The Emory community shares a commitment to building and sustaining a strong Emory College of Arts and Sciences. To do so, the College is closing and reorganizing several departments and programs in order to reallocate funds to support others areas of the arts and sciences program. The College has been engaged in a multi-year process to make these changes, outlined below.

Emory College Revisioning Process

• The process was guided by the bylaws adopted by Emory College of Arts and Sciences faculty 11 years ago.
• The process has taken more than three years and involved appropriate consultation with duly elected faculty committees.
• Consultation appropriately involved faculty rather than students, since faculty have authority over the curriculum.
• The authorized faculty committees have endorsed both the process and the outcome.
• These decisions and the process by which they were reached have been endorsed by the Provost, the President, and the Board of Trustees of the University. The Board also recently reaffirmed its support for the decision, the process, and the work of the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Laney Graduate School.

Program Changes

• In the College, three academic departments and one program will close in a multi-year process: The Division of Educational Studies, the Department of Physical Education, the Department of Visual Arts, and the Program in Journalism.
• Students with an interest in visual arts and/or journalism will have opportunities to explore these subjects in other departments or program structures.
• The Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) will begin a three-year transition from a department to an institute with rotating faculty appointments. In the Laney Graduate Schools, admission to the graduate programs in Educational Studies, Spanish, Economics and the ILA have been suspended.
• The undergraduate economics and Spanish departments are not closing. Majors will continue to be offered and faculty will have the opportunity to strengthen those fields of study.

Faculty, Staff and Students

• All tenured faculty members are being offered positions in other departments, and contracts for all non-tenured faculty members are being honored.
• Approximately 20 staff positions will be eliminated over the next one to five years, and all affected staff will have the opportunity over the next one to five years to be placed elsewhere at Emory. 
• All undergraduates currently majoring in affected programs will have time to complete their degrees.
• The Laney Graduate School will honor commitments to all graduate students in affected programs.

Future Directions

• Emory is investing in new growth areas to help our students become leaders in whatever field they choose.
• Change is built into the decision to reorganize and reallocate. It is an ongoing process that already is engaging the thought and work of many faculty members.
• The dean has asked the College Council to appoint a student advisory committee that will offer input going forward.