Monday, June 2, 2003 | 9:26 a.m.
Carol C. Harter is about to finish her eighth year as president at UNLV.
"It's been a whirlwind every way you look at it," she said last week while taking a 15-minute break from her hectic schedule. "We started a dental school. We started a law school. We added 72 programs and built 15 buildings and raised $200 million in private funds."
Those are impressive numbers to be sure. But for the average UNLV sports fan, they're not nearly as important as national championships (one in men's golf), Top 25 football finishes (zero) or Final Four basketball appearances (zero) in that span.
Which makes the next couple of months crucial to Harter's legacy as UNLV president in the eyes of many Rebels faithful.
Harter will have the final say on who will replace John Robinson as athletic director at the school sometime late this summer. And in the ever-changing face of big-money college athletics, that person could play a key role in determining whether UNLV continues to move ahead toward Harter's goal of being a perennial national Top 50 athletic program, or allowing the school to remain where it stands now -- a solid mid-major athletic program that is sandwiched in the shadows of the Pac-10 and Big 12 conferences.
"I haven't really thought it through that much," Harter said when asked how the AD hire will determine her legacy at UNLV. "I think of it much more in terms of what will be the most important thing in terms of the university."
Harter acknowledges it takes a special person to be able to handle the athletic director's role in college athletics these days.
"It really is a complex job," she said. "In many ways, it's as complex as the presidency in terms of the multitude of things that you do.
"The very first thing at the center of it has to be the student athlete's welfare, not only their athletic welfare but also their ability to be successful in the academic program. I don't think UNLV has made near as much progress in that area as we need to. We want them to be successful academically and we want them to graduate. I think that's the heart of what an athletic director is going to bring here. Then on top of that, they'll have to manage tight resources (an esitimated $21 million budget), fund-raise, take part in community relations ... they're all very important parts of the job."
Harter said she will be looking for someone with a strong background in intercollegiate athletics to replace Robinson.
"I think obviously you need an experienced person here," she said. "There are many, many very young people out there who will eventually be great athletic directors and I wish them well. But I think we need someone who has substantial experience at some way or another in the collegiate environment. There are major differences between working with professional sports or other kinds of (private) organizations than at the university level."
That doesn't necessarily mean the new Rebels AD will have been an athletic director at another NCAA institution, however.
"It could be someone who has been at the associate level, whether it's a senior women's administrator or an associate athletic director at a very fine institution," Harter said. "Or it could be a sitting AD at an institution that would not be considered as high level perhaps as UNLV but would be the natural step up."
Harter was asked if she had put together any kind of list of candidates in her head when Robinson announced he was going to step down after just 17 months on the job.
"I really don't," Harter said. "Absolutely not. This is going to be a national search for the very best person. I have no list whatsoever and no predetermined choice whatsoever."
Harter said university by-laws mandate that a screening committee be formed to help identify potential candidates. She said that Joseph "Andy" Fry, a distinguished history professor at the school for 27 years, will chair that committee.
Harter also has enlisted the services of Bond, Schoeneck & King Collegiate Sports Services in Overland Park, Kan., a law firm well known for helping represent NCAA schools in infraction and compliance cases, to help with the screening of potential candidates.
"I've gotten some inquiries about the job and we've already sent them on to (BS&K)," Harter said. "They're a firm that help does searches for athletic directors, so we're sending any material we receive immediately to them. We also haven't formally advertised the job yet. We're about to do that in the nation's top higher education journals, the NCAA newspaper and several sports related media outlets so that we get a broad coverage across the country."
Harter hopes to have the screening committee formed in the next couple of weeks and would like to have the new AD hired by the start of football season Aug. 30.
"That may be overally ambitious because of the schedule," she said. "But if we can fast-track this, that would be wonderful. The new person would start right with the beginning of the serious sports seasons here and that would be great. But if we can't, we can't. The most important thing is finding the right person."
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