Priority 2

Priority 2

Identify opportunities for new academic structures

In order to leverage the University’s resources and realign them to strengthen areas poised for growth, we will conduct a thorough review of programmatic and course offerings across WVU’s campuses beginning with the Morgantown campus.

In addition to identifying program or course redundancies, we will investigate potential programmatic or administrative organizational mergers with the goal of reducing administrative costs and generating collaborations and innovation, while creating new opportunities for growth and differentiation.

We will utilize a complete audit of all academic offerings at WVU, coupled with additional internal data, such as student success markers, enrollment trends and graduation rates, as well as external benchmarking data focused on recent mergers, consolidations and configurations at peer institutions.

This approach will enable us to make informed decisions on how to best capitalize on University resources and expertise and reinvest resources to support areas of growth and opportunity.

These efforts are focused initially on WVU’s Downtown and Evansdale campuses and will extend to regional campuses in the future. WVU Health Sciences is leading its own transformation process, although HSC faculty and leadership will participate in helping to identify shared areas of growth and opportunity.

Results to Date

• Announced merger of College of Activity and Sport Sciences and College of Education and Human Services to form new college.
• Through an inclusive process, determined name and structure of the new College of Applied Human Sciences.
• Engaged external agency to determine brand identity of the new college.
• Conducted successful search for founding dean of the new College of Applied Human Sciences; announced founding dean in May 2022.
• Created new Center for Community Engagement within WVU Extension to replace former Center for Service and Learning.
• Transitioned bachelor’s in Economics program from Eberly College of Arts and Sciences to Chambers College of Business and Economics.
• Transitioned the National Student Exchange program from Student Life to the Office of Global Affairs.
• Launched task force and discussions about an Interdisciplinary Incubator housed in the Office of the Provost to facilitate innovation and intercollegiate program development.
• Drafted and shared for discussion a sample memorandum of understanding for interdisciplinary program development.
• Hosted fall Academic Innovation Summit with key leaders, faculty and staff to develop the vision, goals and structure for a new academic innovation incubator.
  
• Began developing operational plans for a new academic innovation incubator.
  

Next Steps

• Determine process to incubate and support new academic programs.
• Create structure to house and processes to support intercollegiate academic programs.