WILL SEBERGER/Arizona Summer Wildcat Former Board President Jack Jewett and UA President Pete Likins listen to comments at last Thursday's Arizona Board of Regents video conference.

President Pete Likins on Thursday urged regents to be patient as the university reshapes itself under Focused Excellence, Likins' plan to narrow the university's mission in response to continual funding cuts from the state.

Many of the plans for cutting, merging and altering individual programs must still be reviewed by faculty, staff and students before they can be implemented.

That means it might take longer for the university to see changes. But Likins believes more people are likely to accept the changes if a broader group is able to offer opinions.

"The extra time will pay off in terms of trouble avoided in implementation," he said.

Of the more than 40 proposed changes, the board of regents must approve about 25. When Likins originally unveiled the timeframe for implementing Focused Excellence, he had hoped the board could vote on all the changes at last week's meeting.

But only five fairly non-controversial changes actually came before the board at its meeting Thursday, and all received unanimous approval from the board. Those are:

· transferring the interdisciplinary studies program in epidemiology to the College of Public Health

· temporarily moving the School of Planning to the Graduate College

· approving the bachelor of applied science program at UA South in Sierra Vista

· approving a plan for greater curricular autonomy at UA South

· approving establishment of the Arizona Geriatric Center, which will improve the training of health professional in Arizona geriatrics.

The temporary move for the School of Planning was a response from the school's faculty to its proposed closure.

Though faculty continue to oppose the closure of the school, which offers only a master of arts degree, they believed the temporary move would be helpful during a time of restructuring, Provost George Davis told the regents.

At Thursday's meeting, Likins said he was excited about the progress that had been made as Focused Excellence has developed in the last year, even though most proposals will have to wait until at least the fall for final approval from the regents.

"A great deal has happened in the last 12 months," Likins said.

Speaking after the meeting, Davis also cautioned against thinking the scope of the Focused Excellence proposals is too limited.

"We're beginning to develop a mindset that has us scanning for where redundancies are and where eliminations could be," he said. A year from now, "You're going to see that there are some very significant changes."

Proposals yet to be acted upon include merging the department of German Studies with the department of Russian and Slavic Studies and eliminating the Humanities Program.

Longer-term goals under Focused Excellence include creating a new college that would encompass many areas of mass communication, including journalism and media arts.

Additionally, the board voiced support for a policy that would allow the creation of new non-tenure eligible faculty positions for professionals in a given field who lack traditional academic credentials.

All three university presidents supported the policy change as a means by which qualified professionals in the community could be used to increase the quality of undergraduate education at the universities.

The policy would increase the allowed percentage of non-tenure eligible faculty from four percent of the total faculty to 15 percent.

Likins said that many non-tenured and non-tenure track faculty already exist at the universities, such as clinical professors in the school of medicine.

The new faculty would be given titles such as "Professor of Practice" and "Research Professor."

Typically, many faculty members are hired at the last minute for a single academic year, said NAU President John Haeger.

Haeger said the new policy would allow all three universities to establish a more consistent faculty pool.

However, Arizona Faculty Council representative and vice-chair of UA faculty Wanda Howell said that she was concerned that the increase in the number of non-tenure eligible faculty could reduce tenure track faculty's exposure to undergraduates.

The policy will be up for approval later this year.

The board also approved UA's long-range master plan for campus development, giving the university the green light to proceed with development of the campus area north of Speedway Boulevard.

The plan would give the Arizona Health Sciences Center a greenbelt that would resemble the main campus' Mall.

The development would tie in with the construction of three new medical research buildings that will be constructed near AHSC.