Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004 | 8:52 a.m.
Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers appears to be trying to defuse tensions between him and university regents in a memo sent Wednesday that addresses whether regents should be appointed or elected.
Four regents last week called for a personnel session to address those concerns after interpreting several pointed memos from Rogers to mean he wanted the elected board to be appointed. One of the regents, lame duck Tom Kirkpatrick, even sent the interim chancellor a memo telling him he should resign if he could not except the board's resolution that regents remain elected.
In the memo sent Wednesday, Rogers writes that he does not think regents should be appointed instead of elected, that he does not want to reduce the board or kick any of the current members out and that he is not paying one of the system lobbyists out of his own pocket in order to have that lobbyist do his personal bidding during the 2005 Legislature.
After six months on the job, Rogers wrote, he believes an appointed board would actually cause more problems in the system. And while he thinks the board is unwieldy at 13, he would rather see regents develop an executive committee to help deal with problems in between meetings than to reduce the board and perhaps limit representation throughout the state.
Kirkpatrick and other regents said they were pleased with the more pleasant tone Rogers used in Wednesday's memo.
"If before he said he had not made up his mind or was neutral, I think the message he was sending out was that he wanted an appointed board," Kirkpatrick said.
"I'm pleased that the chancellor appears to be softening his approach."
Rogers said he sent out Wednesday's memo not to offset the pending personnel session, which several regents have said will be more of a dialogue to improve communication than anything else, but to make sure he was on the same page with regents.
He said he also wanted to address rumors that he was somehow out to destroy the board in hopes of benefiting his own political aspirations to be governor.
"These rumors that get started about what the hell I'm up to just drive you crazy," Rogers said, noting for the record that he has no aspiration to run for any political office.
"I thought I would just put an end to it and put it in writing."
Rogers' memo to the regents also noted that the UNLV Boyd School of Law is considering offering night classes in Reno as a means of offering greater access to a legal education to all Nevada citizens without opening up two law schools.
Law school Dean Richard Morgan has been in talks with the National Judicial College in Reno about offering classes there for years, both Rogers and Morgan said. But recently adopted American Bar Association rules on distance education threw a wrench into the original plans.
The proposed plan was for professors in Las Vegas to teleconference their night classes to students in Reno, Morgan said, but ABA rules require that there be a substantial faculty presence in Reno.
Morgan said he is again looking at the possibility as part of a larger planning process on the future of the law school.
"There is no plan at the moment, there is just an idea," Morgan said.
The law school would have to come up with an academically sound night program that could be offered to Reno students either through an ABA waiver or through compliance with ABA rules, Morgan said.
But if the law school is required to hire a substantial amount of new faculty to implement a Reno branch campus, it may not be worth the cost, Morgan said. In that case the law school would look at other ways to have a presence in Reno without offering a full selection of classes.
Rogers, in his weekly memos, has asked regents to limit the state's higher education system to one medical school, one law school and one dental school because of the high costs associated with these professional programs. At the same time he is working to expand the presence of the established schools throughout the state.
It "means a lot" to students if they don't have to leave town to get their education, Rogers said.
Rogers proposed a partnership between UNLV and UNR to expand the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas last week, which officials at both universities are working on developing, Rogers said.
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