Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

CCSN president finds shaky ground in Legislature

CCSN President Richard Carpenter's constant complaints about the college's severe funding shortage have not won him many friends in the Nevada Legislature, Carpenter told an assembly of faculty and staff Tuesday.

But that hasn't stopped him from continuously bringing up the issue.

The $3,400 gap in funding per fulltime student between the Community College of Southern Nevada and other community colleges in the state was again a major focal point in Carpenter's State of the College address Tuesday. The college desperately needs more money to improve student services and meet the burgeoning needs of the college's 34,000-plus student headcount, Carpenter said.

The response to that need from leading state lawmakers has been somewhat terse, Carpenter told faculty and staff at the college's annual spring convocation.

"The indefensible funding of CCSN is a touchy subject in Carson City ... and I've been advised to learn my place," Carpenter said to audible gasps and nervous laughter from the packed Nicholas J. Horn Theater at the Cheyenne campus.

Carpenter described himself as a sea captain using a lighthouse to try to navigate. He said afterward that he could not name who in the Legislature that lighthouse might be because he said he liked his job and wanted to keep it.

Carpenter said his hope is that lawmakers will use some of the much-talked about state surplus to at least keep the gap from growing bigger, He repeatedly quoted a recent Legislative report that details the college's "subsistent" funding and calls for an end to the funding gap between CCSN and the other community colleges.

"If ever they were going to address the issue and not hurt the other colleges, this is the year to do it," Carpenter said.

In what was his second keynote speech before the faculty and staff, Carpenter also reviewed all of the recent changes at the college and asked for help in developing getting a strategic plan in place by April's Board of Regents meeting.

CCSN is the state's largest institution of higher education and the fourth largest community college in the country, Carpenter said. The institution has a $103.3 million budget with more than 2,000 employees, three main campuses and 12 centers in Southern Nevada.

Carpenter is currently realignning several divisions of the community college to squeeze money out of the administration to go toward needs in instruction and student services. CCSN spends a higher percentage of its budget on instruction than the national average and than other community colleges in the state, Carpenter said, but that comes at the loss of other services that are essential to retaining students and helping them earn their degrees.

The Henderson campus's student service building in particular is in dire need of expansion and repair, Carpenter said. As the original building on the otherwise new campus, Carpenter said the building's construction structure is substandard and there's not enough room to house the staff necessary to meet student need.

He's said he'd like to find a way to expand and renovate the building through alternative revenue streams but that it may have to be included on a future capital construction list.

Faculty and adjunct salaries is also a concern, Carpenter said, because CCSN has a lower salary schedule than both UNLV and Nevada State College in Henderson. This makes it difficult for the college to recruit and retain adequate faculty, particularly in the nursing department where there is a shortage of instructors, Carpenter said.

Two of college's nursing faculty defected to the other institutions this last year, Carpenter said, one to UNLV and one to the state college.

In an effort to retain staff and end some inter-departmental squabbling over laboratory credit hours, Carpenter announced Tuesday that that he will use the $300,000 in administrative savings he has already secured through the realignment of the college's extended programs to remedy the workload issue.

Carpenter is also looking outside of the state for money. The college recently applied for federal grant money for its Cheyenne campus because the college is approaching the "magic threshhold" of being 25 percent Hispanic. That allows the campus to be designated as a Hispanic-serving institution and allows it to receive more money to serve those students better.

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