Cheyenne, CCSN split eyed

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, March 7, 2001 | 10:54 a.m.

A movement is under way among some legislators to divorce the Community College of Southern Nevada's Cheyenne campus from the rest of the system.

Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, has requested a bill be drafted to allow the North Las Vegas campus to become its own entity.

"The community college has become a stepchild of the other campuses," Arberry said. "The main issue is that I want a president to be on site, not have an absentee landlord."

The CCSN president has offices at both the Cheyenne campus and the newer West Charleston campus.

The bill is expected to be introduced to the Legislature this session, Arberry said. He hopes the separation will allow for the campus to be renamed, have its own president and have more resources in order to expand. The specifics on how the bill will be worded and how funding to CCSN would be split has not been fleshed out yet, Arberry said.

One of the complaints topping Arberry's list is that Cheyenne has lost several of its teachers to the Charleston campus. With that is the perception that the campus has been playing second fiddle to Charleston.

"They cannot tell me that the Cheyenne campus is not being neglected. Now, when you come to the campus, nothing is new," he said.

The Community College of Southern Nevada's office of academic affairs could not provide numbers this morning on how many faculty members transfer from one campus to the other.

However, said CCSN spokeswoman Linda Campbell, that faculty members are hired for the entire system, not a single campus.

According to preliminary enrollment numbers, Cheyenne's campus is the largest in the CCSN system, with about 12,000 students. The Charleston campus is a close second with 10,000 students.

The last building constructed on the Cheyenne campus was in 1995. At the Charleston campus, a multimillion science building is slated to finish construction in 2002.

The move to separate the campus may be hasty because Nevada's higher education officials have a study under way that will look at how the CCSN system is organized.

"We first want to talk to Morse Arberry and find out what his concerns are and his rationale for doing this," Chancellor Jane Nichols said. "CCSN is in our Rand study. I think it's premature for there to be legislative action right now. We need to see what events precipitated this action."

The idea has been brewing for more than a year. Just before Moore stepped down as president of CCSN, he had moved his offices to the West Charleston campus -- a move that left Arberry angry, he said.

"Dr. Moore made a commitment that he would not abandon the campus, and he did," Arberry said.

Views from students at the Cheyenne campus are mixed. While some wanted the school to stay the same, a few students mirrored Arberry's concerns.

"There's a big rumor going around that (the system is) shifting all the good instructors to the West Charleston campus," said Robbie Franklin, a student senator for the Cheyenne campus' student association. "A lot of students don't think that it's fair because this is supposed to be the main campus. It is leaving Cheyenne behind like a shadow."