Rogers backs school deal

Chrsitina Littlefield

Monday, May 10, 2004 | 9:37 a.m.

New interim chancellor Jim Rogers' first official act on Friday was to lobby university regents to approve a private-public partnership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Dental Medicine.

The partnership, approved 8-3 with two regents not present, allows UNLV to begin an orthodontics residency program at the school with Orthodontic Education Ltd.

Appointed less than two hours earlier, Rogers listened as several regents picked apart the contract's faults and Las Vegas orthodontists renewed their complaint that the program meant "indentured servitude" for the students who accept the scholarship offers.

But when Rogers was asked for his opinion, he chided those regents and orthodontists for trying to "pick it (the program) apart and destroy it" without providing an alternative solution or offering to provide money to replace the $3.5 million initial gift to start the program.

"It breaks my heart to listen to this because this is such a great program," Rogers said. "If you kill this program you will make it very difficult for me to do what I want to do and make it very difficult for any university to come to any private-public partnership ever again."

Rogers, owner of Sunbelt Communications Co., which includes the Las Vegas station KVBC Channel 3, is known nationwide for his efforts to raise private money for public education. He personally has donated $200 million to higher education across the country,including $28.5 million to the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The private money from Orthodontic Education will allow UNLV to begin the orthodontics residency program and build a new 50,000 square-foot facility for clinical research and health sciences at UNLV's Shadow Lane campus, President Carol Harter said. In addition to the initial $3.5 million, the company will continue to prove money to the ongoing needs of the school and scholarships to both scholarship and non-scholarship students for the next 30 years.

Without the private money, it is not possible for UNLV to start an orthodontics program now or any time in the foreseeable future, Harter said.

The program will provide 16 slots each year to qualified dentists desiring to specialize in orthodontics, and the clinics they operate will provide orthodontic care to many of Nevada's neediest citizens, proponents said.

Half of the slots are available to Orthodontic Education fellows who will receive full tuition and living expenses in exchange for agreeing to work in a company orthodontic practice for seven years.

In the end the majority of regents agreed with Rogers that the risks were "worth the gamble," and approved the contract.

Regents voted 11-1 to approve Rogers as interim chancellor earlier Friday after Rogers had actively lobbied for the position. Regent Howard Rosenberg was the only no vote, saying that he was voting against the process and not Rogers himself.

Regent Tom Kirkpatrick was absent.

Rogers announced his bid for chancellor shortly after Nichols resigned due to health reasons last month.

Nichols will take the next year off to prepare to re-enter the classroom as a professor of educational leadership at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her interim salary will be $155,456, the median between her current salary as chancellor and her expected salary as a professor.