The university has developed a proposal to establish a new model, a College, designed to support interdisciplinary teaching and research at Queen’s.
The proposed College model is intended to address barriers that currently make it difficult to offer cross-Faculty academic programming.
The College would operate within an existing Faculty but would hold defined authority over its academic regulations and budget; it compensates the host Faculty for administrative and support services received. Faculty members and students associated with the College would remain members of their respective Faculties for governance, representation, and eligibility purposes.
Computer Science has been identified as the most appropriate pilot for this model, because of the rapid and widespread impact of AI across disciplines and professions, and the growing need to prepare graduates from all Faculties to operate effectively in an AI enabled environment.
The College of Computer Science is intended to enable a family of “X+AI” degree programs (where X represents a disciplinary field) that would otherwise require complex and repeated exemptions from existing Faculty academic regulations to be created. Any new academic programs enabled by the College would continue to follow Queen’s established approval processes through Senate and the Board of Trustees.
To support understanding of how the new college would be structured and operate, the university is holding a broader consultation process over the next several months. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni are invited to share feedback on the proposed model through an online form.
Additionally, the university will hold several in-person consultation sessions with senators, department heads, senior staff members, and students. The university will use feedback from these sessions and the online form to guide next steps for the college proposal.