Faculties
Faculties at Columbia are the formal bodies that form the academic backbone of Columbia's 16 schools and two affiliates. Each is large, prestigious, and like everything else at the school, complex and decentralized. In total, there are 20 separate faculties, in addition to 79 departments of instruction. In general, the "faculties" correlate to what most people know as "schools" within the University. 16 of the 20 faculties are the schools of Columbia University, 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 as a body are in charge of organizing curricular programs that lead to degrees and certificates, while departments are bodies 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.
In the fall of 2008, Columbia employed 3,566 full-time faculty. 880 teach in the Arts and Sciences, 497 in the professional faculties, 2,189 in Health Sciences. In addition there are at least 70 instructors in physical education.
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Faculties
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The unified Faculty of Arts and Sciences is one of Columbia's two "super faculties" - administrative constructs intended to put one person (in this case the Vice President of Arts and Sciences) in charge of a number of faculties with significant overlap in needs and goals.
The unified faculty is actually a recent creation, having been established in 1991 as the culmination of a series of administrative restructurings. It is composed of itself and its 6 constituent faculties: Columbia College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (itself having been only formed in 1979 through the merger of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science), General Studies, International and Public Affairs, the Arts, and Continuing Education. The first three of these 'faculties' are actually made up of the same people, since they share a single body of instructors. Once upon a time though, CC, GS, and GSAS had separate faculties (i.e. sets of instructors - although a professor could hold appointments to more than one of them.) Today the "faculties" of those schools really just exist administratively to 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.
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. The exception to this rule is the Law School, where the Dean is selected by faculty election. 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.
