Rogers plans search for vice chancellors

Tuesday, May 10, 2005 | 9:21 a.m.

Assistant Chancellor Trudy Larson will not stay on past July 1, Chancellor Jim Rogers said Monday.

The announcement was one of a handful of changes Rogers said he will be making as he transitions from the interim to the permanent chief executive officer for the University and Community College System of Nevada.

Rogers also said he plans to take over and expand the system's external relations efforts and will be filling two vice chancellor positions in national searches. Rogers will also keep on two personal employees who now assist him almost full time on higher education issues.

Rogers brought on Larson, a physician who teaches pediatrics at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, last June as a temporary, one-year appointment. As the former faculty senate chairwoman for UNR, Larson's job was to take care of some of the internal operations of the system and to oversee the academic side of the house while Rogers focused on addressing some of the more immediate management issues.

Rogers said Larson has done an "excellent job," especially as part of the system's Legislative team, but that his administrative "structure going forward doesn't require the position."

Larson, who was paid $165,000 a year as assistant chancellor, said she has "no concrete plans" for the future. She has been invited back as a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the medical school in Reno and still practices twice a month in her HIV clinic there.

Larson said she was personally satisfied with work she has done in the last year, including the administrative efficiencies and the lobbying team she helped put in place.

Much of the work Larson has been doing will be taken up by the new vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, Rogers said. He is in the process of hiring a search firm to fill that position and is looking at about 70 applicants for the open position of vice chancellor for technology.

The external relations department department currently falls under Suzanne Ernst, chief administrative officer to the Board of Regents. Ernst said she had no problem handing it over to Rogers, but that they still needed to work out the job duties for those employees might change.

"If that's what he wants to do that's fine with me," Ernst said.

In addition to fielding questions from the media and sending out press releases, the 2.5 person external relations staff currently spends most of their time assisting the regents with their constituents and handling other board needs, Rogers said. He wants the team to focus more on external relations and better promote the system's achievements.

"You'll see more of an intense focus there," Rogers said.

Rogers will need regents' approval to change the external relations department because it falls under the jurisdiction of board, Ernst said. All other changes fall under his discretion.

Regents were generally supportive of all of Rogers' changes, especially the decision to bring the external relations office under his authority. Rogers first announced the idea in his state-of-the-system address in December.

"That is something that we have talked about in the past," regents chairman Stavros Anthony said. "Obviously he's pretty well versed in external relations and working in the media, and our Suzanne Ernst can spend more time working on board issues."

Regents Steve Sisolak and James Dean Leavitt said the move would help boost the board and the system's credibility in the public.

"About 95 percent of what happens in our higher education system is newsworthy, and sometimes we only hear about what isn't," Leavitt said.

Rogers' two personal employees, who are paid out of his pocket, private secretary JoAnn Prevetti and lawyer Cisco Aguilar. Aguilar has been doing legislative and diversity work for the system, Rogers said, but as a former member of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's Washington staff, Aguilar is also a liason to the state's congressional leadership.

Sunbelt attorney Earl Monsey also does system work on occasion, Rogers said.

Rogers said he is donating their services to the system just as he is donating his own. His initial contract with the system allowed him to bring on his own staff.

Anthony said he will have to make sure that the longterm arrangement doesn't conflict with any state labor laws. But he and other regents praised both Prevetti and Aguilar and said their services were a huge benefit to the system.

"The lady is a magician," Sisolak said of Prevetti. "Where he found her I don't know, but she makes Jim Rogers look good."