Kent State’s Center for Comparative and Integrative Programs will undergo a name change and revision effective fall 2021, the Faculty Senate approves in Monday’s meeting.

The center, a part of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, will become the School for Multidisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities. The school will have the same administrative structure as the academic department, which will include a director.

As part of the change, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality will move into the new school. Six faculty members will also join the school. The university plans to move an additional three faculty from the international relations major.

“It will hold all the same programs that are currently in the center. Bar pre-law, which we’re moving to political science because that’s a more natural home for that to live in, and then we’re moving the major international relations from political science into the school because it pulls from political science, geography, history [and] English,” Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said in the meeting.

The school will have about 250 majors and nine faculty members, Munro-Stasiuk said.

The university, as well as Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Division of Graduate Studies Manfred van Dulmen, has been discussing the possibility of the School for Multidisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanity as a model moving forward. 

“This is the direction I think we should move, and I think we can make some logical steps to move the direction. … On all educational levels I think we could build an infrastructure at the university level,” van Dulmen said.

Munro-Stasiuk said she feels faculty morale will likely be improved as a result of the revisions. When she joined the College of Arts and Sciences, she said the center’s faculty body had “a lot of discontent.”

“Once we have this structure in place, all of the faculty will be much happier,” Munro-Stasiuk said. “I know most of them are pretty ecstatic, actually, about these changes that are taking place. … It’ll give them a sense of place, a sense of community [and] a shared vision moving forward. … I think there’s a place where some really major, innovative things can happen within this new school.”

Kelly Krabill and Emma Andrus cover administration. Contact them at [email protected] and [email protected].