DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat UA Provost George Davis speaks during the Arizona Board of Regents meeting in Tempe on Friday.

TEMPE ÷ The Arizona Board of Regents decided on Friday to consider in April whether to charge a $10 per credit hour fee for students in studio dance classes to cover the costs of musical accompaniment.

Provost George Davis said he didn't know how many classes this fee would impact, but said that if the regents approve it, no student would be charged more than $50 per semester.

Current regents' policy allows fees to be charged to cover the cost of live models for studio art classes, but not musical accompaniment.

Regents also decided to allow UA to offer a doctoral degree program in audiology. Davis said that because of stricter certification requirements for U.S. audiologists and the likelihood of 250 more audiologists becoming necessary in Arizona within 30 years, UA needed to offer the program.

"We at the University of Arizona feel we might as well get on with it," Davis said.

The university will reallocate funding from other areas for the hiring of two tenure-track and two clinical faculty members between the 2004 ÷ 2005 school year and the 2007 ÷ 2008 school year.

The program would be the first in much of the western U.S., though university officials have no plans to turn it into a center with responsibilities to the entire region, Davis said.

The program will not offer a Ph.D., but a doctorate similar to those offered for pharmacy and law students.

Regents also gave the UA permission to spend $2.3 million more than had been budgeted for design schematics for a new Biotechnology building and an addition to the Chemistry building.

Under current regents' policy, universities are only allowed to spend up to five percent of total project costs, but no more than $600,000, for schematic design. Both of these buildings had already been granted exceptions to that limit once, but the previously approved limits weren't enough to cover the design costs.

Some regents said that the $600,000 limit should be overturned, especially because designing technologically advanced buildings that will house biotechnology researchers can be expensive.

Regent Gary Stuart said $600,000 often can't cover schematics for such buildings, where research that is expected to bring tens of millions of dollars and national prestige to the university will be conducted.

"What's going to happen here is going to be monumental," said Regent Don Ulrich, arguing the importance of allowing higher spending for design.