Dread spreads at UNLV over less money, more students

By Stephanie Tavares

Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

When UNLV students return this month for fall classes, they will be paying more in fees and tuition but won’t notice many other effects of the budget cuts handed down by the Legislature this year.

At least for this academic year, the same level of student services and courses will be offered as in the past.

But students and faculty shouldn’t rest easy, because the hammer will drop after UNLV figures out how to absorb the 2009 Legislature’s budget cuts.

That’s making many people on campus nervous — chief among them Christine Clark, the vice president of diversity and inclusion.

Clark’s three-person office is charged with such responsibilities as organizing the Martin Luther King Day celebrations and building meaningful dialogue among the diverse university constituents.

And she feels she has a target on her back, worried that in this time of fiscal hardship, her office might be considered expendable.

Decisions will be made in coming months on whether to eliminate not just her office but entire departments, programs and services. At the least, classroom instructors could find some of their courses canceled. (Already, some faculty and staff are choosing the option of spreading their nearly 5 percent pay cut over this year and next, rather than taking it as a single blow next year.)

New UNLV President Neal Smatresk has promised students that if they’ve already started a degree program, they’ll be able to finish it — but it might take longer and the university won’t take in new students in every program.

The campus will cut courses and services, but it is also expecting a boost in enrollment. The new GI Bill and the recession have combined to attract more students to college campuses than ever, making it even harder for students to get into the most sought-after classes and complete the most popular majors. Administrators promise to shift funding to ensure the most important courses will still be available to large numbers of students.

Some departments may be consolidated to streamline administrative overhead. That could happen to Clark’s diversity office, which has come under heavy fire in recent months for the size of its budget and a poorly received hate-crimes-policy proposal.

If the committee decides her office isn’t important enough to UNLV’s mission, Clark could be demoted to faculty, the multicultural center she built could be shuttered and the goal of increasing diversity on campus relegated to student services and admissions.

Hers is just one of many offices, majors and departments feeling the heat.

To help sort this all out, administrators have established a faculty-senate-led committee of student leaders, faculty and staff to decide over the next 12 months what, and how much, gets cut.

Smatresk says he will accept the committee’s recommendations.

The criteria to decide the fate of each program include student demand, alternative funding sources and how well a program aligns with the goals and ideals of the university and the needs of the state.

The chopping process will be excruciating and is already causing tension among department heads on campus who are gearing up for a yearlong competitive fight to save their programs.

One thing the committee won’t recommend is cutting a degree program because the degree can be earned elsewhere in the system, such as nursing or teaching programs that also are offered at Nevada State College or chemistry degrees that could be earned at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Smatresk has asked each program and department to turn in a dossier by the end of the month addressing each of the committee’s criteria. These reports will then be examined, investigated, debated and filed for later action.

The entire process isn’t expected to be completed for another year. In the meantime, faculty and administrators across the campus, including Clark, are quietly mobilizing to save their programs.

It’s certain that few, if any, on campus will be pleased with the outcome. And because no public or student input mechanism is in place, committee members are likely to be heavily lobbied by those who feel their programs and majors are at risk.