By Kami Steinle, Josh Pfleger-Bernat

Nearly every college at Wichita State is planning to undergo department mergers or restructuring, but the reason isn’t entirely clear. 

Faculty are concerned about reorganization of departments being rushed, and are seeking clear answers before the plans start being reviewed by the provost in October.  

According to proposed plans sent to The Sunflower by Lainie Mazzullo-Hart, director of strategic communication, Liberal Arts and Sciences will merge sociology with social work, political science with public administration and English with philosophy. The College of Education will merge the School of Teaching and Learning with the teaching apprenticeship pathways, literacy and special education department. The College of Engineering has not yet submitted its proposal, but at least one of its departments will be merged. 

The College of Health Professions plans to restructure into three departments that will house disciplines: clinical sciences will house dental hygiene, advanced education in general dentistry, medical laboratory sciences and physician associate; rehabilitation sciences will house communication sciences and disorders, athletic training and physical therapy; and population health sciences will house exercise science, health science, aging studies and health management and administration. The School of Nursing will remain the same.

To implement the mergers, administration has suggested using policy 2.10 — program discontinuance — which is exacerbating controversy among faculty.

“This policy has a wide range of prescription for who ought to look at these proposals,” Provost Monica Lounsbery said. “I find that attractive. There isn’t very much else related to that I think is germane here. I don’t know that our faculty are hearing that, I mean, they’re really, really hyper focused on the policy itself, and there are a lot of provisions in that policy that are not germane to the context.”

Stephanie Newbold, director of the Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs, said LAS faculty were told in fall 2025 that they had too many departments, and that was the primary reason for merging.

“None of us had a choice as to how we were merged,” Newbold said. “That was decided by individuals above us.”

Faculty were not notified that policy 2.10 was being used until over the summer. Matthew Muether, associate vice provost for faculty affairs. said the policy had been presented to and cleared by general counsel — who provides legal services for the university — which happened before notifying faculty that this policy was being used, according to Newbold. 

“It certainly seems like the university administration wanted these mergers to go through and needed a way to do that,” Alexandra Middlewood, political science department chair said. “So, they’re trying to retrofit this policy that existed to fit this current merger need, versus slowing down, taking time to actually implement a new policy that could successfully get these departments through these mergers.”

Whether or not the policy applies to this situation wasn’t explicitly confirmed by Lounsbery. In a Faculty Senate meeting on September 14, the main topic of discussion was the validity of using this policy. Faculty expressed concerns around the disregard for shared governance by the administration, and the policy never originally being intended for mergers.

The general consensus from faculty members was that the policy says the reasons for discontinuance must be based in “educational considerations” separate from financial concerns, and they said administration has not given a clear answer to whether this is driven by finances or clear academic objectives.

Financially, the university isn’t currently in a dire situation, but according to Provost Monica Lounsbery, these are happening as a precaution in case there are more budget cuts for the coming fiscal years.

In January, the university announced a 7% reduction in its budget, and in the FY27 budget, it can be seen that revenue is projected to be up from both state funding and tuition. 

“There’s just innumerable kinds of examples of how revenue has not kept pace with cost,” Lounsbery said. “… We got to do it because if the legislature chooses to cut us, and they might, with those costs we just talked about, even though, ‘Well, there’s new revenue because we increased tuition.’ Ok, but yeah, it just got ate up. It’s like one step forward and five steps back.”

At the beginning of the Faculty Senate meeting, Susan Castro, associate professor of philosophy, said she was working on a resolution that will be presented at the next meeting on September 28 to make a new policy that would better fit this situation.

“Our university makes a very strong distinction between policy and procedure,” Castro said in the Faculty Senate meeting. “Policies take years to get through all the approval steps. We are proceeding before any of that has been happening. 

“We did that last year, and from all intents and purposes, it seems like this freight train is going now. The purpose of offering the resolution now is to halt that freight train just a little, so that we do have input and the faculty senate resolution is the voice of the faculty.”

Many faculty members expressed their disapproval of using this policy, and Newbold made a motion to not use the policy for this situation. After more discussion, the faculty senate passed a statement that said policy 2.10 was inappropriate for department mergers. 

“The idea that a merger is the same as discontinuing an academic department is really disturbing,” Newbold said. “… if we use this policy, it’s just a terrible look for how the university presents itself to the community, to outward-facing partners — that we don’t look functional.”

Lounsbery said the language in the policy is anxiety-inducing, which was her explanation for why faculty are against using the policy. 

“(The policy) starts to talk about faculty in the affected unit, can be laid off,” Lounsbery said. “So that’s not what we’re doing. And no matter how many times this is being communicated, I think saying that we’re using this policy is creating a barrier and it’s creating a trust factor for our campus.”

When asked what role faculty should play in these situations, she replied that she herself is a faculty member and emphasized the importance of understanding the financial situation. 

“I think faculty need to understand the gravity of the real financial situation higher education is in across the country, including this institution,” Lounsbery said.

The possibility of further financial constraints is the exact reason why a merger policy is a necessity, but the lack of communication has created accusations among faculty of administration of being disingenuous, Castro said.

Some faculty members have expressed that there has been little to no communication about any of the mergers happening. 

“There’s definitely been a lack of transparency on the university side about department mergers,” Middlewood said. “All the way from why certain departments were on this list to begin with, to which department each department was going to merge with.”

During the September 14 faculty senate meeting, Matthew Muether presented slides showing the multiple town halls and meetings that occurred to discuss mergers. None of those meetings mentioned the use of policy 2.10, according to faculty.

Middlewood, Newbold, and Castro all independently told The Sunflower that those meetings were high-level, largely led by leadership and lacked specific discussions between departments.

Lounsbery said that most of the communication faculty would have received should’ve been through their deans.

“It’s confusing to me because they do know what’s going on, and even affected units will know, you heard that, ‘I’m in an affected unit,’ well that’s what’s happening,” Lounsbery said.

That is in contrast with what multiple faculty members affected by the mergers have said to the Sunflower.

Newbold confirmed the philosophy department submitted four separate merger proposals, indicating faculty’s view about which department would be best to merge with. Each of those proposals was denied with no reason given, and philosophy is now being merged with the English department.

Middlewood and Newbold said they have been working together to coordinate what a merger between political science and public affairs would look like, but are struggling to do so with lack of proper guidance.

“This summer, I know our dean and her staff submitted formal plans for what these mergers were going to look like for each department’s concern,” Newbold said. “We’ve never seen what that plan is. We didn’t have a say in its construction. We didn’t have a voice in what it was going to outline and articulate moving forward, and to this day we still have not seen it.”

Chase Billingham, professor of sociology, said last year these mergers were brought up to LAS faculty by the dean, but no reasoning was provided other than it would be a way to save money if needed. 

“It is completely illegitimate,” Billingham said. “And is an attempt to justify — after the fact — the rushed proposals that were already in development last year that academic departments — at least mine — have not even seen the justification for why we are supposed to be merging.”

Billingham said the budgetary crisis that the university has said it is going through does not necessarily line up because, according to the budget for FY27, the university’s financial position is decent.

“I didn’t quite understand what was going on,” Billingham said about the proposal that was presented by the dean in the spring. “And now we’re hearing again that the proposed restructures are based upon the budget, but the university has not declared a state of financial exigency. So where is that disconnect?” 

Billingham said he noticed money being moved from academics to athletics in the FY27 budget. 

Lounsbery said she has heard those concerns.

“I don’t feel good about when we move into spaces and places where we’re talking about others, and we’re deflecting what others should be doing,” Lounsbery said. “I heard a comment about athletics, well, in this difficult budget period, athletics has suffered, I think pretty greatly.”

Last semester, WSU athletics discontinued both men’s and women’s golf programs. Billingham said the $5 million that was cut from Academic Affairs correlated to an increase of about $5 million in the Office of the President for intercollegiate athletics — which had never been funded through the Office of the President other than small amounts to pay some coaches and other personnel. 

“It just basically says: miscellaneous other expenditures. It hasn’t been made clear exactly what those are. It’s completely hidden,” Billingham said. “But that is what is driving this entire ship, is a reallocation of money away from the academic mission of the university to other places in this university.”

Kami Steinle is the news editor for The Sunflower. Steinle is a sophomore majoring in painting. After graduating, Steinle plans to work as a curator. Steinle uses she/her pronouns.

Josh Pfleger-Bernat is the in-depth editor for The Sunflower. He is a junior studying political science with a minor in communications and plans to pursue a career as a political journalist. Pfleger-Bernat uses he/him pronouns.

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