Thursday, March 5, 2026

Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,

Last week, I shared that we are launching an initiative to redesign our large-enrollment, lower division courses using flipped classroom and hybrid learning models. This initiative will ensure every UNT student has a small, high-impact learning experience while also giving our students digital learning experiences that prepare them for a rapidly changing workforce. Already, more than 40 faculty-led course redesign projects are being organized for Fall 2026, and I appreciate the creativity and enthusiasm our faculty and deans are bringing to this work.

Now, I want to share another strategy we will deploy to advance our commitment to excellence and innovation at UNT while reducing administrative costs. Today, UNT has about 60 academic departments. Traditional departmental structures not only involve administrative overhead; they can also become disciplinary silos for students and faculty, making it more difficult for them to pursue research and develop educational programs that address a broad range of intellectual and practical questions. These silos also make it more difficult for the university to be nimble and responsive in our efforts to address changing needs across our region and beyond. At UNT, these considerations have already inspired multiple initiatives within our colleges to develop new organizational structures that address the importance of a broader approach to scholarship and career preparation.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will accelerate these efforts to reorganize our traditional academic departments into larger divisions or schools. Faculty will work under the guidance of academic leadership to develop new structures designed to foster greater collaboration and interdisciplinarity in research, scholarship, and teaching.

Realigned divisions and schools will serve as academic homes for faculty and assume responsibility for developing curriculum, faculty workload and teaching assignments, faculty evaluations, and other administrative functions. Of course, there will be many issues, organizational decisions, and policy documents to consider and address through this reorganization, which will be completed by the end of the 2026-27 academic year.

In particular, the shift to broader divisions and schools will have implications for promotion and tenure. Over the last several weeks, faculty from across the university have been working together with the Office of Faculty Success in the Provost’s Office to develop updated, broader institutional criteria for promotion and tenure. That process is on track to have recommended updates by the end of Summer 2026. This revised institutional framework will allow the necessary work to further specify criteria within colleges, divisions, and schools to be completed over the coming academic year as an important facet of these larger reorganizational efforts.

All of this work is grounded in our commitment to navigate our budget challenges in ways that reflect our values, mission, and the priorities outlined in Look North: UNT 2030. Moving away from smaller, traditional departments to broader, interdisciplinary divisions and schools will allow us to strengthen our effectiveness as a leading public research university while improving our operational efficiency and reducing administrative overhead.

I look forward to working with our faculty and staff on this and other strategies to navigate our immediate budget challenges and strengthen our university for the future. UNT’s greatest days are still ahead of us, and I look forward to what we’ll accomplish together.

Respectfully,

Harrison Keller, Ph.D.
President