Department or School Name Change

Academic departments may find it necessary or desirable to change their organizational status by renaming their department. Reasons for such changes vary, for example, 

  • Academic discipline changes
  • Industry standards or expectations change
  • Academic programs within a college require re-alignment

All such changes impact the Academic Program Catalog in CMS and may also impact curriculum articulation, academic advising, student records, admissions, and/or financial operations, data reporting requirements, academic scheduling and/or personnel management structures. 

Such changes require review, consultation and recommendation for approval by the following the process below (per University Policy S18-14 [pdf]).

(Changing a Degree Name is not the same as changing a Department name. Degree name changes require Chancellor’s Office approval - see the Program/Subprogram Modify document.)

Proposal Process

Submit a *Department/School Name Change OR Reorganization approval process. View Submit a Proposal in Curriculum for help in initiating the proposal.

Attachments: Official Memo 

Required Components of the Official Memo

The change has must be approved by the College no later than December 1st for inclusion in the subsequent academic year. The memo should include the following:

  1. Brief description about department and its history.
  2. Brief description of current academic standards and trends. 
  3. Include data from other colleges, universities, and CSU departments and professional organizations within the discipline.
  4. Academic Standards: Adding a new degree may lead to renaming a department to reflect the new profile more accurately.
  5. Industry Standards: Corporate understanding of terminology is not necessarily academic understanding of a degree name; e.g., Corporate Financial Management is not understood by many companies to include an accounting component in the curriculum. Documentation may include letters of support from companies and/or organizations within the field. 
  6. Survey of Students: Students often have strong opinions about their degree names; e.g., students in Corporate Financial Management asked that the name be changed to include accounting to make them more competitive for positions based upon the accounting element being named in the degree. Similarly, Speech became Communication Studies. Student surveys may be formal or informal.
  7. Data on how the new name relates to coursework and faculty expertise.
  8. Faculty support for the new name and alternate names discussed.
  9. Letters of support from other potentially impacted departments/programs; e.g., if the name change includes words/terms that overlap with the use of those terms in other programs. Thus, any program seeking to add “media” to the name would need to consult with both Journalism & Mass Communication and Art & Design to discuss their proposal prior to submitting the request to the UGS Committee.

Approval Process 

  1. Department Chair or School Director
  2. College Curriculum Committee
  3. College Dean (or designee)
  4. Curriculum and Research Committee
  5. Provost

After the Approval in Curriculum/Curriculog 

After the department name change has been approved in Curriculog, the department must submit the AAD Organizational Change Checklist to Academic Business and Strategic Operations (ABSO) and include a link to the completed/approved Curriculog form. Implementing the name change will involve a series of tasks as outlined in the AAD Checklist.