TO CLIPS INDEX  Clips for March 26, 2009

NAU to lay off 45 staff, close some branch campuses
The Arizona Republic 3/26/09 12:53 PM
Cuts in state funding are prompting Northern Arizona
University to lay off staff and close four satellite campuses
around the state. University officials said Thursday they
are laying off 45 people mainly in the distance learning
and enrollment departments.  NAU President John Haeger,
in a statement, said additional layoffs are likely. "We have
been working hard to minimize the number of layoffs, but
we cannot escape the reality that 83 percent of our budget
goes to salaries and benefits," he said. "We have weighed
our decisions carefully to cope with a severely constricted
budget while protecting our core mission of undergraduate
education."

Holding bills until budget is done irks some senators
The Arizona Republic 3/26/09
Senate President Bob Burns' continued insistence on
finishing the 2010 budget before any bills are heard is
wearing thin with some of his Senate colleagues.
Some senators say they're wasting their time as they
wait to hear details of the budget, which is being
worked on behind closed doors by leadership and
members of the Appropriations Committee. Meanwhile,
they can't move bills. "I'm available to work," said Sen.
John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, on Tuesday. "I want to
work on the budget four hours a day, or I want to work
on my bills." Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, said
the hold-all-bills approach is resulting in a lot of dead
time for senators not involved in budget negotiations.

Community colleges reject hike in tuition
The Arizona Republic 3/26/09
Tuition will stay the same for Valley community-college
students despite expected state budget cuts. The
Maricopa County Community College District governing
board voted 4-1 Tuesday against a proposed tuition
hike. The measure would have increased fees $5 per
credit hour for county residents and $27 per credit hour
for non-county residents. The tuition increase would
have created $12.5 million in additional funding for the
system, which serves 230,000 students and 30,000
more who take non-credit classes. "The board
recognized the present economic landscape, and to
ask for more money out of our students would be like
drawing blood from a turnip," board President Colleen
Clark said.

No tuition hike at Phoenix-area community colleges
Associated Press/East/Valley Tribune
3/26/09 4:08 AM EDT
PHOENIX - Tuition at community colleges in the
Phoenix metropolitan area won't be going up despite
expected state budget cuts. The Maricopa County
Community College District governing board voted
4-1 Tuesday against a proposed tuition hike. The
measure would have increased fees $5 per credit
hour for county residents and $27 per credit hour for
non-county residents. The tuition increase would
have created $12.5 million in additional funding for
the system, which serves 230,000 students and
30,000 more who take non-credit classes.

Guest Opinion: Carolyn S. Allen: Budget for moral
obligations, too
Arizona Daily Star 3/26/09
This economic crisis reminds us that many hardworking,
taxpaying citizens in our communities are one or two life-
changing moments away from poverty and desperation.
And it reminds me of my childhood experience. When I
was 6, my father died, leaving my mother no choice but
to go on public assistance for three months to support
our family until she could find a job as a maid, take in
laundry, and apply for my father's Social Security. We
didn't plan it; we didn't want it. My mother was a proud
woman. But we needed it. And, thank God, the help was
there for us. Arizona's human services safety net exists
to support people - like my mother - with temporary
services that help them work their way back to self-
sufficiency. Today, Arizona's economic turndown is
putting more people in my mother's position. The
safety net is straining and is at risk of unraveling.

Guest Opinion: Lucas Witman: UA warning on
Mexico isolates border economy
Arizona Daily Star 3/26/09
Tucson, Arizona - 'The damage has been done,"
the Mexican consul in Tucson, Juan Manuel
Calderón, was quoted in a recent article on the
University of Arizona's decision to advise students
not to travel to Mexico during this year's spring
break ("UA travel warnings to Mexico still stand"
March 6). But this damage is not limited to Mexico.
It affects the border region as a whole. For those
living in Southern Arizona, it goes without saying
that goods, capital and, whether we like it or not,
people travel back and forth across the U.S.-
Mexico border. Yet, too often we seem to be
content with isolating problems in one country
or the other. The UA's urging of students not to
travel to Mexico represents this failure to view the
border region as a whole when it comes to local
problem-solving. And this reckless decision could
yield dangerous results.

Esteemed UA professor dies
Arizona Daily Star 3/26/09
Tucson, Arizona - Thomas J. Hixon was the
consummate university professor, always
pushing students and colleagues to back
up their assertions with facts and research.
That lifelong drive led Hixon, a former
University of Arizona professor and dean of
the Graduate College, to find a key link be-
tween the respiratory system and speech,
a pioneering breakthrough that transformed
the study of speech, language and hearing
sciences, friends and colleagues said.
Hixon died in Tucson on Saturday after
suffering a pulmonary embolism. He was
69. Yet even as Hixon tested his students
and fellow researchers' views, he worked
to give them confidence that they could
meet his demands and succeed.

Charges unwarranted for teen that gave
birth in UA dorm, lawyer says
Arizona Daily Star 3/25/09
Tucson, Arizona - The lawyer representing a
UA student who gave birth in a residence hall
last month said her client should not be
charged with attempted murder. “She never,
ever meant to hurt that baby,” Laura Udall
said Wednesday outside Pima County
Superior Court, following Sarah Tatum’s
arraignment on attempted first-degree murder
and child abuse charges. “She didn’t think it
was viable.” Tatum, 19, gave birth on Feb. 23
to a boy in a bathroom stall in the Arizona-
Sonora Residence Hall. University of Arizona
police were called to the dorm that evening
and found the baby inside a tied plastic bag
at the foot of Tatum’s bed, according to court
documents. Tatum was arrested Feb. 25 and
was later released. She was placed on
interim suspension by the UA and has since
withdrawn from school, Udall said.

New rules: AZ might have to increase schools
funding to qualify for stimulus
Arizona Capitol Times 3/25/09
A draft proposal of rules by U.S. Department of
Education could force the state to undo $160
million in cuts to higher education approved in
January by lawmakers if Arizona is to receive
$775 million in federal stimulus aid. Republican
legislative leaders were briefed on the
development on March 24 and 25. Under the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the
federal education department is tasked with
creating guidelines for states to follow in their
applications for stimulus funding. Included in
those rules, House Speaker Pro Tem Steve
Yarbrough said, is a requirement that prevents
the state from reducing the level of funding for
both K-12 and higher education to below fiscal
2009 levels. He said lawmakers were told the
draft rules were not expected to change
significantly before being adopted.

Give or Take
Tucson Weekly 3/26/09
When it comes to Rio Nuevo, it sometimes seems
as if the Tucson City Council can't do anything right.
The latest dust-up came last week, when the
morning daily featured a brief report noting that the
city had accelerated work on the Mission Gardens,
a $3 million project to re-create a small collection
of trees and plants near the Convento site at the
base of "A" Mountain. The garden, which is being
paid for with Rio Nuevo dollars, should be
completed later this year. When Republicans at
the Arizona Legislature--who have been critical of
the city's lack of progress on downtown revitalization,
despite tens of millions of dollars in expenses--
heard that $3 million was being spent on a garden,
some of them hit the roof.

Reduce pay of high-end state workers
The Explorer 3/25/09
..... At this point, most state and local agencies
should still be able to prevent almost all layoffs
by making substantial cuts in the pay of their
highest paid employees. Our economy is out
of whack, as it was in 1929, in that the gap be-
tween the richest and poorest is huge. Such
gaps are demoralizing and socially destructive.
Some of this inequity has spilled over into
public employment. A few years ago, the Arizona
Legislature gave a percentage increase to all
university employees. I was later stunned to
find that the president’s increase was more
than the entire yearly salary of thousands of
university employees. Public employees are
being traumatized by threats of layoffs. But the
University of Arizona, for example, has more
than 1,200 employees who receive more than
$100,000 per year. Few, if any, of them are
facing layoffs.

Opinion: Arguments for breaking up the ASU empire
ASU Web Devil 3/26/09
What if we weren’t all Sun Devils?
On Monday, The State Press ran a front-page article
detailing how, as a response to (or is it in spite of?)
the uncertain financial situation of the University,
ASU President Michael Crow intends to move for-
ward with his plans to develop a new system of
ASU-run state colleges known as the Colleges of
ASU. These colleges would provide students with
a four-year education at a lower tuition cost on
account of the institutions not doing any research.
You might find yourself asking: Why? Why would
President Crow want to expand the University at
the very moment when it seems most sensible to
contract its scope? Amid budget cuts, layoffs, tuition
hikes and mandatory furloughs, how could it
possibly make sense to make ASU even bigger?
Crow does not ignore that issue. The Colleges of
ASU are necessary “because that’s a way for us to
maybe have a lower-tuition model,” he told the
paper’s editorial board on March 2. The revenue
from the new colleges would make the overall ASU
system easier to sustain in the face of dwindling
resources coming from the state.

Taylor Place makes changes for more students
ASU Web Devil 3/26/09
When Taylor Place opens next semester, changes
will include the opening of the second tower,
increasing the number of community assistants
and opening additional eateries to accommodate
an increase in residents, University officials said.
Though construction on the second tower ended
in December, Downtown campus officials decided
to keep the building closed until fall 2009 when
more residents will move in, said Patrick Panetta,
associate director for the University’s real-estate
development. “[This academic year] only one of
the two towers was open,” Panetta said. “The
second tower will accommodate the growth and
population at Taylor Place.” No further material
renovations will be made to provide for the
increase in residents at Taylor Place, he said.
“There’s not going to be any physical changes
besides the second tower being opened and
utilized,” Panetta said.

Many ASU faculty to be renewed for 1 year only
ASU Web Devil 3/26/09
Contracted faculty members at ASU could see more
single-year contracts offered instead of multiyear
contracts, as administrators weigh options to reduce
the budget. Multiyear contracts held by many lecturers
do not offer the University enough budget flexibility,
said Mark Searle, vice president of academic
personnel. “We need to move more of them to year-
to-year [contracts],” he said. “We have to have some
better opportunity to be flexible.” Administrators are
working with deans to identify which lecturers have
long-term commitments to the University that may
require multi-year contracts, Searle said, but the
trend is toward annual contracts.

Arch. college looks at new fees
UA Daily Wildcat 3/26/09
The College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
announced yesterday that they plan to increase their
differential tuition and fees. Currently, CALA under-
graduate students pay an extra $300 a semester in
differential tuition for the last three years of their
education, typically their third, fourth, and fifth year,
said David Shirk, CALA's business affairs manager.
The proposed increase for undergraduate differential
tuition would be $1,000 a semester for all five years,
Shirk said. Undergraduate students would see their
differential tuition increase from $600 a year to
$2,000 a year

Gigantic School, Gigantic Budget, Gigantic Mess
American Daily 3/25/09
The New York Times printed a must read article on
Arizona State University and its President, Michael
Crow: He quickly made a name for himself,
increasing enrollment by nearly a third to 67,000
students, luring big-name professors and starting
interdisciplinary schools in areas like sustainability,
projects with partners like the Mayo Clinic and
Sichuan University in China, and dozens of new
degree programs. ....With a four-year graduation
rate of 28 percent, I include myself among those
raising questions about ASU’s focus. In addition
to dozens of new degree programs, the article also
notes that ASU has spent lavishly on certain types
of student aid: Arizona State University recruits
National Merit Scholars nationwide with a four-year
$90,000 scholarship, a package so generous that
Arizona State enrolls 600 National Merit Scholars,
more than Yale or Stanford.

Obama's Pell Grant Proposal Would Make 260,000
More Students Eligible, Report Says
The Chronicle of Higher Education 3/26/09
Increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $200, to $5,550
for the 2010-11 academic year, as President Obama
has proposed, would make an additional 260,000
students eligible for a grant and would raise the
average national award by $121, according to an
analysis by a pair of interest groups.

Recovered Pieces of Asteroid Hold Clues to
Early History
The New York Times 3/26/09
Scientists who for the first time tracked an asteroid
on a collision course with Earth, and watched as it
exploded in the atmosphere, have now picked up
some of the remnants on the ground. The discovery
and analysis of the meteorites, reported in
Thursday’s issue of Nature, give scientists solid
data on the composition of meteorites that originate
from at least one type of asteroid, known as F-class.
.....“For the first time, we can dot the line between the
meteorite in our hands and the asteroid astronomers
saw in space,” said Dr. Jenniskens, the lead author
of the Nature paper. The cascade of discovery started
when Richard Kowalski, working with the of the
University of Arizona, spotted a moving white dot on
his computer screen late Oct. 5 at an observatory on
Mount Lemmon outside Tucson. He sent the
coordinates to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.