College
New College brings together common educational interests reduction in the number of colleges at SDSU, from eight to seven, doesn’t equate into a lessening of the institution’s academic integrity. The College of Education and Counseling and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, separate colleges for many years, plus the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation from the College of Arts and Sciences, are now one entity. The two colleges and the department joined to form the College of Education and Human Sciences effective July 1, 2009. The new College boasts the largest graduate enrollment of any college on campus with about 500 graduate students and 2,300 total students. With fifteen undergraduate majors and twelve graduate degree tracks, the merger brings together seven departments: • Counseling and human resource development. • Educational leadership. • Teacher education. • Design, merchandising and consumer sciences. • Human development. • Nutrition, food science and hospitality. • Health, physical education, and recreation.
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Nursing and Fine Arts Building
Wenona Hall
Southeast entrance of HPER
2 SDSU
Efficient use of resources Whether it’s through cognitive skills developed in early childhood, kindergarten through grade twelve or adult education; aesthetics interests through apparel merchandising and interior design; or helping develop lifelong habits of wellness through nutrition and health, physical education, and recreation, administrators say the new College will better educate students through a single, coordinated college. “The primary purpose of the new College is to bring together different disciplines to increase interaction and to really build stronger programs,” explains Interim Dean David Hilderbrand. “It (one college) will be more efficient,” he adds. “We can use our resources more
effectively and build better collaboration in all academic areas of the College.” Efficiency means courses delivered by one college will be incorporated into programs of the other college. Most noticeably, though, is the number of departments will be reduced to five or four, which, according to Hilderbrand, means some administrative dollars could be rolled into support for expanded instruction, scholarship, and service by faculty. “It will give us the opportunity to use some dollars in different ways,” he says. “Faculty from the two colleges may find themselves in the same department in the new College. The new departments will have more faculty because there will be fewer departments.” New departments coming All existing departments, like nutrition and food science, and health, physical education and recreation will be restructured, observes Hilderbrand, who notes it’s conceivable that some departments may keep their name in some form. As an example, Hilderbrand points to human development in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, and counseling in the College of Education and Counseling. “Counseling and human development have a natural, common bond,” he says. “We may have a new department whose name could have a form of both titles in it, but we don’t know yet. As we study the interrelationships this year we may find other connections that are stronger.” Whatever the case, Hilderbrand indicates everything will be settled by January 1, 2010. “One of my responsibilities is to make recommendations by the end of the calendar year on the names and structures of the new departments,” he says. “The current departments will be in existence until the end of this academic year.” Sam Gingerich, the Board of Regents’ chief academic officer, says, “This new structure positions SDSU very well to respond to state workforce development needs in the broader fields of education and human sciences.” Kyle Johnson