Hal Rothman gives his assessment of retiring UNLV President Carol Harter and what legacy she leaves behind

Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

When I am not writing columns for the Las Vegas Sun, I am a history professor at UNLV. I came to the university in 1992, 33 years old and bumping my head on a very low ceiling somewhere else.

UNLV was appealing because here everything seemed possible. The sky was the limit, and it seemed like people would help you achieve your goals.

That's not a common sentiment in American universities, especially now in an age of contraction. In most places, young faculty have to wait a very long time before they have a shot at prominence, leadership and success. What made UNLV so attractive was the latitude it allowed anyone willing to work hard.

But beyond the promise of entrepreneurship, the place was in total chaos. When Carol Harter came to UNLV, almost every dimension of the university was in shambles, a legacy of rapid growth, inadequate state funding and the complicated machinations of Nevada politics.

Back then, UNLV was medieval, a series of vertical baronies that helped only those who kowtowed to the barons. Our vaunted basketball team had just endured a season with three coaches; relations with the community were strained. People still thought of us as a basketball school, Tumbleweed Tech in the desert.

In a little more than a decade, Carol Harter changed everything about the place, and much for the better. First and foremost, she taught us how to plan. UNLV had never engaged in comprehensive planning before she arrived. We simply tilted at the next windmill, following whatever lead came along.

Harter instituted a planning process that let us envision a future, discuss it, and plan its implementation. Now we can see where we're going, and even more important, why we are headed in that direction.

B.H. (Before Harter), the whole place was based on personality, on who you knew. If you had the right sponsor, it was easy to get ahead. If you ran afoul of anyone with a hand on the levers of power, it was best to find a job at another university.

Now we are modern, and even beyond that. We have administrative structure that functions, ways to go up and down the various ladders that comprise a university hierarchy, and even more, ways to go laterally from ladder to ladder.

Even more, we're on the verge of being a top-flight university, a genuine Research I with all of the advantages that come with it. When people around the country think of UNLV these days, they think of a remarkable urban university in a unique setting that is meeting the challenges of growth.

They see a campus with a different face, new buildings everywhere. For a while, I would be away for a few days and return to a place I didn't recognize. Buildings went up so fast that I sometimes got lost on my own campus!

We are now recognized for our professional schools and graduate programs, for meeting the challenges of educating a diverse student body, and for conceptualizing the redevelopment of the urban area around the campus. Athletics are finally under control and on a good footing with strong leadership, and UNLV has become a real player in the larger Las Vegas community.

All of this and much more redounds to Carol Harter's credit. She led us forward, giving the faculty credit for what its members accomplished and taking the blame largely on herself when things didn't go quite right. This is my definition of leadership, and Carol Harter more than cleared that bar.

Her magic was simple: With vision, she maintained the feeling that everything was possible. At the same time, she brought order to the chaos that had characterized UNLV. The combination created stunning results. Purpose and structure produced real progress, and we became the envy of universities around the country.

Eleven years is a long time to serve as a university president, and there's a reason Carol Harter lasted so long. She led. She saw that we could become more than we were. She understood how to get us there.

I suspect that when we reach the 100th anniversary of the founding of the institution in 2057, Carol Harter will be prominent among the great names in UNLV history.

Hal Rothman is a professor of history at UNLV. His column appears Sunday.