Plans for Henderson college move ahead

Stacy J. Willis

Monday, Dec. 14, 1998 | 11:03 a.m.

The proposed college in Henderson may turn out to be a national school for teacher training. Or a UNLV satellite campus. Or maybe, as originally envisioned, a well-rounded 4-year state college.

It depends who you ask.

But regardless of splintered goals, plans are moving forward:

Two state lawmakers are jointly sponsoring a bill to fund a study on the need for establishing, and the feasibility of funding, a new college in the area.

Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson has narrowed the search for a plot of land to three parcels and interested benefactors have talked up several million dollars in local support.

"We're going to play ball no matter whose game it ends up being," said Gibson. "There is a need for the community to support growing higher education needs."

Last month, Gibson and his Henderson allies made public their months of conceptualizing plans for a new, four-year state college in his city, drawing the interest and concern of higher education officials statewide.

Some have argued that a new college will further stretch the state's already tight higher education budget, while others see a college in Henderson as an inevitable outgrowth of the state's continually rising population.

One of the new ideas that has popped up in brain-storming sessions about the college is to create "a premiere school of education," according to Sen. Jon Porter, R-Boulder City.

"There's going to be a need for 2 million new teachers in this country, and we've talked about making this an academy for educators -- like an Air Force Academy, but for teachers. A state of the art, premiere school for education," Porter said. "We have a great need for teachers here, and we would benefit from having that in our area."

Clark County School District officials estimate the district will need 1,700 new teachers each year for the next 10 years to accommodate some 14,000 new students per year.

Porter said that if officials made the Henderson college a national academy for teachers, they would be more likely to acquire federal funding.

Another avenue of monetary support for the new college is the private sector -- longtime education advocates have made contact with Henderson officials to offer donations, raising talk of a "public-private partnership, or a private school," Gibson said.

"A number of benefactors have come forward and said they want to support it," said Assemblyman Richard Perkins, D-Henderson. "We've had contact with probably six or eight people so far, who together have offered several million in support."

Some of those donors also may be UNLV benefactors -- raising the issue of whether fund-raising dollars, in addition to state revenues, would be shifted from the university to the new college.

"We're not looking to take people from the UNLV Foundation," said Porter. "The Foundation is really big, and there are a lot of folks who would continue to support UNLV but might also support us."

But UNLV President Carol Harter is holding firm the idea that a new higher education facility in Clark County should be a part of the UNLV system.

"I want to be very positive about the new campus in Henderson, from the perspective of UNLV being partners," said Harter. "We can do a satellite campus."

Harter said it would be the most economically sound approach for the state's higher education system because funding a new college would siphon money from existing state schools.

Henderson leaders would rather make the campus separate, Perkins said, but are "open to the idea that in order to get it off the ground, we might see a UNLV satellite campus."

Later, he said, it would be converted to a state college, like those in California or New York, which fill the gap between the university's professional school emphases, such as law school and the community college's vocational emphasis.

Harter, Porter and Perkins met two weeks ago to discuss plans, and all are committed to coming up with a compromise best suited for the state.

To that end, Porter and Perkins will co-sponsor a bill asking for "less than a million dollars" from the state coffers to fund a feasibility study, Perkins said.

Gibson said he has identified three plausible plots of land for the college "along Boulder Highway, and on Lake Mead Drive in the southern foothills."

He declined to specify addresses or current land owners, but said the three parcels are all privately owned.

"There just isn't a piece of city land big enough," he said. "We have a 135-acre piece, but that's not big enough."

The Board of Regents will likely address the issue this spring. The earliest the school would be open is 2003, Gibson said.