Academic Units that will be joining the College of Health:
Department of Health Science
Department of Social Work
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
School of Nursing
School of Kinesiology
The proposal passed Sept. 23 at the University Board of Trustees meeting.
Mitchell Whaley, chairman of the implementation task force of the College of Health, said establishing the college will help Ball State’s health programs stand out.
“We felt as though the creation and co-locating our health related academic programs would actually make a more cohesive unit within the university that would help us attract faculty and students,” Whaley said. “That has been a problem in some of our health related academic departments in the past; … they were embedded in a college that didn’t necessarily look, on paper, as a health college.”
Whaley, who is also dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Technology, said he is confident the remaining work can be completed in time.
The new college’s vision is to provide health care across the lifespan, with programs for children through adulthood to old age. Its goal is to enhance the understanding of health and well-being for all ages through inter-professional development and environments.
Whaley said the College of Health will focus on collaboration, with students in different disciplines and programs all working together. The future College of Health building will have a multi-purpose clinic for all academic programs to share.
“[The clinic] would be shared by all the academic programs, and in that particular space, students and faculty from the different disciplines will have on-campus opportunities … to practice together,” Whaley said. “That’s something that their professions are asking us to better prepare them to do once they get into the marketplace.”
Two programs will be joining the College of Health, along with the five departments that are slated to make up the school. Counseling psychology has agreed to move from Teacher’s College, and nutrition and dietetics will move from the Department of Family and Consumer Science.
The College of Health will have a couple hundred faculty and anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 students once it is fully populated. That is consistent with the current size of the College of Applied Science and Technology.
The construction of a future College of Health building was approved at a University Board of Trustees meeting this past summer. President Paul W. Ferguson said he was pleased the new college already has an established plan for a building, which was unusual.
"Even the better news of course is that we have a building to populate, and that’s usually very rare," Ferguson said. "Usually in my experience it’s just the opposite."
Ferguson said the establishment of the College of Health was a good example of how vision and implementation can come together. He said the college fits with his vision for Ball State.
“It really is that student-centered, community-engaged and 21st century public research university profile. That’s our first major initiative that really integrates all of it,” Ferguson said. “I think Ball State will be different when this is fully integrated."
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