For integreated scienece and technology students, their college isn’t quite the same as they left it. 

Over the summer, CISAT became two separate colleges: The College of Health and Behavioral Studies and the College of Integrated Science and Engineering. The split was formally decided in June but was the culmination of a few years of discussion. 

CHBS now includes the departments of nursing, health sciences, social work, communication sciences and disorders, kinesiology, psychology and graduate psychology. CISE houses the departments of computer science, engineering and integrated science and technology.

Department and CISAT heads decided that to better serve individual majors, CISAT still be regrouped by discipline according to Sharon Lovell, interim dean of CHBS. Nursing, health sciences and psychology are among the top five most popular majors declared by freshmen.

“Its splitting is a result of visioning the future of the college of CISAT,” Lovell said. “We need to group them separately into different colleges to advance the standing of each of the programs.” 

Students won’t see any changes to their program of study or what they do within their major, but nursing majors will no longer be in the same building as ISAT and engineering majors. 

Nursing will move to Burruss Hall  to allow for growth and collaboration within their new college. Computer science, engineering and ISAT majors will all be in the Health and Human Services building.

Bob Kolvoord, interim dean of CISE and school of engineering, thinks the split will make JMU’s program easier to explain to other college deans and potential employers. 

“We are constantly thinking of how we can let the world about what our graduates can do,” Kolvoord said.  “These are different programs and they take some explaining.”

Other schools in Virginia have separate colleges for majors like engineering and psychology, but no other schools in Virginia have a similar program to ISAT.  

Virginia Tech has a College of Engineering and The University of Virginia has a College of Nursing. But other Virginia schools have their science programs separated from technology-focused ones. Marshall University in West Virginia is the only other school in the country that has a program called “Integrated Science and Technology.”

“In the long term, it allows deans to go out into the industry and market graduates of the program,” said Jeffrey Tang, assistant department head of ISAT. “It’s more cohesive, and it makes more sense as an entity. The two colleges will be more focused.” 

The split will also ease the workload for the department heads.

 “It is much easier for a dean if he or she only represents four or five majors that are all pretty similar in terms of skills,” Tang said. 

The faculty within both colleges has high hopes for this year. 

“The faculty seems to be excited,” Lovell said. “It’s always nice to be able to promote programs and advocate for recognition outside the university. It’s a way to work together on things we haven’t been able to do before because it was more challenging.” 

The psychology department hopes to see more collaborative research with graduate psychology and other majors in its new college.

Interim deans will head the new colleges until permanent deans are found.