{"id":1196,"date":"2026-02-11T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2026-02-26T21:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:31:57","slug":"help-us-rename-areas-of-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/news-and-updates\/help-us-rename-areas-of-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Help us rename Areas of Study"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Hello Academic Affairs friends and colleagues,<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I hope you’ve heard, either through this InfoHub article<\/a> or via the email requesting survey<\/a> participation, we are in the process of gathering input on updating and renaming our Areas of Study.<\/p>\n

A Brief History of Areas of Study<\/em><\/h2>\n

When we launched our Pathways work in 2016 and 2017, we grouped programs of study together into what we called Areas of Study (AoS).\u00a0 The idea was to provide “doorways” to students to help them find their interests and career or transfer pathways.\u00a0 However, “area of study” is not a common term in higher education, where you typically hear about “colleges” or “schools” or “divisions” as groups of programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To further\u00a0complicate things, our instructional dean areas don’t always match up with our Areas of Study.\u00a0 For instance, we have the AoS of “Arts, Digital Media, and Communications” while we have the dean area of Arts & Digital Media; Communications is under the Dean of Liberal Arts, Humanities & Communications.\u00a0 We also have one dean over two areas of study in some instances, and we have one area of study divided across two deans.<\/p>\n

Simplicity and Currency<\/em><\/h2>\n

Our goal with this renaming project is to focus on the dean areas as the “doorway” for students so that our\u00a0groupings of programs<\/a>\u00a0line up with our organizational structure AND reflect current program\u00a0offerings and pathways.\u00a0 We want to eradicate the complexity that I briefly described above.\u00a0 We also want to ensure that our naming conventions reflect current opportunities for career and transfer pathways.\u00a0 We will no longer refer to areas of study at all, so we are asking for input on three things.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

First, what should we call our groupings of programs under a dean?\u00a0 If it’s no longer an Area of Study, should it be called a School? a Division?\u00a0 Something else?\u00a0 Second, we want your input on some updates to the names of some of our dean areas.\u00a0 Third, we would like your input on what to call our Associate Vice Chancellor (AVC) domains.\u00a0 Currently, our instructional programs are grouped under three AVCs:\u00a0 Academic Programs; Health Sciences; Workforce Education.<\/p>\n

Your input – along with input from students and staff across the college – will help us update, simplify, and clarify how our instructional programs are organized.  The goal is to help everyone – we want to help current and future students find their chosen pathway, we want to help our advisors in their important guidance work, we want to help everyone at ACC find the right instructional leader when they have a problem, and we want to show by our naming conventions that we are offering learning opportunities that will meet the needs of our community now and in the future.<\/p>\n

Call to Action<\/em><\/h2>\n

Please take a few minutes to offer your opinions via this brief survey<\/a>.  The survey is open through February 20, and your input matters.<\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/p>\n

Gaye Lynn<\/p>\n

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Hello Academic Affairs friends and colleagues, As I hope you’ve heard, either through this InfoHub article or via the email requesting survey participation, we are in the process of gathering input on updating and renaming our Areas of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.austincc.edu\/vice-chancellor-of-instruction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}