JCU looks to dump faculties in favour of colleges James Cook University vice-chancellor Professor Sandra Harding. JAMES Cook University looks likely to ditch its faculties and schools in favour of a college structure next year. Vice-chancellor Sandra Harding told staff on Friday the restructured university have two divisions - tropical health and life sciences and environment, science and design - seven colleges and three corporate divisions. It would replace the existing four faculties, 14 schools and four corporate divisions. "The ambition is to up hold a university that is unique in the Australian higher education setting in terms of its focus, the student experience and its engagement," Professor Harding said in a statement. A university spokesman said he did not know whether there would be any future job losses, but a voluntary redundancy program, unrelated to the restructure, will be put in place due to the need for cost cutting at the university. Decisions on the number and focus of redundancies would not be late until February or March. He said there were hopes a new structure would be put in place during 2014. The list of proposed colleges includes: health and life sciences; allied health; medicine and dentistry; governance and economy; society and arts; earth system sciences and design, science and technology. Professor Harding said the structure would allow intuitive groupings of disciplines to make it easier to implement a grand-challenges framework and the development of signature programs. Friday's announcement comes after 18 months of consultation and planning. Universities are increasingly moving to college structures, with La Trobe and ANU being two recent converts.