Faculty and staff who attended an open forum to discuss the pending merger between the College of Education and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences said the combination would involve both opportunities and challenges.

A group of 55 faculty and staff members gathered Monday afternoon at the forum, which was sponsored by the Planning Committee on the Combination of the College of Education and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, to discuss exactly what those opportunities and challenges might be.

“People have a lot of grief over this issue, and I was really afraid we would miss out on coming out of this [combination] as strong as we could,” said Mary Jane Oakland, associate professor of food science and human nutrition. “I know that out of grief doesn’t come the best planning. If the [university’s monetary] savings can be utilized by our colleges, we can’t waste this opportunity.”

Mary Winter, associate dean of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said faculty should be cautious in counting the value of the $500,000 to $700,000 ISU President Gregory Geoffroy said the university would save with the college merger.

“Those dollars — that’s bodies [that will be eliminated],” Winter said. “One of my concerns is dealing with the human side of this issue. There will be a cost.”

Dayle Nickerson, student services specialist for the College of Education, said the cuts may affect her personally.

“I am one of those people whose job is on the line,” Nickerson said. “There is an officer just like me over in the College of FCS … but I think a merger is a good move. Budgetwise, I don’t think [the two colleges] can afford to do otherwise.”

Nickerson said a combined college enrollment may help students, faculty and staff of both colleges get more attention from the university.

“There is strength in numbers,” Nickerson said. “FCS and education have always been at a disadvantage because of their small numbers. This could give us power and clout that we don’t have at the university level right now.”

One disadvantage the faculty of the two colleges are experiencing in the combination progress is that they didn’t make the decision to combine the colleges themselves, Winter said.

“[The University of Nebraska-Lincoln] is in [its] first year of dealing with a college combination like this,” Winter said. “The difference here is that the two deans of those colleges initiated the conversation themselves instead of having it imposed upon them from above.”

Another concern Winter and many other faculty expressed at the forum was the challenge of naming the proposed college.

“The identity [of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences] is finally there, so we have to be careful to preserve it,” Winter said.

While some attendees said they would be open to a college combination, others said they did not want a college merger to happen.

“[It will be] difficult to measure the costs of loss of identity of the two colleges and the loss of monetary and other support of disenfranchised alums,” said Cynthia Fletcher, professor of human development and family studies. “Frankly, I question if this benefit can possibly outweigh huge costs to each college.”