LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

By Christina Littlefield

Monday, Sept. 17, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Regents on the hunt for a new president for the College of Southern Nevada have established a search committee that is being faulted by faculty and staff for its makeup.

A small but loud contingent believes that some of the administrators and faculty on the committee aren't the best choices.

For example, committee member Patty Charlton Dayar, the vice president of finance, at one point supervised Bob Gilbert, the college's construction chief who is under investigation by the attorney general's office. Until that matter is resolved, some question whether Dayar should be helping to choose a new president.

Others are concerned that in the past, people on the search committees have leveraged their contacts with the new president to gain administration positions. So they contend that anyone in a Faculty Senate leadership position, or an interim position, such as Rose Hawkings, interim dean of the School of Arts and Letters, should not be on the search committee.

Finally, faculty and staff have complained to the Sun that the search committee is composed of the same people who always seem to show up on these search committees. Thomas Brown, the college's affirmative action officer, has served on the last two search committees , which selected Richard Carpenter and Ron Remington.

CSN administration selected the administrators on the committee, and the Faculty Senate selected the faculty representatives, Nevada System of Higher Education spokesman John Kulhman said. Regent s Chairman Michael Wixom selected the community leaders, which include representatives from Nevada's congressional delegation, members of minority chambers of commerce and key community leaders such as Danny Thompson, secretary/treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

The complaints had not yet reached Wixom or Regent Steve Sisolak, committee chairman, but both said they would make adjustments if necessary.

The search committee meets publicly at 1 p.m. Monday at the Cheyenne campus gymnasium.

Speaking of CSN's former president, the Sun learned Friday that Carpenter has taken at least one CSN employee with him to his new job as chancellor of a community college district in the Houston suburbs.

Carpenter's administrative assistant from Las Vegas, Elva Borsch, answered his office phone Friday morning at the North Harris Montgomery Community College District.

Carpenter has previously told the Sun he would like to also bring Rand Key, CSN's vice president of planning and development, to Houston in the future, if there were any openings that fit Key's qualifications.

Key followed Carpenter from Alabama to Wisconsin to Nevada.

Regents are pushing system administrators hard this month to get a new, in-house project manager in place for the system's Integrate project after learning that the system has paid nearly $250,000 in outside consulting fees to keep the project moving forward.

Charlie Moran, of Moran Technologies, was originally contracted for $100,000 to evaluate two different methods of how to implement the new Enterprise Resource Program, which will overhaul all computing functions for student services, human resources and business and accounting processes for the state's eight institutions.

But regents and system officials jumped on Moran's expertise, asking him to do more and more consulting work. Moran brought experience from projects in Arizona and California, helped solve an ongoing debate about how many computer data centers to have and is now helping student services personnel narrow their requirements from 3,700 features to oh, 2,800 or so.

The project has been without a staff director since July 2006, when vice technology Chancellor Lee Alley stepped down. Dan Klaich, executive vice chancellor, said the project turned out to be too big for the interim vice chancellor, Kenneth McCullum, or anyone, to handle on his own.

Klaich said a committee is reviewing 50 applications for the job and hopes to have a decision by October.