There are a variety of issues which should be addressed in developing the academic organization (of CSUMB). Among them are: 1) How to foster and encourage faculty collaboration and interdisciplinary work. 2) How to foster student explorations. 3) How to maintain the benefits of traditional majors and departments. 4) How to establish an academic administrative structure to support curricular goals in an evolving world. 5) How to provide young faculty with the support structure of a department, but not to limit interdisciplinary collaboration. 6) How to handle interdisciplinary courses. 7) How to give faculty access to (other) technically expert faculty/staff. 8) How to house and foster grants work. 9) How to encourage curricular innovation. 10) etc. . . . 11) and how to do all this in a practical, intellectually defensible way. Our first general observation is that we are unlikely to succeed in this project without concerning ourselves with structural as well as curricular issues. We should try to develop a synergistic system in which curriculum and academic structure support each other. We should try to avoid excessively complicated structure, and innovation for its own sake. Our design needs to be comprehensible to faculty, to students, to academic administrators (deans, vp's, etc.), to the Chancellor's office, to state legislators, and to external agencies (e.g., grant funding agencies). The system should be robust enough to remain stable through turbulent times, but flexible enough to allow/encourage change, development and growth (and to keep everyone excited and interested . . .). There will not be any single organizational approach which satisfies all these constraints, but for purposes of discussion we suggest one possible model. The general idea is to use a combination of traditional departments with interdisciplinary, flexible, collaborative institutes: 1) Establish and maintain traditional departments and degree programs (including, as outlined, theatre arts, journalism, film/video, etc., computer science, communications, cybernetics, etc., library and information sciences, MIS, etc.). Each faculty member would have a home department, with two-thirds (~16 wtu) of their load assigned to that department. The department would provide primary support for retention/promotion/tenure issues. Degree programs and core curriculum would be the department's responsibility. 2) Establish four institutes (see below). Each institute would have a particular intellectual (inter-disciplinary) focus, would offer courses/seminars within their area, and would sponsor research, development and faculty collaboration. Each faculty member would be associated with one of the institutes, bringing with them one-third (~8 wtu) of their teaching load. Institute terms would be three years. After each 3-year term, a faculty member would either move to a new institute or could remain for another term with the same institute. Students would be expected to take at least two courses (8 units) from each of the 4 institutes (i.e., one institute course per semester). These courses might satisfy GE requirements, satisfy major core or elective requirements, etc. Institute courses would be developed by faculty in the institute, would frequently be team-taught, and would evolve relatively rapidly (i.e., it would be easy to develop and offer new courses, and old courses could disappear quickly and quietly). Note: Some faculty (for example, senior faculty with tenure) might be able to have membership in two or even three institutes, carrying with them 16 or 24 wtu. The Institutes: (This is the hard part, but here is a possible outline): Institute 1: Simulations/Models/Metaphors a. computer simulation techniques b. problem solving through models c. plays/drama/history/literature/movies d. neural network computing/neurophysiology/etc. e. mathematics/chaos theory/complexity Institute 2: Communication/Networks/Information Processing a. communication networks (e-mail, ftp, gopher, www, etc., internet, compressed video) b. coding and information theory c. database management d. mass media e. system administration/cybernetics f. image processing/analysis Institute 3: Making/Building/Creating a. (computer) programming b. multimedia/video/etc. construction and design c. 2/3D art d. theater craft e. creative writing/scripting/etc. Institute 4: Meaning/Aesthetics/Rigor/Cognition/Intelligence a. philosophical/ethical issues b. aesthetics c. user interface design d. formal languages/set theory/logic e. art "appreciation" f. cognition and intelligence (artificial and otherwise) Comments: In developing this approach, we tried to keep in mind a host of pragmatic issues. Clearly, we see the academic world through particular eyes, which led us to particular `institutes' and groupings of topics within the institutes. One of the primary ideas implicit in our selection was an attempt to categorize by possible approaches to and uses of information technologys (that may not be obvious from our lists, but we hope it is implicitly there). A related issue is access to `expertise' . . . Some people have suggested trying to assure the existence of at least one `guru' in each department. Part of our rationale for this institute approach is the notion that each institute would be sure to have several gurus in residence, and that faculty (and students) would get access that way.