UNLV needs to fill five fundraiser jobs

By Charlotte Hsu (contact)

Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

UNLV officials are trying to fill five crucial fundraising jobs as the university enters the home stretch of a $500 million campaign scheduled to end this year.

School administrators are searching for directors of development for education, student life and the dental medicine school, a director of advancement for the law school and a director of external relations for the hotel college.

“Every month these positions are open means there’s less funding coming in,” said Bill Boldt, vice president for advancement. Searches for each job began in September.

Boldt hopes to make offers to candidates for each position by the end of January. Applicants from outside the Las Vegas area would need time to move before starting, so some positions could be vacant until after February.

Development officers are the backbone of fundraising at UNLV. They are part public affairs workers, informing the Las Vegas community and potential donors about department programs and research. They woo donors and ensure they know how their money is making a difference for the university.

Hiring is a slow process because of competition for qualified applicants among universities, museums, nonprofits and other organizations, Boldt said.

Development officers’ pay comes from private sources, so budget cuts at UNLV will not affect the ability to fill those positions, Boldt said.

The anticipated hires would bring the number of development officers for colleges and other departments at the university to 14.

As of the end of September, UNLV had raised $378.8 million toward its $500 million goal. The school will release updated fundraising figures this month.

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In a city flush with jobs, students can land lucrative gigs to pay for their education. They park cars, dance, serve cocktails and otherwise contribute to the 24-hour economy.

Ryan Phillips, 23, is pursuing a less orthodox way of paying for law school at UNLV.

Phillips, an aspiring corporate attorney, happens to be a competitive chess player. And he’s hoping that teaching chess for $30 an hour will allow him eventually to drop his other gigs tutoring math for about 10 hours a week.

Phillips, who won the under-2000 Western States Open in 2006 and tied for second in the North American Open’s under-1800 in 2004, learned to play chess at age 8 from his dad. (“Under-2000” and “under-1800” refer to the U.S. Chess Federation’s ratings for players.)

Since childhood, Phillip has taught himself more about chess by practicing, reading books on tactics and studying other players’ games.

“I liked the logic of it,” he said. “It’s a beautiful game to me aesthetically also. The patterns, the way the pieces move, there’s a logic and a symmetry to the game.”

So far, Phillips is finding that entrepreneurship isn’t easy.

He’s started his chess business with one student a 6-year-old who has taken hourly lessons once a week for the past 2 1/2 months.

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It might come as a relief to some at UNLV that as the university prepares to slash its budget, scrimping on bathroom cleaning is not high on the list of potential reductions.

Plans approved Monday to help higher education save money include large-scale reductions such as saving $10 million by delaying a planned overhaul of computing systems.

But other options individual campus, such as picking up trash from offices two or three times a week instead of daily, indicate that schools may try to nickel and dime toward solvency. (Tidying bathrooms would remain a priority, the document said.)

Other options include leaving open at least one part-time job that pays a whopping four figures.

Buying cheap furniture for new buildings or delaying the purchase of furniture for conference rooms and other public spaces are other choices schools can make.