Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Higher Education:

Taking a chance, starting a new life

Educators eager to get to work at UNLV, despite state’s uncertain financial outlook

UNLV Professors

Steve Marcus

Marcia Gallo, left, and Ann Cammett say they’re loving life in Las Vegas after pulling up stakes in New York City for a new home and teaching jobs at UNLV.

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  • Marcia Gallo, a history professor starting at UNLV, talks about why the school interested her.

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  • Ann Cammett, a law professor, talks about why she took a job at UNLV.

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  • Galo and Cammett talk about making friends in Las Vegas.

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  • Galo and Cammett talk about Las Vegas' atmosphere.

Beyond the Sun

Holding forth one recent morning over a home-cooked breakfast of omelets and sourdough bread, Ann Cammett and Marcia Gallo extolled their new hometown.

They like that Las Vegas is a busy metropolis, cosmopolitan like New York City, where both spent many years.

They also love that the three-story town house they purchased lies in the Mountain’s Edge community, where the tentacle tips of the valley’s urban sprawl meet the empty desert.

“I love coming home at night because the skies are beautiful, the land is open,” Cammett said.

In moving here, the couple parted with friends and family on the East Coast. It wasn’t easy, but once the partners made their decision to move west, they committed to it. Both have cell phone numbers with the local area code, 702.

They are hoping their employer, UNLV, will be as committed to them as they are to their new life.

The two are professors — Cammett in law and Gallo in history. Both begin teaching Monday. Neither has tenure, which gives faculty members broad protections against being fired.

And with state agencies including the university facing budget cuts the state archivist has called the worst since the Great Depression, the pair are a curiosity of sorts.

They’re beginning their UNLV careers at a time when some university leaders are worrying that other scholars will leave for better-supported institutions.

The university has laid off dozens of employees and offered buyouts to longtime faculty members, 14 of whom had accepted as of this week. In general, professors who stay will be teaching more students. Morale has taken a hit.

The problems are shaping the way some job candidates view UNLV.

“I know we lost one person because of the budget situation,” said Chris Hudgins, dean of liberal arts. “I know that several people thought long and hard about it.”

In the 2009-10 and 2010-11 fiscal years, UNLV could lose at least 14 percent of its state-funded budget.

Gallo, 57, knows the reductions are severe, not “run of the mill,” but said she and Cammett liked UNLV too much to turn down the school’s offers. They pointed out that Nevada’s public colleges aren’t alone in facing drastic funding cuts.

“I share people’s concerns, but it would not keep me from coming because I guess where I am in New York, we have gone through these battles over and over again,” said Gallo, who taught for several years and completed her Ph.D. at the City University of New York.

Cammett, 47, who went to law school there, said, “I came out of the City University of New York and we were always under budget. Public institutions tend to be underresourced anyway.”

When Gallo visited UNLV early this year, she was impressed by faculty members’ dedication to both teaching and research. She also liked that the university had a relatively diverse student body.

And Las Vegas, with its freewheeling entertainment industry and strong religious traditions, fit well with her research interests, which include gender and sexuality.

Cammett, who toured the campus late last year, liked the idea of helping to build UNLV’s law program, which, at only 10 years old, was 88th in the nation in rankings U.S. News and World Report released this year.

Because the law school is still young, new faculty members have more chances to shape it than they would to affect the makeup of more established institutions. At UNLV, Cammett will be teaching a course in the law school’s legal clinic, a program that allows students to help prepare cases and represent clients in court.

“I am actually looking forward to becoming an integral member of this law school,” she said. “I plan to be here for a long time, and I want to really make a contribution here. I want to be very much a part of this community, and that is the Las Vegas community, the UNLV community.”

Though Nevada’s financial crisis has worsened since Cammett and Gallo accepted positions at UNLV in late February and early March, respectively, Gallo said she is “cautiously optimistic” about the future and their job security. They will be working toward tenure, and Hudgins said UNLV’s president has emphasized that new faculty members are “some of our best new blood.”

“We will guard those positions,” Hudgins said.

At a time when many faculty members at UNLV are fretting and grumbling about budget problems, newcomers such as Cammett and Gallo are a welcome injection of fresh energy and enthusiasm.

They are, after all, beginning what they hope will be a long adventure, starting a new life in a new city.

Forty tenure-track or tenured professors are starting at the university this fall compared with 75 at the same time last year. The university employs about 900 faculty.

Executive Vice President and Provost Neal Smatresk called new faculty members “the engine of change in higher education.”

“You’re bringing in newly trained people with the latest and greatest ideas and technologies and research interests, so you’re enriching ... the perspective of the faculty, and of course, the perspective of the students,” he said.

“Those who come in fresh in academics are full of optimism and enthusiasm, and that, too, is critical for the health of a program. In some departments, where there hasn’t been much renewal, there can be morale problems.”

Cammett and Gallo’s excitement about UNLV and Las Vegas is palpable, contagious. As they banter about their new jobs, their new home, they smile and laugh, animated, interrupting each other to get another word in.

Cammett’s sister and nephews live in Las Vegas, so the two had visited many times before interviewing at UNLV. They love Red Rock Canyon. They like how easy it is to travel in and out of McCarran International Airport. They have taken in a First Friday, a monthly downtown arts festival.

“The city is just wild,” Gallo said. “I mean, you know, as New Yorkers, we love the fact that it’s a 24/7 kind of town.”

“And that there are so many people here from all over the place; it’s a very familiar feel,” Cammett added.

“Which makes it more friendly,” Gallo continued. “People’s social networks haven’t been set for 25 years and it’s hard to get in. How many folks have we met who said, ‘Oh, let’s go get drinks, let’s have dinner?’ ”

“We already have a huge number of friends here,” Cammett said. “And it’s very interesting that you can find people from all walks of life and that it doesn’t feel clubbish because they’re all new, too.”

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