Office of the President
                                                      September 19, 1967






Members, Board of Trustees:

                  PROPOSED ACADEMIC ORGANIZATION

Background: the University has been seeking to improve its capacity for in-
struction, research, and service in large measure by carrying out the mandates
of the academic plan endorsed in 1964 by the Board of Trustees. In accepting the
implications of the document, Beginning A Second Century, the Board of Trustees,
the faculty, and the administration of this University joined together for the
purpose of providing the Commonwealth with an academic endeavor of renewed
strength and imagination. The most important of the mandates in the 1964 aca-
demic plan called for exploration of certain changes in the academic structure of
the University.

The first mandate was to establish a clecrer cdifferentiation of academic function
within the University, especially through improved use of the Community Colleges.
To a large extent this has been carried out by such steps as an expanded role for
the Community College System, by emphasis upon central review of undergraduate
education and graduate education throughout the University, and by the Board of
Trustees' recent enunciation of a broadened concept underlying the University's
mission of extension and service.

The second charge encouraged the University's revision of its undergraduate
studies program. This was accomplished by establishing a series of components
within every student's course of study, of which the general studies program was
perhaps the most important innovation. All students are now registered for their
first two years in the College of Arts and Sciences. Thus, the key responsibility
has been assigned to that College for offering all. freshmen and sophomores excel-
lent instruction and advisement in those areas of study which the University
determined should be a part of any individual's development before the baccalaure-
ate degree would be merited. The various professional colleges all reviewed and
modified their programs in the context of this challenge.

The third charge spoke of the need to face adequately the immense complexity
today in the broad area of learning which comprises the arts and sciences. The
academic plan called for an improved organization of the College of Arts and
Sciences. In response came a plan from the faculty of that College which the
Board of Trustees adopted, creating seven Schools within the College. These
Schools, each under the leadership of a Director who is also an Associate Dean
in the College, are now the broad program units from which new strength in
teaching, research, and service is emanating from the University's basic studies.



Beyond these three significant goals which the University would now seem to have