Kent State University's Board of Trustees gave their approval Wednesday to a university plan that will consolidate academic colleges and leadership, reducing the number of deans and department chairs by 40%.
The "Transformation 2028" plan would eliminate the positions of 30 of those 78 academic leaders. The "vast majority" of those leaders will return to faculty roles at Kent State, said Emily Vincent, director of university media relations. For the rest, she said it's "too soon to say" what will happen to their employment, whether that means they will retire, be laid off or something else.
The transformation plan calls for reducing the total number of academic colleges and schools, bringing some under the same umbrella as others, "reducing redundancies and streamlining processes," the university wrote in a news release Wednesday. The reorganization is estimated to save $1.5 million a year for the university, while also allowing for new collaborations between different disciplines.
The board will still need to vote to approve future actions related to the plan, which will be implemented in phases and expected to be fully in place by 2028.
"The Board endorsed the recommended structure to enable the division to proceed with planning for full implementation by 2028 and acknowledged that the specific organizational and curricular actions necessary to implement the plan will come to the Board for approval in accordance with university policy," the news release reads.
As an example of what the reorganization could look like, the new "College of Architecture and Built Environments" and the "College of Arts, Design and Media" will each retain their own deans but will share “other academic leadership, administrative support and resources,” according to a copy of the university’s Transformation 2028 plan. The College of Arts, Design and Media would be a new college resulting from merging most of the schools from the College of Communication and Information and schools from the College of the Arts. The names are not final and will be determined later with input from faculty, the university has previously said.
Tracy Laux, chair of Kent State’s faculty senate, said in a February 2025 interview that programs being consolidated under one roof will be a good thing for both students and faculty, leading potentially to new ideas for courses.
“(This would) create certain synergies between academic programs academic departments that could work together that never worked together before, but would be beneficial to do so,” he explained. “And that started exciting people in the academic sector, more than the cost reduction part, of course.”
The Transformation 2028 plan explains that support staff and administrators will be "shared" across colleges and departments to save money. However, it's "yet to be determined" if any layoffs will happen down the road because of it, University Communications & Marketing Assistant Vice President Eric Mansfield said in a February 2025 interview.
The board of trustees also approved "inactivating" nine majors during the March 19 meeting, which was unrelated to the Transformation 2028 plan. Many of the majors had "low enrollment" over the last few years, the university said in its release. The majors ending as of fall 2025 are listed below:
- The conducting major in the master of music degree
- The music composition major within the master of arts degree
- The media and journalism major with the master of arts degree
- The public health major within the master of public health degree
- The athletic training major within the bachelor of science degree
- The managerial marketing major within the bachelor of business administration degree
- The enology major within the associate of applied science degree
- The viticulture major within the associate of applied science degree
- The environment management major within the associate of technical study degree
The trustees also approved creation of three new majors to begin in fall 2025 for several in-demand job areas. The College of Public Health will have two new masters programs: a health policy and management major, and a social and behavioral sciences major. Meanwhile, the College of Communication and Information will have a new user experience design major for its bachelor of science degree.
The transformation plan and sunsetting of the majors comes as higher education institutions across the region and country have been making moves to adapt after years of declining enrollment and costs increasing across the board.
