While many departments are merging in an effort to manage budget woes, some are hammering out more creative solutions. One example is in the College of Design.

In an effort to save on administrative costs, the Departments of Landscape Architecture and Community and Regional Planning will function under one chair, although the departments will not merge.

“We’re not combining departments we’re just unifying the leadership of the departments,” said Mark Engelbrecht, dean of the College of Design.

He said the two departments were together before the college was formed.

“They’ve had a relationship that’s been historic. They’ve always shared the same methods and forms of teaching,” Engelbrecht said. “Because of the budget issues and other related matters, we thought this would be a way to not only realize some savings, but also recreate some of those old partnerships.”

Tim Keller, current professor and chair of landscape architecture, will head both departments starting in the fall term, and Timothy Borich, associate professor of community and regional planning, will serve as the associate chair.

“[Borich] will assist Tim Keller and actually do a great deal of the work that the chair of the department of planning did in the past,” Engelbrecht said.

Keller was not available for comment.

Borich said Keller was chosen because he has five years of experience in leadership, but in the future, if the position remains, faculty from either department could act as the chair for both.

“The separate offices are set up in a way they retain their own identity,” said Riad Mahayni, professor and former chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning.

“We’re going to try this for two years to see how this works,” Engelbrecht said. “We’ll review it at that point, and if it’s not working as well as we hoped, we’ll go back to the way it was.”

Budget savings will occur through streamlining administrative staffing.

“It looks like an approach that would provide some benefit and also save us some money, which we desperately needed to do,” Engelbrecht said.

Engelbrecht said the total students enrolled in these two programs still makes it the smallest program in the college.

“These are two of the smallest units to begin with,” he said. “Planning and landscape architecture both had around 200 students in them – this was another way to permit us to equalizes the administrative chores throughout the college.”

“A lot of discussion of both departments went on as to how this might take place,” Borich said. “It’s not ideal, but we understood the ramifications of what was going on with the state budget, and this was the best we could do.”

The two departments had some similarities that allowed them to be run under one office, although the students from each department will not be mixed, Borich said.

“We lost a secretary,” Mahayni said “The fact remains yet to be determined how the office will run.”

He said the impact on students will be minimized, although a faculty position was lost, and some classes will be offered on alternate years, instead of every year.

“We talked with the students of these programs and the faculty and they agreed to try this,” Engelbrecht said. “No one forced this on anyone.”