Pacheco around for many changes at UA

Pacheco, who earns $165,000 a year at UA, will step up to a higher-paying position as president of the University of Missouri's four-school system Aug. 1.

"The years I have led the University of Arizona have been the most exciting of my professional career," he said in a January interview.

When Pacheco accepted the position as UA's president in April 1991 students and faculty were scratching their heads wondering what to expect.

"In a myriad of respects, Pacheco's style is a radical departure from that of his predecessor, Henry Koffler," according to an August 1991 article in the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

His appeal to faculty, staff and students for their opinions made him popular early on in his career.

"Pacheco's approach has made him wildly popular among students, faculty and administrators. Skeptics and critics have kept quiet," the article stated.

In addition, the UA saw a 14 percent increase in gifts and grants under Pacheco in the 1991-92 academic year.

He arrived at the UA as one of the highest-ranking Hispanic officials in higher education, and set four main goals for himself: to improve undergraduate education for students at the University of Arizona, to ensure the research mission of the UA was not hurt by the first goal, establishment of a strategic planning process to consider each element of the institution and the establishment of a more effective governance.

"I think there is a high level of accomplishment in all of those areas, but all of them need to be continued," he said in January.

The UA's place in the top 10 in U.S. News and World Report's ranking of public research universities clearly illustrates accomplishment of the research goal, Pacheco said.

He also pointed to the cap on enrollment and a greater availability of classes for incoming freshman as signs of improvement in undergraduate education.

"The freshman-year experience is probably the most important in a college students career, and we need to enhance that. To me, that means we need to move forward with the Integrated Instructional Facility," he said in a September 1996 interview.

While he proposed futuristic buildings and assigned task forces to improve undergraduate education, a good percentage of students reported feeling overwhelmed and alienated in last year's campus climate survey.

When asked about his relationship with students, he said it was not possible to have a close relationship with each and every student when there are 35,000 of them.

This year, enrollment decreased, leading to a budget shortfall of over $1 million.

Budgetary constraints throughout his presidency led to elimination and consolidation of departments as well as trimming the fat across the board.

"I would have liked for us to have more financial support for our programs," he said, adding that elimination of programs was a "very painful process."

The Committee of Eleven also gave Pacheco low ratings, but he felt the sample was not a good representation of the true majority. "It was a small group of faculty. I don't call 240 responses out of a group of 2,000 a representative sample," he said.

Twenty-five percent of the UA's 2,159 voting faculty - about 540 people - responded to the Committee of Eleven's survey.

Of the respondents, 57.8 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed the president can effectively administer the university.

Perhaps constant budgetary limitations, and Pacheco's department trimming solutions are what turned faculty against him.

A July 1993 issue of the Arizona Summer Wildcat said that faculty morale was very low because of budget cutting measures, and as a result faculty were leaving UA in "large numbers."

Faculty in departments fearing the ax generated negative feelings about the president's office.

"They have hunted us down like a hunted animal. They have destroyed what I have created here in a short amount of time with limited resources," Statistics Department head Yashaswini Mittal said in January 1995, in response to Pacheco casting his vote to e liminate the departments of Journalism and Statistics.

"I was disappointed. I had hoped that the additional evidence we showed Pacheco and the public support might sway him," said Jim Patten, head of the Journalism Department.

Despite cuts to programs, new buildings and UA expansion projects were a cornerstone of Pacheco's reign. The Environmental and Natural Resources Building at the northeast corner of East Sixth Street and North Park Avenue, as well as the Aerospace and Mech anical Engineering building, at the northeast corner of East Speedway Boulevard and North Mountain Avenue, are just two examples of large building projects.

With impending UA expansion despite the campus being "landlocked" on most sides by neighborhoods, businesses and neighborhood associations began to wonder about the future.

"We've tried to work really hard with the neighborhood associations," Pacheco said, adding that expansion may be a threat to some business people.

Despite the controversy surrounding Pacheco's term as president of UA, with large projects like the IIF and Arizona International Campus still in development, he will no doubt be remembered.

At one of the most extraordinary times in UA history, Manuel Pacheco was no ordinary president.