Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023 | 3:43 p.m.
Patricia Charlton
Acting Vice Chancellor Patricia Charlton is the new interim chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
The Board of Regents today unanimously approved Charlton to be elevated to the position. They are continuing to work to permanently fill the post.
“(NSHE has) over 100,000 students that are in our institutions today. We owe all that we can do to make this the best experience for them,” Charlton said. “So I am committed to working directly with you, making the improvements that you see that are necessary to get a successful search underway, and I want to thank all of you for your steadfast commitment not just to our students, (but) to our faculty, to our staff and our community.”
“Ms. Charlton has a wealth of experience and knowledge, and I would hope that we could all come together during this time frame,” Regent Susan Brager said during the meeting. “She knows NSHE; she knows the board; she’s sat through a number of meetings; she understands from CSN to the universities and everything in between.”
Charlton, hired earlier this year as NSHE’s acting vice chancellor of academic and student affairs, was appointed earlier this month as acting officer in charge at NSHE. She had served as vice president and provost of the Henderson campus of College of Southern Nevada from 2018 to 2022. She had served in various capacities at CSN since 1995.
A longtime resident of Henderson, Charlton graduated from the College of Southern Nevada in 1991, then received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNLV.
She is working on a doctorate in public policy from UNLV.
Charlton sits on multiple boards and committees, including the United Way of Southern Nevada’s board of directors and the Clark County School District Bond Oversight Committee.
Charlton’s contract begins Monday and ends once the regents have appointed a new chancellor and closed their search, officials said. She will receive an annual salary of $378,198, an $8,000 car allowance and a housing allowance of $12,000 per fiscal year.
Charlton was not the first pick for the role.
A prospective candidate who was not identified had been in talks with NSHE, confirmed their interest and completed contract negotiations before withdrawing nine hours before the posting deadline last week.
According to NSHE code, Board of Regents Chair Byron Brooks and Vice Chair Joseph Arrascada needed to put forth a suggestion for interim chancellor byTuesday.
There was no contingency plan to allow regents more time to find a new person considering the circumstances, Brooks said during Tuesday’s meeting.
“Recognizing where we are on Wednesday and what the policy states, it’s very clear to me that the policies that we have sometimes don’t align with common sense and reasonableness, particularly if there’s mitigating circumstances in which we’re trying to get things done,” Brooks said. “We have to have conversations about the way this (search process) looks like.”
Regents have been searching for a chancellor to replace acting chancellor Dale Erquiaga, who signed an 18-month contract last year. Erquiaga had been on the job since July 1, 2022, when he took over for Chancellor Melody Rose, who stepped down after 19 months into a four-year contract she signed in 2020.
Rose’s resignation came shortly after the conclusion of a third-party investigation into hostile-workplace allegations she lodged against then-Regents Chair Cathy McAdoo and Vice Chair Patrick Carter, whom she accused of gender discrimination, intimidation and retaliation in an orchestrated effort to drive her away.
The investigators found insufficient evidence to support Rose’s legal claims but fell far short of giving the regents a clean bill of health, instead noting that the board had engaged in unprofessional behavior, was factionalized politically and had possibly committed ethical violations.
The search for a permanent chancellor stalled last month after board members failed to move forward with the appointment of Lawrence Drake II, interim president of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida.
A search committee had recommended Drake for the job, but regents voiced concerns that neither Drake nor two other candidates were a good fit.
Although a new chancellor search will officially begin soon, regents will first discuss amending some of the policies relating to chancellor searches.
Some possible changes could be discussed at their Sept. 28 meeting, Brooks said.
“What we really need to do is … to have this (interim chancellor) here, fix the policy that has constrained us in the past and move forward with a search that is properly conducted in a proper timeline and includes everyone, and hopefully we can be more transparent because we fixed the policy,” Regent Stephanie Goodman said during the meeting.
The transparency remark likely was made in reference to criticism lodged by the Nevada Faculty Alliance, which said that the selection of Charlton as interim chancellor was made without discussions with all of the various NSHE constituencies. The alliance represents professional employees within all eight NSHE institutions.
