The College of Education has planned to merge some of its departments this summer, but changes will not affect students or courses.

The department of educational psychology and foundations and the educational leadership and school business management programs will merge to become one unit starting July 1.

“The programs are the same, and the degrees are all intact,” said College of Education Dean Christine Sorensen. “The faculty are all there, and the staff are all employed. It’s not a reorganization and there’s no downsizing, but we did merge some things for a variety of reasons.”

All colleges and departments are under pressure to save money where they can. The College of Education found its opportunity when the chair of leadership in education stepped down from his position.

“We looked at that point and said, ‘Let’s look at the possibilities,’” Sorensen said.

After consulting with the faculty in both departments, Sorensen decided against hiring a replacement and instead asked Wilma Miranda, the current chair of educational psychology and foundations, to fill the vacant position until the departments could merge.

The change is expected to save the college nearly $100,000 in administrative costs.

Miranda hopes that the new department will find ways to integrate the different programs.

“There’s a very obvious link between [those in educational administration and] the foundations of education folks … because they’re engaged in policy analysis and criticism, and of course policy is a big area for administrators,” she said.

There may be challenges while integrating the program, though.

“I think we have a task of finding our areas of mutual interest,” Miranda said. “My job is to try to develop initiatives where faculty can work together and collaborate in areas of common interest.”

Sorensen hopes that students see a benefit from the change.

“[The merge] helps us maintain our teaching capacity,” she said, “because instead we’re able to invest that money to hire faculty to teach the courses rather than use the money to hire an administrator.”

The new organization may be set, but faculty and administrators are still not sure what to call the new department.

“This semester we will be dealing with the question of an appropriate name for the new unit,” Miranda said. “That’s a decision that the faculty has to be involved in.”