120 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS • Have a plan to address pay differences for faculty from the different campuses who will now be located in the same department. • Faculty concepts of workloads are likely to be quite different. Discuss with faculty how to unify these expectations when they are housed in the same college/department. • The academic ability of students and their backgrounds will likely change in the courses taught by faculty. If the perceived quality of students diminishes, remind them to teach to the students they have and not the ones they wish they had. • Not only is an overall plan needed for the consolidated institution and colleges, plans are needed for departments within the college on each campus to ensure a balance of offices, laboratories and classrooms post-consolidation. • Numerous additional curricular and policy changes will be required, including ones to standardize course descriptions and learning outcomes; standardize course pre-requisites and how they are enforced; unify general education requirements and unify college-specific degree requirements; create unified degree programs and programs of study; align course numbers; standardize course and program assessments; agree upon data tracking, program modi- fications, and program directors for accredited programs, and communicate these changes as appropriate to the accreditation agency; and develop new P&T guidelines for the college, then for departments. • Hold holiday parties and other celebratory events, as these are one of the few activities faculty from both campuses will attend. An Ideal Sequence for Mandated College Reorganizations The cases in this chapter demonstrate faculty learn different things at different stages of a reorganization process. The order of such disclosures of information has conse- quences for the campus and buy-in to the process. Faculty and staff will imagine the worst-case scenario if they lack information they need (e.g., Where will the art program end up? Oh no, will it be merged with accounting because they both start with A?). Based upon our discussions with deans, and in the ideal situation where all of these factors are controllable by the institution’s leadership, we recommend these steps towards reorganization be taken in the following order to minimize employee anxiety (Table 7.1). These are not all of the steps or processes to follow (e.g., whether to appoint or search for a dean, how to use task forces to develop recommendations or make decisions by fiat), just the order of key pieces of the process. Above all else, no matter what order they decide to follow, campus leaders should remember to be transparent and to publicly present the order and timing of the process(es) that will follow.