Building community after a merger: What UniMAC’s concord initiative can teach higher education

Merging institutions on paper is one thing. Building a community out of the people who inhabit those institutions is another. The University of Media, Arts and Communication (UniMAC) brings together three distinct institutes: the Institute of Journalism (IJ), the Institute of Film and Television (IFT), and the Institute of Languages (IL). Each comes with its own history, disciplines, talents, experiences, and, inevitably, its own sense of identity. But if we are to truly become one University,…