UA News

The School of Theatre Arts and the School of Media Arts will merge to create one of the new units.

The Faculty Senate voted unanimously Monday to approve the creation of two new schools.

The School of Theatre Arts and the School of Media Arts, both part of the College of Fine Arts, will merge to become the School of Theatre, Film and Television. In the college of Science, the department of mathematics will unite with the graduate and interdisciplinary programs in applied mathematics and statistics to create the School of Mathematical Sciences.

The merger in the College of Fine Arts is expected to result in substantial cost savings and present new collaborative opportunities for students in theatre arts and media arts, while creation of the School of Mathematical Sciences is expected to help elevate the reputation of the UA's mathematics programs and help them become more competitive when seeking grants, said Gail Burd, vice provost for academic affairs. 

School of Theatre, Film and Television
After sustaining a 7 percent across-the-board budget cut this year, the College of Fine Arts proposed merging its School of Theatre Arts and School of Media Arts in a move expected to save the college $300,000.

The change, which will occur gradually over a few years, will merge the two schools' administrative functions and reduce faculty and staff. There are no anticipated changes to the two schools' current academic programs, but the new structure may spark the creation of new undergraduate and graduate majors over time, Burd said.

Bruce Brockman, current director of the School of Theatre Arts, will head up the new unit, which will consist of six divisions: acting and musical theatre, design and technology, theatre studies, film and television production, film producing, and film and television studies.

"We have a lot of students that are converging, regardless of which of the two schools that they're in now, in the same industry, and I think the bottom line is the lines between theater and film are blurring significantly," Brockman said.

"It seems like a no-brainer to start merging these two activities together into something that's a little more cohesive and that can truly be interdisciplinary rather than just multidisciplinary," he said

School of Mathematical Sciences
Since national ranking organizations often look to larger entities when assigning their rankings, elevating math from a department to a school may be one way to better highlight mathematical accomplishments at the UA, Burd told the Faculty Senate. The name change also could help when applying for grants, she said.

In the new school, the department of mathematics will continue to operate as part of the College of Science, while the graduate and interdisciplinary programs in applied mathematics and in statistics will remain a part of the Graduate College, but the three will work together in what the proposed merger calls a "collegial alliance."

"The goal is that these entities would remain intact and work as separate entities but they would come together to do collaborative activities in the school," Burd said.

The new school will have a director, steering committee and academic advisory board. The director position will rotate each year among the three unit heads.