LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

Monday, July 2, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

With President Richard Carpenter's exit just a month away, several College of Southern Nevada administrators are being promoted.

Michael Richards, vice president of academic services, is taking over for Carpenter as interim president.

Carlos Campo, dean of Liberal Arts, is temporarily taking over for Richards as interim vice president.

Rose Hawkins, English Department chairwoman, is taking Campo's spot as dean, and her assistant chairman, John Zeibel, will serve as interim chairman of the English Department until faculty elect a permanent leader.

Darren Divine, currently chairman of the biology department and former Faculty Senate chairman, is also stepping into an administrative role as associate vice president of academic affairs.

The personnel shifts will ensure stability for students while regents seek a permanent president, Richards told faculty and staff in a letter this week. He did not return requests for comment to the Sun.

Although Richards has said he won't seek the permanent presidency, Campo is considering it.

After earning tenure at the college, Campo had a meteoric rise through the administrative ranks. Carpenter selected him from the faculty to serve as interim dean of Liberal Arts in March 2005, and from there he won the permanent position and took on extra duties as the college's coordinator for K-12 partnerships. His previous administrative experience was in the 1980s for a private Christian start up college in Las Vegas.

Campo said in a phone interview that he wants to make sure the college isn't stuck in limbo until a new president comes in.

"We are going to move forward," Campo said. "We are not going to just tread water for a year."

CSN, by the way, has officially started calling itself that. It is no longer known as Community College of Southern Nevada. Student Body President Presley Conkle persuaded regents to drop "community" from CCSN.

College administrators are also changing the names of several departments, with each area in the college known as a "school" rather than a "division."

The name changes are, for the most part, to enhance appeal to donors, Campo said. Foundation trustees and community leaders didn't understand what a division was and dividing the college into schools made more sense to them.

At UNLV, the "schools" are the professional programs, such as the journalism school or the law school.

The Board of Regents is going digital.

Concerned about the high costs of printing and mailing their often 18-inch-thick agenda packets, regents voted June 22 to make everything electronic.

Regents, and the public on the regents' mailing list, will receive the agenda on CDs. Regents can then print the agenda if they like, or access everything they need via laptop computer during the meeting.

The system will buy 13 lap tops for just that purpose, and training regents to access the agenda easily and make notes on the electronic version, said Scott Wasserman, chief executive officer for the board.

The laptops, along with the equipment needed to create the CDs, will cost $25,000 upfront, but going digital will save about $30,000 a year, Wasserman said.

Many system employees already access the agenda through the Web. The regents are all fairly computer savvy, but university system Chancellor Jim Rogers notoriously isn't. His secretary prints all his e-mail for him.