‘Difficult relationship’: UW task force proposes splitting Allen School from College of Engineering

University of Washington leaders are weighing whether to separate the Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering from the broader College of Engineering, after a task force recommended the move as part of proposed changes to UW’s computing and AI programs.

The split would give new independence to what has become one of the world’s leading schools for computer science and AI, and a major source of talent for the Seattle region’s tech industry. As an independent, college-level school, the Allen School would gain greater control over its finances and a seat at the table with UW’s other deans.

The task force’s report, released this week, concluded that UW’s successes in computing, data science and AI have come “not because of the organizational structures we have in place but in spite of them.” The nine-member group included UW faculty leaders from across campus, two outside academics and an Amazon executive.

The report also described a “difficult relationship” between the Allen School and the College of Engineering, and “significant distrust” across campus over resources and priorities.

UW Engineering Dean Nancy Allbritton, in a statement to GeekWire on Tuesday, called the relationship “complex rather than difficult.”

She said the college is committed to helping shape an outcome that “strengthens the College of Engineering, strengthens computer science as an independent discipline, and advances the University of Washington’s broader mission of innovation, discovery, economic opportunity and public impact.”

The Allen School “is an extraordinary unit that has experienced remarkable growth and operates at a scale unlike any other department in the College,” Allbritton said. “As both organizations have evolved, there have naturally been questions about structure, governance, and how best to support future growth.”

Allbritton said the college and the Allen School have a long history of working together, and that the college supports the university’s decision to “carefully evaluate” the task force’s recommendations.

No decision yet: UW President Robert J. Jones and Provost Tricia Serio said Monday that they aren’t making a decision yet. In a letter to the UW community, they announced two implementation committees.

• One committee will plan for a possible independent Allen School, including its finances. The letter calls the continued strength and growth of the College of Engineering “a central consideration.”
• The other will develop plans for a new campus-wide “Federation of Information, Computing and Society,” which would coordinate computing, data science and AI work across UW, including fundraising, and hold its own funding for hiring across departments.

Both committees are due to report by the end of winter quarter 2027, and UW leaders plan to announce next steps in the spring. Any changes would still need approval through the university’s usual processes, including the Faculty Senate and Board of Regents, with a goal of putting them in place by the end of the 2027-28 academic year.

The task force was co-chaired by Andy Connolly of UW’s eScience Institute and Kathy Yelick of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its other members were Dan Grossman, now the Allen School’s interim director; Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau of the University of Wisconsin; UW’s Elizabeth Nance (chemical engineering), Abel Rodriguez (statistics), Emma Spiro (Information School) and Peter Tarczy-Hornoch (UW Medicine); and Anne Szeto of Amazon.

Allen School faculty voted 83-0 in late September in support of “moving forward with a process to determine how the Allen School would become an independent school,” with 13 not voting because they were absent or on leave, according to the school. A formal decision and vote would follow that process, the school said.

Budget and a seat at the table: The issue comes down to money and influence. UW’s budget model sends tuition and a share of research grant funding to the college where the courses are taught and the research is based.

For the Allen School, that’s the College of Engineering. As an independent school, the Allen School would control those funds directly, and its leader would sit with UW’s other deans when the university sets strategy on AI and other priorities, a voice the task force says computing has largely lacked.

The task force also said independence would let the school put more of its own revenue toward teaching, as student demand for computing courses continues to outstrip its capacity.

UW’s Information School already operates as an independent, college-level unit. But the report says its focus on the human, societal and organizational side of computing and information is different from the Allen School’s focus on computing as a discipline.

The school’s graduates are in high demand from the region’s tech giants. Nearly 100 graduates from the 2025-26 class went to work full time at Amazon, and more than 70 went to Google, Microsoft or Meta, according to a survey of recent graduates by the school. More than 150 companies hired its graduates.

In the meantime, Jones and Serio invited Grossman to participate in the Board of Deans and Chancellors. The letter says the move is “independent of any future decision about administrative structure.”

In a message to the Allen School community, Grossman called the invitation “a reflection of the Allen School’s scale and reach,” adding, “I’m pleased to have this opportunity to make meaningful contributions to discussions among UW’s leaders.”

He described the task force’s proposals as “exciting recommendations that will be great for the whole of UW and its impact on Washington state and beyond.”

Grossman also said there are “no planned changes to the Allen School’s structure, staffing, budget, policies and procedures, or degree programs” while the committees do their work.

A longtime Allen School professor and its former vice director, Grossman was named interim director this summer when Magdalena Balazinska’s nearly seven-year term as director ended. At the time, UW said it was opting for an interim leader for about a year while it weighed the task force’s recommendations, which hadn’t yet been made public.

The seat on the board was one of several early steps the task force recommended to demonstrate UW’s commitment to the process. Others, including having the Allen School’s director report jointly to the provost and “meaningful moves toward budgetary autonomy,” weren’t part of Monday’s announcement, though the Allen School committee will examine the school’s finances and administration.

Rooted in Paul Allen’s gift: The prospect of independence goes back to the Allen School’s creation in 2017.

When a $40 million gift from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen turned UW’s longtime computer science department into the Allen School, the gift agreement said the school would “remain a unit of the College of Engineering, at least for the time being,” according to a copy obtained by GeekWire.

The agreement called for the school to receive, “to the greatest extent possible,” the “visibility, support, privileges” of UW’s other schools and colleges, and anticipated that it could someday become “a free-standing School or College.”

The agreement also spelled out what would happen to the name if the school were ever “elevated to a College of the University”: it would change to reflect the new structure, but would “always prominently include” Allen’s name.

Engineering and the federation: The College of Engineering would lose its largest unit. The Allen School, which awarded more than 800 undergraduate and graduate degrees in the 2025-26 academic year, is roughly half the size of the rest of the college.

The report acknowledges “significant short- and long-term financial implications” from a separation and suggests options such as permanent financial support for Engineering to offset the loss.

Allbritton noted that the College of Engineering has nearly doubled in size over the past decade “amid increasingly constrained public resources,” and said the college’s focus is on ensuring that students, faculty, staff, research partnerships and industry relationships “continue to thrive.”

The report doesn’t detail the friction between the Allen School and Engineering. It says independence “does not directly address concerns voiced about collegiality” but could remove “a structural asymmetry that has complicated those relationships.” Opinion across campus on Allen’s independence was “genuinely divided,” the report says.

The proposed federation is partly a way to keep the rest of campus on board. Other units worried that the Allen School would win independence while the federation never got real resources, according to the report, which recommends that the split not be finalized until the federation is up and running.

Much of the “distrust” cited in the report centers on whether one recommendation would advance at the expense of the other.

If the Allen School’s separation is finalized first, the report says, “other stakeholders are unlikely to trust that the federation will ever achieve the size and stature it needs.”

If the federation moves ahead without a clear commitment to independence, the Allen School and its supporters “are unlikely to trust that their important contributions toward the federation’s success will achieve meaningful change.”

The Allen School is already helping lead cross-campus efforts, including a new AI minor for students in all majors, developed with 18 academic units and set to launch in spring 2027.

Toward a college of computing: Other top universities have taken similar paths. Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech run computer science as standalone, college-level schools, while MIT, UC Berkeley and Cornell have created broader colleges of computing, according to the report.

Peer institutions’ computing colleges were “frequently propelled by a transformational naming gift,” the report notes, as with MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing and Cornell’s Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

The report describes the federation as a possible “transitional phase” toward a full College of Computing at UW, which would house the Allen School alongside other units, and recommends revisiting that idea in about five years.