Faculties
The Faculty of Columbia University is large, prestigious, and like everything else at the school, complex.
Contents
Organization
Faculties and Departments
Columbia's faculty is actually organized of 20 seperate faculties and 79 departments of instruction. In general, the faculties correlate to the schools within the University. 16 of the 20 faculties are schools, 2 are affiliated schools, and 2 are organizational constructs (Arts and Sciences, and Health Sciences).
The difference between faculties and departments in general is that faculties are in charge of organizing curricular programs that lead to degrees and certificates, while departments are in charge of instruction. Faculties can be made up of many departments or just one, and conversely departments can be part of multiple faculties or just one.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The unified Faculty of Arts and Sciences is actually a recent creation and composed of itself and its 6 constituent faculties: Columbia College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, General Studies, International and Public Affairs, the Arts, and Continuing Education. 3 of these 'faculties' don't actually exist as independent bodies (GSAS, CC, GS), though they once did, and are really just constructs that correlate to the curricular programs of their schools.
Morningside Heights Professional Faculties
There are 6 'professional' faculties on the Morningside Heights campus: Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Business; the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; Journalism; Law; and Social Work. Each corresponds directly with a distinct school. The faculty of law is the only one at Columbia that can grant tenure without approval from the central administration.
Health Sciences Faculties
The unified Faculty of Health Sciences coordinates the activity of its 5 constituent faculties: Dental and Oral Surgery, Medicine, Nursing, and the Mailman School of Public Health. These all operate out of the Columbia University Medical Center.
Affiliated Schools
In addition to the 18 faculties of Columbia proper, the University counts among its faculties the faculty of Barnard and the faculty of Teachers College, over both of which the University has oversight in tenuring.
Departments of Instruction
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is organized into 30 departments of instruction, typically split into 5 categories
- Humanities
- Social Sciences
- Anthropology
- Economics
- History
- International and Public Affairs (which is also a whole Faculty)
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Natural Sciences
- Continuing Education - A faculty, department of instruction, and school all in one.
- Arts - A faculty, department of instruction, and school all in one. Within itself, SoA has 4 'divisions' but these don't fall within the university-wide framework.
Extra-faculty Administrative Boards
The university also has three administrative boards that exist outside of the faculties, but act like them, to oversee special programs.
Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
All PhDs, regardless of which faculty the program is a part of, are granted by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is the committee that deals with that quirk.
Administrative Board for the Master of Arts in Teaching
Oversees the MA program at TC.
The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law
The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law is a program housed within the Law School and undertaken jointly with SIPA.
Deans and Vice Presidents
Each faculty is led by either a dean, or in the case of the two unified super-faculties, an academic vice president (who is simultaneously dean of the super-faculty). They are appointed by the Trustees on nomination by the President, and serve terms of indefinite length. All deans are subordinate to the Provost, and in the case of the Arts and Sciences and Health Sciences, the constituent faculty deans are also subordinate to their respective academic vice president/dean who is in turn subordinate to the Provost.
