The University has announced plans for a major restructure which looks set to significantly change how the institution operates.
In an email to students earlier this month, Vice President of Education, Mary Vincent, set out the move “towards a new School structure”, in which current academic departments are brought together into “new, larger Schools.”
Rather than having forty-two separate departments each organising the teaching of their own subject, multiple similar disciplines will fit into, and be managed by, the same school.
The shift will be completed in phases over the next two years, and finished in time for the start of the 2025/26 academic year.
Vincent seeked to reassure students that they will be unaffected.
She said: “There won’t be any changes to your programmes or courses… You will remain studying on the same programmes, with the same academic teaching staff.”
She further described Sheffield’s model of “a large number” of departments which “vary greatly in size” as an outlier in a modernising higher education landscape.
“A school structure will bring us in line with other universities, who have taken a similar approach.”
Sheffield’s branch of the UCU, the University and College Union which represents all higher education staff, believe the project is “being pursued with a reckless degree of haste” and that “the proposed benefits are nebulous” and “do not justify the scale of disruption”.
The changes will not lead to any academic redundancies, but the University admits that a “small number of professional service roles” may be affected. It is “confident” of matching those affected with “new roles wherever possible”.
The UCU has said this inability “to rule out redundancy” is causing “fear and uncertainty” among their membership.
A case study for the new structure is the Faculty of Health’s School of Biosciences, formed in 2021.
Louis Cox, an 2nd year Ecology and Conservation Biology student, said that whilst the changes haven’t been “too impactful” on him, but that “students who have selected a wider range of modules”, such as those outside of the School of Biosciences, have experienced some disruption through timetable clashes.
The University has promised to keep “students informed” throughout this transition period, “providing opportunities for feedback throughout.”
Image credits: Bailey Streetscene