School of Business restructured into two departments

The School of Business has been restructured into two business departments, rather than one singular department. This separates the business school into the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Accounting, Information Systems and Finance.

“The department head now has a much narrower span of control, so from 30 to 15 (faculty), and also the number of disciplines roughly from 10 to five,” said Ed Bashaw, dean of the School of Business. 

By dividing into two departments, the intent is to give the department heads a better sense of what’s going on and increase communication, Bashaw said. 

After structural changes occurred, such as the loss of several faculty members, the business school had the funds available to pay for the two departments and the addition of a department chair, Bashaw said. They kept one secretary for the two departments and the chairs teach more classes than a traditional department head, to help save costs, according to Bashaw

The restructuring became effective in July, after it was approved by the Kansas Board of Regents, according to Bashaw. The proposal process wasn’t lengthy and began during the spring semester, with David Cordle, provost, presenting it to KBOR later on in the semester, Bashaw said. 

Although Bashaw said that the change is smooth enough that it won’t be noticeable for students, and that they will benefit by the addition of another administrator and cut out the number of faculty members students had to go through for help.

One more department head for students to talk to when issues come up is one of the benefits, Bashaw said. Another is adding more opportunities for students, according to Bashaw. 

“Hopefully some of those are going to be that they’ll be put in a position when they have not just issues but when it comes to employment time that there’s another administrator that has worked with the outside community to try to create opportunities for them once they leave,” Bashaw said. “it’s just a whole lot easier to build those relationships that way.”

The two new department chairs will be Joyce Zhou, chair of the Department of Business Administration, and Liz Diers, chair of the Department Accounting, Information Systems and Finance, according to the website. 

“As a department chair, I really want to make this place to be a better place to work, for students so they want to stay and contribute,” Zhou said.