Here’s a chance to query CSN presidential finalists

By Charlotte Hsu (contact)

Monday, April 21, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Members of the College of Southern Nevada community will have an opportunity this week to vet the final candidates for the presidency of their school, which enrolls more students than any other Nevada college.

A Board of Regents search committee decided Thursday on three finalists: Berton Glandon, president of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado; Laurence Spraggs, president of Broome Community College in New York; and Michael Richards, who has been CSN’s interim president since August, when Richard Carpenter left to take a job in Texas.

Each candidate will answer questions at community forums Wednesday at CSN’s main campuses in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson.

On Thursday, the Regents’ search committee will decide on a final candidate to recommend to the full board, which is scheduled to vote May 1 on a presidential appointment.

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Nevada System of Higher Education officials are hoping to land a major donation for health sciences projects within the next several months.

System staff members have been in close touch with representatives of a philanthropic foundation that Chancellor Jim Rogers hopes will give big.

“They’ve given us every indication that they’re very interested and they want to become our partners,” Rogers said. “And I think they’re not going to come in and say, ‘Here’s $1 million.’ I think it’s going to be substantial.”

A donation could go toward buildings, programs and equipment for nursing, medicine and public health programs. Rogers said he would consider any gift over $5 million “substantial.”

If it materializes, the money would help Rogers and other administrators begin to realize their dream of making the university system a bigger player in solving Nevada’s health care problems, which include a chronic shortage of medical professionals.

The state set aside $88.7 million this biennium for the university system to renovate and build health sciences facilities, asking the system to come up with an additional $38.7 million to match the state’s allocation.

Then, to help plug its budget hole, the state deferred $65.5 million of the $88.7 million.

“With the state cutting back it makes donors skittish as well,” Regent Steve Sisolak said.

But Rogers doesn’t see the funding deferral as a major setback. State officials, he said, have said the delay will not lead to a cancellation of the funds.

Rogers said if the governor handed him a check for $88.7 million today, “I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

The chancellor has been trying to snag a big donation for health sciences for nearly four years. In June he told the Sun he was confident the system would land major donations by the end of 2007. Though that didn’t happen, Rogers said he is not frustrated.

“The discussions,” he said, “did not go as fast as we thought they would because everybody has been affected by this bad economy.”

Hopefully, Sisolak said, the pace of fundraising will quicken once the first major gift is secured.

“The first one is the toughest,” he said. “The first one starts the momentum. It shows people that other people are committed.”

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As the UNLV community celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is looking forward as well as back.

For a class project, six students are putting together a time capsule they hope will be opened during UNLV’s 100th birthday.

Among items to be included: a BlackBerry device, copies of course catalogs from today and 50 years ago, and three metal letters — “M,” “S” and “U,” — that adorned the Moyer Student Union building, which was demolished to make way for a new student union completed in 2007. The old facility was named after Donald Moyer, UNLV’s first president, who died this month.

In a ceremony the students have planned for 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, the capsule, a metal box 2 feet tall and 1 foot wide, will be placed in a hole carved into the bottom of a concrete bench outside UNLV’s new student union.

Mario Berrettoni, 22, a member of the group working on the capsule, said assuming he is alive and well, he will return to watch the opening of the capsule in the 2057-58 academic year.