pilot year for the academic clusters is 2017-18.