90 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS • Events (speakers and conferences) were coordinated and co-sponsored, resulting in increased attendance and reduced costs • One person—the outreach coordinator—represented all the programs to the broader community c) Soon after coming on the job, an A&S dean learned her faculty who specialized in plant science had entered into discussions with faculty members in the College of Agriculture to try to bring together all those interested in collaborative research in the field. The faculty believed synergy between the research they were conducting and the applied focus of research in Agriculture would be beneficial to everyone. The dean and her counterpart in the College of Ag agreed to fund a seminar series under a “Plant Research Center” to feature the work of a member of the faculty or an outside expert. Ideally, learning about each other’s work would lead to collaborative grant proposals, which “is what gets funded these days.” The fac- ulty decided to hold the seminars over lunch in a neutral location, and the effort has proven not only popular but has indeed led to cross-college collaboration and grant awards. The deans further supported this initiative by providing seed grants (around $5,000-$8,000) for collecting data that could then serve as baseline work for grant proposals. The faculty also submitted a proposal for an NSF graduate fellow train- ing grant. The deans expect to continue funding the Center until such time as it generates sufficient F&A to become self-supporting. Staff support is provided by the cooperating departments. 7. Reorganizing from disciplinary clusters into departments A few colleges use disciplinary clusters rather than traditional departments as the organizing framework for all majors and programs. Some small colleges (as illus- trated by the following case) find that disciplinary clusters no longer work when enrollment grows and faculty increases. Relying upon chairs to provide leadership to disciplines in which they have no background is most problematic. In 2005-2006, the administration at a medium-sized private liberal-arts institu- tion raised the idea of changing from its current configuration of five (5) schools housing related faculty and programs and headed by deans, to establishing depart- ments with chairs within those schools. At the time, each discipline had an area coordinator whose basic responsibility was scheduling. The university was growing rapidly in terms of students and faculty, and the lack of departments headed by chairs placed an untenable burden on the deans, who were responsible for the hiring and evaluation of all faculty and directing all assess- ment efforts and program reviews. In 2005, for instance, the School of Humanities housed 12 disciplines offering 14 majors and 20 minors (with 70 fulltime faculty