10/10/2024

Dear Stony Brook Community,

As a flagship university, we have strengths across a comprehensive set of disciplines. When we have the right structures in place, our faculty and the departments they’re affiliated with are able to serve our students most effectively while building disciplinary strengths as well as cross-disciplinary partnerships. To support these important goals, the Office of the Provost leads conversations with members across our community in considering what structures we have that are working well and which ones might benefit from a closer examination.

Most recently, these conversations have focused on the scholarship and practice of writing at SBU. Specifically, last spring the Provost’s Office formed a committee with at least three representatives each from the Department of English, Lichtenstein Center, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, and School of Communication and Journalism (SOCJ), all chosen by the leadership in those units. The committee also included representatives from senate leadership, as well as from the deans’ offices from the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and SOCJ. The committee met five times in the spring to deepen their understanding of each others’ units, considering points of synergy, and unique differences, with a focus on how each contributed to the educational experience for our students. They were incredibly thoughtful conversations that produced an array of possibilities and built new connections among those who participated.

Based on these committee meetings and many more small group and individual meetings I held with faculty and staff across these disciplines, I have come to some decisions regarding several structural changes. I have had final discussions with leaders of the units involved in the committee and shared these decisions with them. Now I am pleased to share them broadly.

By the end of this academic year, we will make the following changes in unit structure and reporting lines:

• The Lichtenstein Center will become a department within the College of Arts and Sciences, a change from its current reporting line to the Provost’s Office. This change will not impact the current location of programs across Southampton, main campus, and Manhattan. Their move into one of our academic colleges will support their rapid growth and potential as a core academic unit at SBU.
• The Program in Writing and Rhetoric will become a department within the College of Arts and Sciences, where it currently resides. Their growth into a department is important for recognizing the importance of their scholarship and the critical role they play in the teaching of writing and rhetoric as foundational skills for our students.
• The Department of English and the School of Communication and Journalism will remain unchanged, but will have the opportunity to pursue multiple new curricular possibilities that arose across these conversations.
  
  

By bringing together English, Writing and Rhetoric, and the Lichtenstein Center as departments in CAS, we are able to foster more interdisciplinary collaborations and cohesion among these units serving as a core part of the outstanding liberal arts education provided to our students. This will require clear delineation of the domain of each unit. This clarity will allow units to better know where they have autonomy in curricular developments, as well as where there are opportunities for collaboration across units. As a recent example, a BA in Rhetoric and Writing, jointly led by Writing and Rhetoric and the School of Communication and Journalism, is pending approval by NYSED.

Throughout this process, we have engaged in many difficult conversations. In each instance, I have been pleased by the ways our faculty and staff have approached this process with intellectual curiosity and an openness to growth through change. I am optimistic that these conversations will facilitate further cross-unit collaboration across SBU supporting new curricular offerings that optimize undergraduate students’ awareness, understanding, and access to writing courses, and opening new possibilities for collaborative research for faculty and graduate students.

With the decisions outlined above now in place, the remainder of this semester will be used to work through important details such as the naming and structure of the units becoming departments, as well as how we will provide transparency and clarity, particularly to students and those advising them regarding their interests and opportunities in writing across its multiple iterations across the university. We will then use the spring semester for final implementation with the changes officially being in place for Fall 2025. We will work closely with shared governance partners throughout these steps.

I look forward to implementing these changes and appreciate the partnership of our faculty and staff in arriving at this decision.

Sincerely,
Carl