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 Looks Like A Bad Idea May Be Corrected Soon By Margaret Regan IT MAY SOON be moving day for the troubled Arizona International Campus of the University of Arizona. The tiny branch campus, whose distant location on the far eastside of town has occasioned controversy from the start, likely will move to the UA campus sometime next summer. The move is contingent upon approval by the full Board of Regents, who could vote on it as early as this week. Along with the departure from the UA Science and Technology Park would come a demotion for AIC, sources say. If the regents agree, AIC would lose its status as an independent liberal arts campus and become a subsidiary college within the UA. Lambasted all along by UA profs for procedural irregularities, the revamped AIC would come under the UA's close supervision. Renamed the Arizona International College, it would become part of the UA college system, though just how is yet to be determined.
"Pending approval from the Arizona Board of Regents, Arizona International will move to and co-locate on the University of Arizona," Fernández wrote. "The move will occur during the summer of 1988." Fernández argued in the letter that the new situation will be temporary and that he still expects AIC one day to spin off as "separate four-year liberal arts institution." Meantime, he noted, "Arizona International will retain its own identity (independent recruiting efforts) and academic program and current reporting structure."
And Amos confirmed the reorganization plan would likely be brought up for discussion at the Board of Regents' regular meeting in Flagstaff this Thursday and Friday, September 25 and 26. A vote could ensue, although Board President Rudy Campbell prefers the regents hold off on taking action until after the new UA president, Peter Likins, is installed next week. "If they want to take a vote, I would say, 'Let's wait for Dr. Likins,' " Campbell said. "But they might outvote me." Campbell said he and the other regents have discussed AIC's woes at every meeting in recent months, and in August directed the Southern Arizona regents "to take a look" at the school. The reorganization plan was hashed out September 16 at a meeting at the UA that included Amos, Fernández, Acting President Paul Sypherd, UA lobbyist Gregory Fahey and UA vice president for undergraduate programs Michael Gottfredson. Regent John Munger participated via telephone. The question on the agenda, Amos said, was, "What can we do to ensure the success of AIC?" THE PROPOSED CHANGES to AIC come at the beginning of its second school year, at a time when its chances for success have come increasingly into question. AIC managed to attract only 63 new students for the fall semester, and it lost nine from last year, bringing the enrollment total to an embarrassingly low 106. A financial shortfall in August forced AIC to borrow some $950,000 from the main campus, a move that only intensified criticism of the school back at the UA, where departments are struggling with budget cutbacks yet again this year. This fall, AIC hired five temporary instructors to teach part-time, though it was boasting in advertisements all over town--including in a schoolchildren's calendar put out by Tucson Unified School District--that all AIC students are taught by "professors." And the case of Kalí Tal, the AIC humanities professor Fernández dismissed at the end of the first year, has brought the small college damaging attention in the national scholarly press. The Chronicle of Higher Education, a 90,000 circulation weekly, has run two articles on Tal's case. Its August 18 story, "A Campus Without Tenure Is Dubbed 'Fire at Will U,' " sympathetically aired Tal's complaint that in the absence of tenure AIC had set up no structures to protect either academic freedom or due process. A second story ran September 16. Lingua Franca, a rival academic journal, has an AIC story in its October issue. The flap over Tal has also brought AIC to the attention of Likins, the incoming UA president. Jerry Hogle, chair of the UA faculty, met with Likins at his Lehigh University office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in August and the two discussed AIC at length. "Dr. Likins has gotten letters from scholars all over the country about Kalí Tal," Hogle said. "He's very clear that he wants due process at AIC. And he also wants the concept of AIC dealt with. He certainly asked me a lot of questions about it."
WHERE AIC WOULD go on the cramped UA campus is an open question, and what title Provost Fernández would bear is another. Also uncertain is whether the relocated AIC faculty would be eligible for tenure. There are some precedents at the UA for long-term non-tenure track instructors. The College of Education, for instance, has some "adjunct faculty without tenure on year-to-year contracts," says Lawrence Aleamoni, a UA education prof who heads the faculty watchdog group the Committee of Eleven. But whatever their tenure status, AIC faculty would enjoy the same due process rights the UA professors do, including carefully defined appeals of adverse employment decisions and reviews of grievances to such groups as the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. AIC student Rachel Rojahn was close to tears over the move. She had transferred out to AIC from the UA because she hated the large campus. And though Fernández says in his letter that the eastside location was always considered a "temporary site," she said this is the first time she's heard that. "I feel sold out, lied to," she said. "A lot of things I was told (by AIC recruiters) are not accurate...Nobody ever told me of the possibility we'd go to the UA campus. But second year AIC student Kristel Ludwigsen is pleased.
"I think it's going to be excellent. The UA will be able
to watch the school better, what's going on. There have been problems
with the administration here. It needs more oversight."
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AIC Provost Celestino Fernández broke the news about the
move to his faculty on September 17, and sent a letter to students
the same day.
Regent Hank Amos cautioned Tuesday that Fernández's letter
is "premature," saying that a move to the UA campus
is "just one of the options we're looking at...But it probably
is the most favorable one."
Likins has also been participating in negotiations with Tal.
Former President Manuel Pacheco turned down Tal's first appeal
of her dismissal, but once Pacheco left, Tal filed a second appeal
to Acting President Sypherd. Hogle has been mediating those negotiations.
Fernández was not invited to participate in the discussions.
A settlement to the Tal case is expected soon after Likins arrives
in town, and Tal herself said she has reason to be "very
optimistic" about the outcome.
