Friday, April 17, 1998 | 10:49 a.m.
With 12 major construction projects underway at UNLV, the silhouette of the 40-year-old university is undergoing dramatic change and so is its philosophy.
"When I first came here I saw we needed a plan to bring people together," said UNLV President Carol Harter, who took over the reins in 1995. "There was no shared sense of purpose that tied it together with the community."
That situation may one day be relegated to the History Department.
Speaking to members of the Southern Nevada Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, Harter said UNLV is reaching out to the "community, the city and the state" to become a more effective institution.
"We intend to become a premier urban university," Harter said.
She said those at the university are striving "for the highest quality in everything we do."
Harter compared UNLV with land grant colleges created by the federal government almost 150 years ago as an alternative to liberal arts colleges.
Land grant colleges taught agriculture, law and other practical subjects and turned out people who ran the country.
She said UNLV has the same goals.
"We encourage applied research as well as academic," she said. "We want teachers to reach out to the community."
UNLV is different from liberal arts colleges.
Harter noted that the average students are older and that 80 percent of them work.
"It's a different student body," she said.
Harter said the university is becoming more student oriented,
It's also doing a number of things in the community, such as having university teachers serve on curriculum research teams in the public schools; creating a fast-track teachers' credential program, allowing people who already have degrees to get their teaching certificates more quickly; working more closely with the community college; and having a secondary school on campus that serves an at-risk population of families.
Harter noted that when the new law school opens in the fall, UNLV will be one of 165 universities in the nation to offer a law degree.
"And we want to make the business college one of the top 50 in the nation," she said.
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