The over-four-year initiative to create a College of the Arts was dropped in the spring, replaced by a plan that would revamp the Art Institute instead, University Committee Chair Michael Bernard-Donals said at a Faculty Senate meeting Monday.
The college would have brought together arts programs housed in different University of Wisconsin-Madison schools into one unit with a single dean.
School of Music Assistant Director Benjamin Schultz said the new proposal brought forward in the wake of ending the College of the Arts would reorganize the Art Institute, where representatives from arts departments across campus currently assemble to promote cross-department collaboration and discuss issues such as financial support for arts students.
Multiple factors played a role in the decision to call an end to the College of the Arts, Schultz said. For example, several arts departments voted to decline joining the proposed college.
“There wasn’t enough unification between the arts departments on campus,” Schultz said.
The School of Music was one of the programs that decided not to join the proposed college, although Schultz himself did not vote on the matter.
Some of the contention within the School of Music came from music academics who believed their research needs were best served by staying in the College of Letters and Science, faculty senator and music professor James Doing told The Daily Cardinal in April.
Professors of different departments were also worried about the financial burden of creating a new college with its own dean, Schultz said.
A May 2012 proposal said the College of the Arts would have cost $2,635,000 in addition to money that would have been transferred to the college from the participating departments and programs.
“Many people felt that money could be used elsewhere in support of students and departments that currently exist,” Schultz said.
In the end, Schultz said, faculty on both sides were trying to decide how to most effectively serve students.
“These different professors and faculty members, they do have the best interest of the students at heart,” Schultz said. “They want them to experience the arts as much as they can.”
