Monday, Aug. 15, 2005 | 11:19 a.m.
Community College of Southern Nevada President Richard Carpenter likes to joke that he pushes change because he doesn't know how long he'll survive at the college's helm.
Carpenter is, after all, the college's seventh president in the last 10 years, and when he inherited the leadership reins last August the troubled institution was still reeling from the controversial removal of his predecessor.
But instead of making him hesitant, Carpenter said, the college's past history lit a fire under him to overhaul as much as possible as quickly as possible.
"I'm doing what I can to make the college a better place when I go," Carpenter, 51, said. "I wanted to put policies and behaviors in place that will stabilize the institution and that would not be dependent on the president."
Carpenter has worked on streamlining the entire administrative structure, from vice presidents to department chairs, and overhauled human resources, distance education, extended programs and student services.
His retoolings resulted in more than $1 million in annual savings, Carpenter said, mostly in eliminated positions.
Information technology and the college's outreach centers are next on the horizon for make-overs, Carpenter said.
Eventually, he said, he'll be putting every unit of the college through its paces to ensure productivity, with the goal of improving student service.
The college's new Division of Workforce and Economic Development, which offers customized training to area businesses, is improving and will likely be profitable before the end of the year, Carpenter said.
He also is attempting to improve the college through a new office of diversity, a new Center for Academic and Professional Excellence and through better partnerships with the Clark County School District, Nevada State College and Regis University.
As many changes as he's pushed through, Carpenter frets that he's not moving fast enough. For every accomplishment he lists, he can also list another area he wants to tackle.
"Everything I try to do takes longer than I think it is going to take," he said.
Up next on Carpenter's agenda is to unroll a new strategic plan for the college by the Board of Regents meeting in September.
The college also will be unveiling a new, consistent brand and marketing campaign, and Carpenter hopes to work with the CCSN foundation on a miniature capital campaign.
Carpenter said he is also looking forward to working in the community on developing more partnerships and coalitions to support the college.
He says he has some partnerships in mind, but he wouldn't give any hints.
"I'd be shooting myself in the foot to give anybody who I work with any idea what I'm up to," Carpenter said. "I have to get them to the trough first."
University system Chancellor Jim Rogers and regents said Carpenter's determination and willingness to laugh at adversity have made him a good fit to lead the beleaguered community college. All agreed that he's helped the college significantly in the last year in terms of providing accountability, structure and stability.
Rogers said Carpenter is tough but fair, decisive but not arbitrary, and intellectually honest with a great sense of humor.
He is, in short, Rogers' kind of man.
"I think he is an absolutely exceptional president and CEO,' Rogers said. " He has a great sense of balance in everything he does.'
Regent Linda Howard said Carpenter just needs to keep doing what he's doing, "to bring the college up to par.'
"I think he's on the right track," Howard said.
But to bring stability, Carpenter, formerly president of the Wisconsin Technical College System, first had to shake things up.
His first "blustery" month last August was spent airing the college's dirty laundry: Carpenter made a stink about the college's funding woes, the administrative "fiefdoms" that clogged progress, the nepotism and cronyism that fostered mistrust and the overall animosity that emanated throughout campus, particularly in personal attacks dragged out through campus-wide e-mails.
By highlighting the college's severe underfunding, Carpenter won considerable support from CCSN faculty but also got himself into some hot water with state lawmakers.
Rogers also razzed him for months, calling him the system's new public information officer for the way Carpenter hands out data.
"Even though he took a lot of flak about that he was fundamentally right' that the college was underfunded), Rogers said.
The complaining apparently paid off. Carpenter didn't get the increases to the formula funding he wanted this Legislative session, but he did get money to increase faculty salaries at the community college and more than $40 million in capital improvements.
Carpenter's "no-nonsense, candid" approach admittedly made it tougher for some faculty to accept his later changes, Carpenter said, but many professors also said they were grateful for they called a "breath of fresh air.'
The changes also appear to have brought some stability, members of the faculty and staff said, but it's still a little too soon to tell how everything will shake out. Many faculty said they couldn't really comment on Carpenter's first year because "the verdict is still out."
"I think most of the faculty believes, most would say, that the changes are in the right direction, that the college is moving forward," Darren Divine, Faculty Senate chairman, said.
"That said, change is difficult. ... There is reservation and trepidation with some of the changes."
Carpenter has been quick to address what issues he can, Divine said, but the faculty are still getting used to Carpenter and Carpenter to the faculty.
Despite Carpenter's openness to faculty input, he still has a very decisive, top-down hierarchical approach that will take some faculty more time to get used to, political science professor Alan Balboni said.
As presidents came and went over the last decade, the faculty forged on, dealing with the college's explosive growth with no definitive direction, Balboni said.
"It's a good thing for some and it's a negative for others,' said Balboni, who has been at the college for 24 years.
"It depends on what style they like. Some welcome this (Carpenter's approach) and some look back with yearning to the days of either Moore or Remington,' Balboni said, referring to former presidents Richard Moore and Ron Remington.
Balboni is one of the faculty members who is taking a "wait-and-see' approach, but he said he cannot really argue with any of Carpenter's changes. " Interestingly, one of Carpenter's biggest fans is John Cummings, the former CCSN lobbyist turned English professor whom regents demoted along with Remington in November 2003.
"I would say he's the best president the system has hands down,' Cummings said. "I was second in command in the former administration, so I should be critical, but I can't be.
"I don't think anyone in good conscious can criticize this kind of success and this kind of leadership shown by Dr. Carpenter.'
Cummings in particular praised Carpenter for removing "d"eadwood' at the college.
"I think he has looked at the needs of the college and determined what positions and which people employed were not doing what they could or should have been doing for the students, and I think that has been the benchmark of this particular administration,' Cummings said. "He has certainly gone out there and determined what was best for the students and done everything for them.'
While wounds have begun to heal from the controversial removal of Remington and Cummings, who were accused of lobbying the Legislature for four-year programs behind the regents' backs, the "cuts are deeper than that," Carpenter said.
"I'm the seventh president in 10 years. Ron Remington was just a chapter in that, a devastating chapter, but still a chapter in a larger saga."
Those deeper scars will take much longer to heal, both Carpenter and Divine said, and have made for a rather cynical and mistrusting faculty. Carpenter said he's tried to rebuilt trust "where trust in the system have been lost."
"When I say we haven't healed, that's the biggest symptom," Carpenter said.
One of the biggest issues facing the college is communication, Divine said. Rumors have tended to make some of the ongoing changes harder, both Carpenter and Divine said.
The key is dispersing information to the faculty in an "unadulterated form," Divine said. Too often, information has been passed down from person to person, and like the game telephone, it has been distorted. There have also been times when administrators think the message went out and trickled down the chain of command when it hasn't, Divine said.
If the college keeps moving in the current direction, Divine thinks the wait-and-see people will open up more to Carpenter.
"It's just a matter of trust and trust takes time."
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