BEMIDJI—Bemidji State University plans to reshuffle it’s academic departments before the 2018-19 school year.

School leaders agreed this month to reorganize the university into three renamed colleges that, staff say, will have a more even workload between them—and save the university about $150,000 annually.

Departments such as English and history will end up in the College of Arts, Education and Humanities; math, and biology will be in a new College of Business, Mathematics and Science; and nursing and political science will become part of the tentatively named College of Individual and Community Health, among other moves.

The reorganization evens out the number of staff—and therefore the administrative workload—at each college, said BSU spokesperson Scott Faust. Documents supplied to the Pioneer indicate that the former Arts and Science College had nearly twice as many enrolled full-time equivalent students than the former College of Business or College of Health Science & Human Ecology. It had more full-time faculty than both of the other colleges combined, too.

“It was imbalanced in terms of, frankly, the workload, if you will, for the deans,” Faust said. “The scope of their responsibilities…were out of balance. The College of Arts and Sciences had an excess amount of faculty and programs.”

Under the new model, each college will have nearly equal full-time faculty numbers. The new model is expected to save the university $150,000 annually because administrators there can eliminate an assistant dean job and an administrative associate job from the former Arts and Science College, but Faust said the savings there weren’t the motivation behind the reorganization.

The positions were already empty, he explained, and won’t be needed under the new plan.