Nine of 12 work groups that are planning an upcoming college merger will turn in final or preliminary reports Friday.

The work groups are part of the Planning Committee on the Combination of the Colleges of Education and Family and Consumer Sciences, and their objective has been to find solutions to issues within their assigned areas. The committee will use the groups’ reports to make an overall proposal for the college combination that will be given to Provost Ben Allen.

Four of the nine work groups are presenting their final reports Friday, and the other five groups are turning in preliminary reports.

Final reports and recommendations to the planning committee are due from these work groups: College Name and Mission; Deans’ Offices: Organization and Operations; Student Services; and Technology.

The College Name and Mission work group had its final open forum Monday night, and its online poll for the name of the new college ended Tuesday night.

Planning committee member Roger Smith, associate dean of the College of Education, said the job of the Deans’ Offices: Organization and Operations work group and the Student Services work group is to restructure the administration of the combined colleges.

“One of the real challenges is going to be to recognize the heritage of each college, to build a strong, cohesive, forward-looking group that works together and looks to the future and not just the past,” Smith said.

The Student Services work group looked at each position in the student services departments of both colleges to see how the departments may be combined, said Ken Schindele, coordinator of international programs for the College of Education.

“The charge was to decide how we can best serve the students in what will be the new combined college,” he said. “We make recommendations regarding the functions, the number of people and space.”

Dayle Nickerson, assistant director of student services for the College of Education, said it was a long process for the Student Services group to reach its conclusions.

“We worked from April to August to come up with this report,” she said. “It didn’t come easily — there were differences of philosophy that we had to bring together and sort out, different positions that existed in family and consumer sciences that didn’t exist here and figure out what was the best combination of all of them.”

Preliminary reports are due from these work groups: College Governance Documents and Policies; Curricular issues; Extension and Outreach; External Funding issues, including endowments; and Scholarship, Research, Creative Activity and Grant Funding.

Ann Thompson, interim associate dean for research and graduate studies for the College of Education, said the research departments of both colleges have been working on increasing collaborative research.

“The group seems to be in agreement that this combination will provide opportunities for strengthening scholarly activities,” she said.