National advisers to the new Arizona International Campus of the UA said they were concerned with the new campus' location and that it could hinder students' educational efforts.

"Not living on or near campus jeopardizes the student's learning experience," said Alexander Astin, vice chair of the National Advisory Board and director of the Higher Education Research Institute. "Serious consideration should be given to building residential sites."

The board members, on their third visit to Tucson, met with AIC administrators and curriculum committees at their downtown offices Friday to discuss issues related to the new campus.

The board, composed of university administrators and professors from around the country, is solely advisers, acting as a sounding board, coach and counsel to AIC's administrators.

Although board members said they were pleased with AIC's progress, they also said they were concerned about the new campus' location and its dependence on the UA.

"We can understand that this is an interim location," said Gregory Prince, president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and chair of the advisory board. "In order to involve the community and benefit the students you've got to be convenient.

"It really needs to be in the center of its population."

In November, the Arizona Board of Regents approved to temporarily locate AIC at the IBM site on South Rita Road and Interstate 10. The new campus is scheduled to open in the fall with about 100 students.

Prince said AIC may have to invest in a system to move people around. Massachusetts universities, he said, spend more than $1 million a year on a busing system between their five state campuses.

Astin and other board members also said that the new public college should become independent as quickly as possible from its parent university.

"If it's not independent, you're trying to match it to the current mission," Prince said. "If it's independent, you can develop its distinctiveness."

Board members responded to criticisms from the Faculty Senate that the UA and the Arizona Board of Regents have created a "branch campus" by establishing the new four-year liberal arts university under the UA's umbrella.

The Committee of Eleven, the oldest faculty governance committee at the UA, released a resolution in February asking the Faculty Senate to cast a vote of "no confidence" in the new campus and its administration. The Faculty Senate voted this month to postpone approval of AIC's curriculum programs and to require AIC to follow UA guidelines for hiring faculty and establishing programs and courses.

The board said the relationship the UA has with AIC is like that of a parent overseeing the actions of a child. They said the issues that have arisen between faculty and administrators can be found in almost any university setting of this nature and that they would be more concerned if these issues had not surfaced.

The disagreements, they said, can be resolved.

"There's always the issue that my kid isn't doing it my way," Astin said. "If you want the child to become an independent adult then you have to let it go."