Smatresk vows more openness

By Emily Richmond

Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009 | 2 a.m.

UNLV President Neal Smatresk’s meeting with the Faculty Senate — and his pledge of better communication about budgetary decisions — appears to have helped smooth some ruffled feathers.

The university leadership’s decision to spend close to $500,000 on new positions and raises for nonteaching administrators in the student affairs unit raised concerns among some faculty members, who are facing pay cuts and heavier workloads as a result of a steep reduction in state funding.

At a meeting of the Faculty Senate this week, Smatresk agreed there had not been enough information provided to explain and provide context for the decisions. In the future, Smatresk said, his office will produce a quarterly report on raises and compensation to be shared with the Nevada System of Higher Education, the Faculty Senate’s financial affairs committee and the joint administrative-faculty committee that reviews all requests for exceptions to the hiring freeze. He will also involve the financial affairs committee members in discussions about future budget cuts.

The money spent on personnel in student affairs included both new positions and about $90,000 in raises that accompanied expanded job responsibilities. The changes were necessary to improve the admissions and financial aid process and to ensure a complicated overhaul of UNLV’s software systems had appropriate support, Smatresk said.

Professor Greg Brown, president of the university’s Faculty Alliance, wrote on the group’s blog that Smatresk’s offers “represented a clear step forward for shared governance at UNLV.”

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How is the 15.4 percent cut in state funding playing out at UNLV?

Professors are facing pay cuts of 4.6 percent along with increased work responsibilities. The university’s support staff employees will take 12 furlough days over each of the two years of the biennium. Resources in certain departments have not kept pace with enrollment increases.

Bryan Spangelo, a professor of chemistry at UNLV and member of the Faculty Senate, said his department is keenly aware of the effects. He was one of the more vocal critics of the university leadership’s decision to spend close to $500,000 on new positions and raises for nonteaching administrators in the student affairs unit.

Chemistry Professor Stephen Carper died two years ago, and the university’s hiring freeze prevents the department from replacing him, Spangelo said. As a result of more students and fewer professors, the department had to ease its course requirements for undergraduates studying biochemistry, dropping a once-mandatory research component.

“Look around the academic landscape at this campus,” Spangelo said. “You’ll see it’s a barren landscape.”

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Nevada high school students are using more tobacco products, reversing several years of declining use.

Oral screenings by the UNLV School of Dental Medicine on students from eight Nevada counties, including Clark and Washoe, show 23 percent of students used tobacco-based products, up from 16 percent the prior year. Until this year tobacco use among Nevada teens had been steadily declining, down from 22 percent in 2005.

Nationally, about 20 percent of high school students smoke cigarettes, according to the most recent survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since 2001 nearly 70,000 students statewide have received oral health screenings as part of the “Crackdown on Cancer” program. Parents must give consent for their children to participate.

Dentists and dental hygienists were at Centennial High School this week, checking students for signs of tissue abnormalities that might require further care.

Last year 283 tissue abnormalities were found in students statewide.

The findings of the dental school’s “Crackdown on Cancer” screenings typically mirror the percentage of tobacco use that students self-report as part of the state’s biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey.