The possibility of reorganizing academic departments and reviewing the faculty tenure process will top the ISU Faculty Senate’s agenda during their meeting Tuesday.

Discussion will focus primarily on the issue of reorganizing academic departments, said Jack Girton, president of the Faculty Senate.

“It’s a big issue, because it can affect just about everything we do in how the departments work,” he said.

Girton said both the faculty and the administration govern the university, but no one area should have total control.

“We don’t have a good interaction between the two right now,” Girton said.

“We need to have a clear policy for how the two areas should interact.”

Faculty Senate President Elect Sanjeev Agarwal said he also feels the issue of reorganizing academic departments should be addressed.

“I think many academic factors change over time, [and we] need to think about how departments are structured,” Agarwal said. “If there’s an academic reason to change the department, it should be done.”

Agarwal said certain departments, such as the biological sciences, have already undergone a reconstruction to update the way they are taught at Iowa State. Departmental changes such as this one are beneficial to the university, he said.

“It helps departments realign themselves with changing reality and academic needs,” Agarwal said.

Faculty Senate Secretary Tanya Zanish-Belcher said the idea of reorganizing academic departments was brought up even before the recent budget cuts agreed it should be addressed.

“One of the issues is that the university has not had a policy [concerning the organization of academic departments], and we need guidelines,” Zanish-Belcher said.

Girton said the Faculty Senate will also examine the ways in which faculty work is analyzed and how the faculty tenure process works.