By Amanda Hunt
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Notable scholars from around the country are helping to get the New Campus in Pima County underway.
A national advisory committee was recently formed by Celestino Fernandez, executive vice president and provost of the New Campus, to provide guidance for the new interdisciplinary liberal arts college. Their first meeting took place last week.
Fernandez said everyone on the committee is enthusiastic about the new school and after visiting last week are "even more interested" in contributing their expertise.
The college is designated to be located in the IBM facility on South Rita Road and is scheduled to be open for classes in fall 1996. The institution is planned to be independent of the UA and will serve about 10,000 students by 2010. Fernandez and his planning team will move to that location in July 1996.
At their first meeting, the committee toured the new site and discussed various academic aspects of the new college. The committee reviewed a draft of the academic program plan and gave guidance on ways it could be improved.
Fernandez said the committee is a "very dynamic group" and will be helping to break "some very important ground" for undergraduate education in Pima County.
According to a press release, Fernandez said, "This is a great opportunity to draw upon the knowledge, experience and expertise from some of the top leaders in higher education today. The New Campus will be implementing many of the innovative ideas on programs and organization proposed by these individuals in recent years."
The committee members are Tomas Arciniega, president of California State University; Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles; Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching (Princeton, N.J.); Carol Gorsuch, vice chancellor of the five-campus Antioch University System (Yellow Springs, Ohio); Charles Muscatine, professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley; E. Ann Neel, professor of sociology at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Wash.); and Gregory Prince, president of Hampshire College (Amherst, Mass.).
Gorsuch said she is pleased that Pima Community College is playing a role in the design of the New Campus. It is important that the two have a close working relationship because many students from PCC will transfer to the New Campus, she said.
"It's critical to make transferring as effortless as we possibly can," Gorsuch said. She added that her voice for the community college student will ensure that the non-traditional student is accounted for and that the new institution does not lose sight of the demographics of the student population.
She said it is especially important to improve faculty and student relations and encourage minorities and women toward receiving advanced degrees.
The committee plans to meet several times a year and will next meet at the end of the summer.