UNLV chief says hire worth price; regent disagrees

By Charlotte Hsu

Friday, Sept. 12, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A new face at UNLV this month is a familiar face to President David Ashley.

Nancy Tanaka, an administrator who reported to Ashley when he was executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California at Merced, will join UNLV as Ashley’s associate president and chief of staff Monday. Her yearly salary of about $175,000 is a bit of an eyepopper at a time when state colleges and universities are laying off employees and offering buyouts.

“We’re cutting all over the place, and this is an add-on,” said Steve Sisolak, a member of the Board of Regents, which governs public higher education in Nevada. He said he has received a dozen complaints from staff and faculty members about the hire.

Tanaka will oversee hiring and budgeting for the president’s office, represent Ashley at select campus meetings and work with regents. She is also expected to ensure Ashley hears and responds to faculty and staff members’ concerns.

“I get feedback that it’s really necessary to have someone managing the office and the communications and making sure there’s some follow-through,” said Ashley, who has been criticized for not communicating enough with rank-and-file workers.

Nasser Daneshvary, chairman of the faculty senate, said Tanaka is “badly needed.”

“There are so many times that there are multiple activities. (Ashley) cannot be at all of them, but he needs to have representation,” Daneshvary said.

When Ashley started at UNLV two years ago, the school had set aside funds for a deputy to the president and a senior adviser whose combined salary this year would be about $275,000. Ashley never hired a deputy, and the senior adviser slot has been open since December.

Ashley said he’s saving money by eliminating these jobs and giving many of their duties to one person — Tanaka. UNLV also used to have a vice president of planning and diversity who doubled as chief of staff, and some work associated with that position will go to Tanaka.

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Sisolak worries that people will view Ashley’s new hire as an example of cronyism at UNLV.

The president considered four people for Tanaka’s job, including three he knew professionally and one who was recommended through a professional contact.

Sisolak, who prefers open searches, said, “You want to avoid cronyism or the appearance of cronyism at any cost, and it’s paramount that we do that at extremely difficult budget times.”

Ashley defended his hire, saying it’s not unusual for university presidents to choose trusted colleagues as their chiefs of staff.

“This is, I think, one of the few positions where the working relationship is paramount,” he said.

In an e-mail to the UNLV community, Ashley wrote that Tanaka, an assistant vice chancellor at UC Merced, oversaw academic personnel, curriculum development, and space and academic budgeting.

“Having worked closely and professionally with Nancy for four years, I am extremely confident in her ability to take on this important and challenging new position,” Ashley wrote. “Please join me in welcoming Nancy Tanaka to UNLV.”

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Jim Rogers, TV mogul and chancellor of Nevada’s public higher education system, has a lot of money — so much he’s not quite sure where it all goes.

This summer, he paid nearly $6,000 to send UNLV communications student Emily Miller to Ethiopia to build homes with the nonprofit group Habitat for Humanity. Asked what he knew about Miller’s trip, Rogers responded, “Not a hell of a lot.”

We’ll fill him in.

To be eligible for Rogers’ scholarship, students had to be members of the ONE Campaign, a nationwide effort to increase awareness of global poverty, hunger and disease. Miller beat out a dozen candidates, stating in her application essay that she wanted to “make a difference that is beyond just writing senators and going to a rally.”

Back at UNLV for her final semester, Miller, 22, said her journey abroad helped cement her desire to do nonprofit work.

In Ethiopia, she helped build foundations and dig latrines for several homes. She said Ethiopians she met cared about “family and a good work ethic and tradition and things like that that I think have sometimes been lost in our culture.”

“In America, we’re so focused on what we have and what we don’t have and being consumers,” she said. “I really reprioritized what I valued ... I learned more about myself in the two weeks I was there than I did in 22 years.”