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Arizona Daily Wildcat
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The student voice of the University of Arizona since 1899
Colleges combine, uncertainties remain By Devlin Houser ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT As part of a sweeping reformation of the UA, four colleges have been united under a larger administrative unit called the Colleges of Letters, Arts and Science. The idea is to eliminate administrative redundancies while increasing communication among the colleges. The consolidated colleges are the colleges of science, social and behavioral sciences, humanities and fine arts. Under the new structure, the colleges will keep their autonomy, professors will be unaffected in their day-to-day routines and students pursuing interdisciplinary studies will have easier access to advising.
The consolidation was prompted by the enacted and expected budget cuts, said Dean of the College of Science Joaquin Ruiz. Ruiz is now on double-duty as the executive dean of the colleges. There are advantages to both the old and new structures, he said. As independent entities, the colleges can more easily develop a culture “that allows you to do things more exquisitely,” he said. However, this comes at the expense of communication amongst the colleges and the tax and tuition dollars. While the restructuring may be new to many faculty and students, it is not a new structure in the world of higher education. Similar structures are in place at Arizona State University and
Michigan State University. The UA itself even utilized a similar structure in the early 1980s. Ruiz said the changes are a boon to students of interdisciplinary studies because advising for these students will be moved from University College to the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, thereby making advising more accessible to IDS students. “I’m very excited about this because what the structure is also going to allow us to do is to have a pile of interdisciplinary programs that don’t fit in any of the existing colleges,” he said. Despite UA officials’ initial reticence on the question of whether the consolidation would result in job and salary
cuts, Ruiz answered with an unequivocal “yes” to both, though the particulars of the matter are still being worked out. “I would hope that we have solid plans in no more than a month,” he said. One roadblock faced by UA officials has been that the Arizona Legislature has not yet passed a budget. Until it does, the university must rely on its best guesses to guide the restructuring process. Sociology professor Celestino Fernandez agreed that most instructors would not be greatly affected by the changes, as they largely take place at administrative levels. While some departments’
ROCK’N’ROLL OVERFLOW Dominic Parry of Priority Christian Ministry rocks out with his band at the annual “Overflow” concert to welcome new students to campus on Monday. The courtyard outside the AZ-SO residence hall served as the backdrop for the event. Colin Darland/ Arizona Daily Wildcat
structures have been changed, such as the Department of Political Science becoming the School of Government and Public Policy, Fernandez said others, including his own, have not seen changes “at the present time.” “The commitment (from administration officials) is that it’s not going to affect students already in the pipeline,” he said. The initial request for restructuring came from Provost Meredith Hay, who left many of the details to be shaped by feedback from professors and others at the departmental level, he said. About 75 “white papers,” or comments and suggestions, were received and have COLLEGE, page 3
Shelton on UA’s budget ordeal This week, the UA heads into a new semester in the midst of what President Robert Shelton called “the most difficult economic time in many generations” in an e-mail to university employees sent last night. In part one of a two-part series, the Arizona Daily Wildcat sat down with President Shelton to discuss his plans for coping with an unstable and shrinking budget.
UA falls in college rankings By Yael Schusterman ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT U.S. News and World Report released its annual college rankings Thursday, with the UA getting knocked down a few rungs from last year. The university’s 2010 overall ranking was 102, down from 96 in 2009. The university was at a four-way tie with the University of Missouri, University of Oklahoma and Florida State University. President Robert Shelton said he was unconcerned by the numbers, as the ranking method employed by U.S. News and World Report does not accurately reflect the mission of the UA. “Our mission is to go fairly deep into the applicant pool, and ensure that those students who are hard-working and of good quality, can still get a quality education,” he said.
In 2008 U.S. News & World Report listed UA in the top tier of its “Best National Universities” and 45 among public universities according to admissions. Charlie Silverman, a pre-business freshman, said he came to the UA for the reputable Eller College of Management. He also said that college rankings affects students’ futures “100 percent.” He said that he knows a lot of incoming freshman who look at college rankings, however that was not a deciding factor in his descion to come to the UA. “In the L.A. Times they have statistics of starting business salaries, which are a lot higher at the University of Southern California and Ivy Leagues,” Silverman said. The methodology behind the school rankings breaks down into three steps. First schools are categorized based on their “mission.” Each school has
a different focus, with liberal arts colleges tending to focus on undergraduate education, and larger universities tending to focus on masters and doctoral programs. Next, U.S. News and World Report collects information from the colleges for up to 15 indicators reflecting academic achievements. Each factor is then weighed based on importance. Schools are then ranked in each category against their peers based on the scores that are formed. Not all schools are ranked — Some of the unranked schools are listed separately, if they do not use SAT or ACT test scores in the admissions process or if there was a lack of responses on the peer assessment surveys for academics. This year, 91.2 percent of the 1,477 colleges and universities that were surveyed, returned their statistical information, according to the U.S. News and World Report
Daily Wildcat: What do you perceive to be the biggest challenges facing the university this year, and what are your plans to address those challenges? Shelton: Well, the obvious one, the elephant in the room, is the budget. We don’t have a state budget yet. We know the biggest cut we can take because there is a limit — called “maintenance of effort” — applied by the U.S. Department of Education on any state that takes (federal) fiscal stabilization funds. Our governor wonderfully has taken all that was available, about $830 million, and distributed that to K-12 and the universities. If you accept those funds, then you as a state can’t cut the state budget for K-12 or the universities below 2006 levels. We’re much closer than the other two state universities to that level. Does that mean that the UA has received more cuts than the other two universities? No, it means that over the years money has come out in different ways. For example, ASU has, appropriately, received a lot of enrollment increase money because they’ve increased enrollment. They should get that money; fair is fair. That growth is something we haven’t taken on, although we’re changing that a bit this year. So, the budget is a major situation. How are we dealing with that? Well, for this year we do have a little over $60 million from the federal government through Gov. Brewer’s office in fiscal stabilization funds. We’re using that to try to get through the year, to plug a lot of holes and to mitigate the tuition surcharge. Because that’s one-time funding, correct? That’s one-time funding. Last March the regents added a tuition surcharge SHELTON, page 6
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