RANDY METCALF/Arizona Daily Wildcat Second-year architecture student Sarah Potzler pauses in the Architecture building yesterday. There is a proposal to increase class fees to as much $500, leaving some students worried.

Architecture students lead expensive lives.

John Kerbaugh estimates he spent $1,500 last semester on materials for class projects. Between building materials, tools and pens, he says the program's costs add up fast ÷ and that's before he factors in the required laptop computer.

"Every project is about $100," said Kerbaugh, whose desk in the architecture studio contains a tackle box full of tools and building materials, all of which he paid for.

Now, future architecture students might have to pay even more.

With the School of Planning and the School of Landscape Architecture facing possible closure under President Pete Likins' Focused Excellence plans, the college's dean has proposed charging future students fees of up to $500 per semester beginning in 2004.

Richard Eribes, dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, proposed the fees in each of three proposals for sparing the college from at least a portion of the proposed cuts.

The fees would range from $250 per semester for undergraduate architecture students to $500 for graduate students in architecture, planning and landscape architecture, and they would only affect incoming students.

In the proposals, Eribes estimates the fee could eventually generate $260,000 for the college. Around 15 percent would probably go toward financial aid, Davis said, although that number could rise if a larger portion is required to protect needy students.

Officials in the college hope the fee would help the college continue to embrace the interdisciplinary mission Eribes has championed since he became dean in 1997.

"It keeps the vision of creating a truly interdisciplinary college alive, and that's something we've all invested heavily in," said Barbara Becker, who heads the School of Planning.

Students in the college seemed unconcerned yesterday that the fees might help the college uphold that mission. Current students likely wouldn't need to pay them, but said they understand the necessity.

"If they made me start paying it, I'd do it," said second-year student Sarah Potzler.

The partnership between architecture, landscape architecture and planning has given students opportunities they say they couldn't have had in a more isolated college.

Lukas Sokol, who is in his fifth year of the five-year architecture program, took an interdisciplinary studio class that sent him to Panama with landscape architecture and planning students, on a U.S. State Department grant, to complete an urban renewal project.

"It really capitalized on the idea of architecture, landscape architecture and planning working together to come up with urban renewal proposals," Sokol said.

Landscape architecture students would likely not even have to pay the fee, said Ron Stoltz, the school's director. Stoltz said local landscape architects have already pledged enough money to ensure students aren't harmed in the fee's first year.

The university's top administrators have heaped praise upon the college's interdisciplinary focus, and Provost Davis said yesterday that program fees could help keep the college intact.

"The fees can only be part of the answer," he said.

Eribes' three proposals all include the new fees, but differ sharply in how the colleges' three academic disciplines would be grouped. One would keep all three in the same college, but downgrade the Schools of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture to programs and eliminate a vacant administrative position.

The two others would either move the School of Planning to the College of Public Health or eliminate it completely; one would eliminate the School of Landscape Architecture.

If the School of Planning were moved, it would not be the first time the program has moved since it opened in 1961. It would survive if it were moved, but it has only flourished as a part of the architecture college, Becker said.

If all three disciplines are kept together, they would have implications on a proposed $7 million addition to the Architecture building that would bring them together under one roof. If programs were moved or eliminated, it would mean the addition wouldn't need to be as big, Stoltz said.

Some students say they adamantly support the building addition, even though many of them wouldn't be around to see it finished.

"There isn't enough room in (the Architecture) building for all three disciplines," said Jeff Simon, a fourth-year architecture student. "The building's the key to what our mission statement is."

Under the proposal that would keep all the disciplines together, Eribes calls for the building project to go forward as planned. Already, he wrote, the college has raised $1 million, and has committed to raise $1 million more. That would become more difficult if the college's structure was changed or programs eliminated, he wrote.

Davis said he and Likins will decide within three to four weeks whether to support one of Eribes' proposals or go forward with plans to close the Schools of Planning and Landscape Architecture.

Once they decide what to propose, a variety of committees made up of faculty, staff and students will review the proposals. The Arizona Board of Regents will ultimately decide what to accept.