UNLV will try to balance research and teaching

With the opening of the William S. Boyd Law School the buzzword for UNLV is momentum, as it tries to become a premier urban university under President Carol Harter.

In her state of the university address Tuesday, Harter said UNLV would use the momentum from the law school, the rise of the basketball and golf programs and other recent achievements to gain a reputation as a national university.

To get that reputation, Harter told a crowd of about 250 professors, students and staff in the Judy Bayley Theater that the university has chosen UCLA as its role model.

"I was really impressed with the way that UCLA integrated its teaching and research," Harter said. "To become a major urban university we have to have a student focus integrated with research, and be dedicated to community problem-solving."

The task of becoming known for research like Arizona State University, while at the same time keeping high teaching standards like those of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is not an easy task, said mechanical engineering professor Brendan O'Toole.

"Balancing those two is probably one of the hardest things for a teacher to do," O'Toole said. "We have to find a way to do it, and do it well."

Student body president Will Price said that he appreciated the fact that Harter wants research to go hand-in-hand with a student focus.

"The university could easily focus on research and neglect the students, but I don't think that will happen here," Price said. "Dr. Harter made the point of saying that the students and research will work together. As long as we reach for one goal while keeping an eye to the students there shouldn't be a conflict."

Students have expressed worries in the past at both UNLV and the University of Nevada, Reno that more research means less time for prominent professors to teach classes.

Hal Rothman, a UNLV history professor, said research and teaching are inseparable.

"To be able to teach you have to know what's going on in your field," Rothman said. "If you don't then you're just going up there and mouthing platitudes."

Harter said she believed that the university already has the foundation intact to become a leader in both teaching and research.

She pointed to the new law and physical therapy schools as well as three new doctoral programs in anthropology, geoscience and psychology. The school now has 17 doctoral programs, nine professional programs, a College of Arts and a College of Science.

She pointed to the addition of Paradise Elementary School to the campus as another positive. The school moved from Tropicana Avenue to the campus at the beginning of the school year.

"By moving the school onto campus we have given a group of at-risk children a chance to have a relationship with the university," Harter said. "These children may have never aspired to go to college, but just by being tied into the university they may get the idea that university life is for them."

Harter also said that the school has benefited from the national publicity that Dwaine Knight's golf team and Bill Bayno's basketball team received last season.

Harter reported that UNLV raised $28 million in private funds last year with 46 percent going to building funds, 17 percent to academics, 15 percent to athletics, 10 percent to endowments, 8 percent for miscellaneous and 4 percent for scholarships.

Harter has given each of the university departments an assignment to define what it can do to contribute to the university's goals.

Rothman, a professor at UNLV for seven years, said he hopes that the university can continue to move forward.

"We now have a mission and we've made vast strides toward our goals," Rothman said. "We've reached out to the community like never before and we're right on track."

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