School cut, but degree program spared, after long public campaign

Barbara Becker, director of the School of Planning, spent the last 19 months hoping for the news she received at the Arizona Board of Regents meeting Friday.

When it came, she couldn't stop the tears from flowing.

"It's very touching," said Becker after the Arizona Board of Regents unanimously approved the university's plan to keep the graduate degree in planning while disestablishing the School of Planning.

The School of Planning was scheduled for elimination along with 15 other academic programs at the university two years ago as a part of Focused Excellence.

Since then, Becker and planning faculty, students and staff have attended regents' meetings to champion the school's preservation, standing out in the audience in bright red shirts that read, "Save the School of Planning."

"I hope the red shirts can now be retired," said Regent Lorraine Frank after regents voted to disestablish the school, while still holding onto the degree it produces. Frank described the outcome a "win-win situation."

After surviving two failed proposals to move it elsewhere and another spot on the elimination list, the graduate planning degree will be preserved and moved out of the College of Architecture to the department of geography and regional development in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Keeping the degree, though, will require a fee.

How much the fee will be and when the university will ask regents to approve it is still unknown. A study, which will include experts from other schools of planning, will work out the details of the degree's transfer into geography this fall.

Becker said requiring special program fees of students in professional programs has become a nationwide trend.

It seems to be a trend at the UA.

Past programs, including the School of Landscape Architecture and the School of Gerontology have undergone changes since being targeted by Focused Excellence and are requiring new students in the program to pay up to $1,000 on top of tuition.

Becker said she doesn't think the fee will reduce enrollment in the program, which she said will still be a "wonderful bargain" to prospective students, half of whom typically come from out of state.

Still, Becker said she hopes the program will be able to bring in scholarship money to help students pay the higher bill.

"We're constantly trying to bring in scholarship money," she said.

New students can start as early as this semester and won't be charged a fee.

Davis said he expects the number of planning students to "increase well above what there's been in the past."

The number of core faculty members, though, should not exceed four. Since its possible elimination was announced a year and a half ago, the school has had to turn away prospective students. Its student body dropped from 68 to 20, and three and a half of its seven full time faculty positions were lost. Two professors resigned.

Though Davis said he expects student enrollment to grow to more than what it was before Focused Excellence, the number of full time faculty positions cannot exceed four.

Becker said it wouldn't be hard to rebuild the program's student body. She said she had to turn away thirty-seven applicants seeking admission into the school this fall. Painfully, she said she had to write and say she couldn't accept them.

Now she looks forward to recruiting new students.

The School of Planning was just one of 16 academic programs that university administration scheduled for elimination as part of Focused Excellence, a plan launched 2 years ago intended to maximize the university's increasingly scarce resources as it becomes more research oriented.

Since the eliminations announcement in January 2003, four programs have been eliminated and another four are pending complete elimination. Five programs have been left mostly unchanged and the remaining four have undergone or will undergo a transfer, reorganization or redefinition.

POTENTIAL ELIMINATION RUNDOWN

Completely Saved

-School of Information Resources and Library Sciences: After broad opposition to the potential loss of one of the few professional library schools in the West, the university decided to keep SIRLS. Contributions from the state librarian, private individuals, and a new business plan will help it financially.

-Department of Atmospheric Sciences: Deemed essential to projecting climate change in the Southwest and to helping the university's other earth science and environmental programs, the department has been spared elimination and reorganization.

-School of Landscape Architecture: The program will continue as is in its current home, the College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, which may be renamed the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture this fall. A $1,000 fee was added on top of tuition to new students pursuing the graduate degree, but scholarship support will cover the fee.

-French Ph.D. Program: Saved, with enhanced graduate student recruitment and advising.

-M.A. in Russian: Saved

Changed

-Environmental Hydrology undergraduate degree: The program will be redefined as a campuswide undergraduate program in environmental science, coordinated by the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources.

-Extended University: Reorganized into the Office of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach. Budget has been brought into stability.

-Flandrau Science Center: The center has been transferred from the College of Science to the Office of the Vice President for Research, Graduate Studies, and Economic Development and will eventually move to the new Rio Nuevo district in downtown Tucson.

Eliminated

-Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies (Graduate Interdisciplinary Program)

-Greenlee County Extension Office:

-Marana Agricultural Center

-Research Support Office

Pending Elimination

-School of Health Professions and Medical Technology Program: This semester, the Physiological Sciences Undergraduate Program will be relocated to the Department of Physiology in the College of Medicine, and the School of Health Professionals will be eliminated after ABOR approval. The last graduating class of Medical Technology majors got their degrees in May.

-Humanities Program: Approaching formal elimination, all tenured faculty members have transferred to other departments. ABOR is expected to approve the transfers this fall.

-Institute for Local Government: The university will ask for ABOR approval for the elimination of the institute this year. The Southwest Leadership Program, which now resides in the institute, will be relocated to the School of Public Administration and Policy, where outreach is expected to increase.

-Nuclear Reactor Laboratory: Though decommissioning has already started, ABOR approval is needed before closing completely.

Source: Office of the Provost