Difference Between Faculty and Department

Faculty vs Department

Faculty and department are two different terms that are often used with no distinction from each other, especially in universities. These words are usually referred to a certain body in an educational institute that focuses on a particular subject matter.

Faculty

Faculty is the name given to a certain body in a university or other applicable institutes that specialize on a specific subject or several subjects that are closely related to one another. Specifically, a faculty is a group of people working within an institution. For universities, a faculty may be comprised of teachers or professors which focus on a specific field of teaching.

Department

Department is a subdivision of an organization that covers many different fields which calls for a segregation of its constituents according to their field of focus. For example, in a university campus, there may be a need to create departments for each field of study, ranging from engineering, medicine and science to psychology and the arts. A department is generally comprised of the staff, the students, and the facilities.

Difference between Faculty and Department

While a faculty is mainly composed of a human workforce such as the staff in a university or the group of employees in an institution, the department may consist of not only the participating populace but also the physical structure of the headquarters, the tools used for the associated research or other purpose and also the concepts behind the subject matter being represented by the department itself. One may notice that the term faculty is used more often in educational institutes, while the department has seen wide-ranging use in areas other than universities, like in government organizations or companies.

In multi-structured organizations such as universities, it is important to remember that a faculty may refer to your teachers assigned to teach a specific subject, while a department is a sub-organization that is comprised of the faculty, the students enrolled under the subject of focus, as well as the infrastructure.