Arizona Board of Regents

The Arizona Board of Regents met in Retreat at the Kilted Kat in the Equestrian Estates in Flagstaff, Arizona, August 14, 2003. President Herstam called the meeting to order at 10:04 a.m.

PRESENT:	Regent Fred Boice Regent Robert Bulla Regent Chris Herstam Regent Jack Jewett Regent Danelle Kelling Regent Wes McCalley Regent Kay McKay Regent Christina Palacios Regent Gary Stuart Regent Donald Ulrich Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne (Morning Only)
ABSENT:	Governor Janet Napolitano

Also present were: President John Haeger, Dr. M. J. McMahon, and Dr. Elizabeth Grobsmith, Northern Arizona University; President Peter Likins, Dr. Patti Ota, and Dr. George Davis, University of Arizona; President Michael Crow, Dr. Milton Glick, and Dr. Christine Wilkinson, Arizona State University; Executive Director Linda Blessing, Board Counsel Joel Sideman, Secretary to the Board Judy Garza, Dr. Tom Wickenden, Dr. Art Ashton, and Ms. Cathy McGonigle, Central Office Staff; and Dr. David Camacho, Arizona Faculties Council.

All lists, reports, summaries, background materials, and other documents referred to in these minutes can be found in the August 14, 2003, Documents File.

President Herstam acknowledged Mr. Wade McLean, President of the State Board of Education, and its Executive Director, Christy Farley.

President Herstam said last year’s Retreat focused on differentiation by increasing the decentralization of decision making to the universities. This year the universities will implement the many policy changes that were made. While differentiation allows each university to sharpen its focus and build upon its strengths, it is also imperative that no one lose sight of the many benefits to be gained by cooperation among the universities and with other sectors of education.

President Herstam introduced three of the Deans of Education: Dr. Eugene Garcia from ASU Main, Dr. Dan Kain from NAU, and Interim Associate Dean Jane Erin from UA. They joined the meeting for this discussion. Dr. Tom Wickenden of the central office also joined the meeting for this discussion.

Superintendent Tom Horne described the requirements of the “No Child Left Behind Act” and the need for additional qualified teachers it creates. He expressed his desire to work with the university colleges of education and described the working group, the NCLB, that is working on the problem. The NCLB is composed of members of the colleges of education, community colleges, and the Department of Education.

Superintendent Horne described the proposed Rubric for Arizona’s Highly Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation. He explained that some schools in the state were having trouble finding teachers who are qualified in content areas. There is a great need for highly qualified teachers in the pipeline. This means a major change quickly.

Superintendent Horne wants to break down barriers for those who want to go into teaching from other subject matter disciplines. He doesn’t want to remove certification requirements, but believes they should be streamlined. He presented a few ideas relating to increasing the quantity and quality for highly qualified teachers in Arizona. Colleges of education, along with other colleges at the universities, would modify their course of studies to enable students to obtain a degree to teach in their respective content areas. A review of courses from both the course content area and education area would be modified/reduced in order to increase the pipeline of prospective teachers. After the prospective teacher has completed the modified course of study, the student teaching experience needs to be strong and positive for the prospective teacher. Universities would conduct a three-five year study following the prospective teacher’s completion of the program. Tracking of the teacher’s employment record, as well as success in the classroom, would be used to evaluate the new teacher education program.

Superintendent Horne said good things are already happening in the post-baccalaureate area. He would like to make sure time spent in required class work is well used. He said the best courses are taught by master teachers, not researchers.

Superintendent Horne said the NCLB Committee had three subcommittees that were working on: 1) Teacher preparation standards, 2) Research to track student achievement, and 3) Induction/Mentoring. He believes there should also be one subcommittee to develop specific proposals to bring directly to the Regents. He would like to see a joint effort between the Department of Education and the research entities at the universities to test or measure teacher quality.

President Crow said laying the teacher problem on the colleges of education does not take care of the problem. He plans to reorganize so any student in the university can take education courses as electives and become teacher certified in their content area.

Dean Garcia presented statistics on Arizona’s School Age Population and Student Achievement. He described how ASU supports university-pre K-12 partnerships and the importance of early childhood education. He agreed with the importance of high quality teachers and said by 2010, Arizona will need an additional minimum 11,384 teachers.

ASU currently prepares an average of 1,000 new teachers per year. They are pledging a 50% increase in that number. ASU will expand partnerships with K-12 and place 50% of prepared educators in high-need communities. ASU will enhance existing and create new pathways to teacher education and retention by increasing participation in ongoing programs, enhancing post-Baccalaureate programs, creating condensed 4-year alternatives throughout the university, creating summer intensive academies, and expanding existing and creating new teacher induction and retention programs.

Dean Garcia described how ASU currently prepares and supports K-12 teachers, students, schools, and families. He pledged that ASU would continue to strengthen university-pre K-12 relationships.

Regent Ulrich said he hoped the universities were using the technology available to store empirical data for assessment use.

President Haeger said it is important to be able to recruit good students into teacher preparation. There needs to be more respect from society for teachers and better salaries to make the profession more competitive. Regent McKay commented that students who had been mentored by NAU faculty since seventh grade are now entering NAU.

Dean Kain gave an overview of the NAU College of Education. He presented statistics on undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, college of education students admitted and graduated, and graduates certified to teach in Arizona. He presented teacher education options and the impact of Proposition 301. He described college of education service and research grants and teacher education innovations. There is now an on-line Masters of Education in Educational Technology Degree, an on-line Masters of Education in Elementary Education, a National Multiage Institute, and a Peace Corps Fellows Program.

Dean Kain said the quality issues for college of education graduates are deep knowledge of their subjects, firm understanding of how students learn, teaching skills, ability to create a positive learning environment, competent use of a variety of assessment strategies, ability to integrate modern technology, collaborative and communications skills, inclination to pursue professional growth, and capacity to instill a passion for learning.

Dean Kain described areas of cooperation between the college of education and the NCLB. Future directions of the college of education are Arizona Regents University, expansion of alternative certifications programs, and increased 2 + 2 programs with community colleges.

President Likins said the moving of teacher preparation at universities to the forefront is a national phenomenon. Dr. Davis introduced the new UA College of Education Dean, Dr. Ron Morris. Dr. Morris joined the UA this week.

Dr. Jan Erin said the UA provided 650 new teachers each year. She described the areas of excellence the UA is emphasizing such as professional preparation for a diverse society, language and cultural studies in an education learning environment, and technology and adaptability, development, and learning access through a lifetime. The UA curriculum and program assessments meet or exceed state and national standards.

Dr. Erin described the UA strengths in preparing teachers and future needs in addressing quality and quantity of teachers.

Regent Palacios asked if the Regents would see more specific objectives from NAU and UA like those provided by ASU and was told they would. President Herstam asked the presidents to bring back an Action Plan on how the universities can move forward with the many thoughtful ideas discussed.

The meeting recessed at 12:05 p.m. and reconvened at 12:30 p.m. Superintendent Horne left the meeting during the recess.

Dan Anderson from the Regents’ central office presented an economic and demographic forecast. He presented the historical population growth, and what the future might hold. The current forecast would leave Arizona with a population in 2020 of 8,577,200 and in 2030 of 11,033,100, the smallest decade-to-decade growth recently recorded.

He described the growth of the urban areas and major towns in Arizona and how Arizona’s population profile is changing, Job growth shows a slow recovery. The good economic news for Arizona is it is the 7th fastest growing state in terms of jobs. Only one state, Florida, created more jobs in the last twelve months than Arizona.

However, the loss in manufacturing jobs has hurt the state. Much of the growth has been helped by low interest rates and there is little likelihood of more help in the future. The national recovery is slow and jobless. The war in Iraq is over, but how much will it cost and when will it end? How much help can we expect form Europe and Asia? Mr. Anderson described state appropriations and university growth in FY 1979 - 2004.

Dr. Art Ashton, central office, joined the meeting for this discussion. President Herstam said the demand for higher education is increasing rapidly and will continue to grow.

Dr. Ashton presented the enrollment demand projections by higher education sector from the year 2002 to the year 2020. The Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education in the year 2000 commissioned a set of higher education enrollment projections for Arizona. The three scenarios used were called “continuation of current trends,” “most likely,” and “more substantial changes.” Dr. Ashton focused on the “more substantial changes” scenario. The university enrollments have tracked with this scenario in 2001 and 2002.

Dr. Ashton presented enrollment projections for private universities, public universities, and community colleges, including number and percentage of enrollments.

President Likins described the UA vision for meeting enrollment growth including demographic projections versus planning to capacity. Resource constraints require efficiency which is measured as cost per unit of learning, not cost per unit of enrollment. Maximizing efficiency requires enrollment at “Responsible Capacity” and enrollments inclusive of diverse constituencies. The “Responsible Capacity” (term developed by Ayers Saint Gross, Planners) of the UA Main Campus of 490 acres is about 40,000 students, depending on the mix of student majors and degrees and full-timers vs. part-timers.

Dr. Likins said as UA enrollments approach capacity, admissions and retention require management to achieve objectives which include higher academic qualifications for improved retention to graduation, increasing diversity for enriched learning environment and desired ratios of lower division, upper division, graduate and professional students.

President Likins described UA South and UA North. He suggested ways to modify the 22:1 formula by motivating performance to reward the universities for producing graduates, especially in key fields and with advanced degrees. To finance enrollments, he suggested implementation of recommendations from the 2000 Governor’s Task Force with grants to needy students in Arizona, stabilizing university tuition by moving resident tuition to the 33rd position among America’s 50 senior public universities, and implementing plans to improve affordability, even at a higher price with financial aid from universities. He explained the implications of information technology and the place of community colleges in enrollment management.

President Likins said capacity for expansion of enrollments at UA is limited to perhaps 5,000 students, but capacity at ASU and NAU seems sufficient to accommodate demographic projections for a least a decade.

President Haeger described the loss of 9th graders during 9th to 12th grade, high school graduate to college student, and college student to graduation. Out of 100 9th graders, Arizona produces 14 college graduates. He described key factors that will drive enrollments and showed Arizona high school graduate projections. Web enrollments are growing. He described the profile of NAU’s 2 + 2 students at Yuma. The new face of higher education in Arizona is composed of many universities and schools of higher education.

Dr. Haeger said urban enrollments will increase more quickly than rural enrollments. He showed distributed learning headcount growth by location.

President Haeger described potential fund sources such as increased tuition as per Board policy, fees for university services, flexibility to implement market-based tuition, new funding formulas, revision of ABOR policies, and legislative allocations. He talked about funding challenges. He said NAU must maintain its position as the best residential campus in Arizona, provide access to Arizona residents at the undergraduate and graduate levels, grow in urban areas given current funding models and to meet demand, have funding formulas that recognize the true cost of residential education and rural and technology delivery systems, and use community college partnerships as a key to public policy decisions that affect higher education.

President Crow presented ASU’s Pathway to 2020. The vision for ASU is to become the major metropolitan research “multiversity” embedded in the fabric of a large and growing dynamic “metroplex”. Through its anchor campuses and extended campus, ASU will be accessible to all Arizona residents qualified to enter a public Arizona university in at least one or more programs. By offering outstanding, individualized opportunities and comprehensive programs attractive to the best and brightest, the number of the most able and ambitious high school graduates who choose ASU will continue to increase. ASU will become a university of the highest academic rank.

Dr. Crow explained how ASU will escalate its progress towards becoming a nationally recognized research university. He showed the growth of ASU from 1975 to 1995, the accelerated growth from 1995 to 2000, and the hyper growth from 2000 to 2002. He listed enrollment growth strategies to 2020 by using ASU Main, ASU West, ASU East, the Downtown Center, off-campus, and telecampus. He gave enrollment projections for the Main Campus and East and West and presented the student diversity at all campuses as well as academic credentials for entering freshmen.

President Crow said the faculty growth requirement for 2002 to 2020 is 1,783 faculty. The resource requirements for core operating budget needs is $251M. The capital budget needs for new facilities is $430M. Dr. Crow gave funding sources as the full funding of the 22:1 formula, moving tuition to ABOR target of the top of the lower 3rd of senior public universities, and state funded student financial aid for needy students.

Dr. Crow concluded the enrollment model of the new American university builds the capacity of ASU to meet the long term needs of Arizona and positions Arizona’s universities to build upon their unique strengths.

It was suggested there might be work sessions later on how to get the investment necessary to make the universities successful in their attempt so meet enrollment growth. Regent Boice asked for information on how the community colleges will be incorporated into enrollment growth plans, the percentage of private funding for east and west, and the percentage of private funding used to increase faculty.

President Crow said there is a special baccalaureate degree program being planned by ASU and Maricopa community colleges. This will expand to a joint-degree program with ASU giving the degree.

Mr. Ted Christensen of the central office joined the meeting for this discussion. President Herstam said he had expressed his concern that differentiation and delegation, part of the Changing Directions initiative, may have been interpreted by some to suggest that collaborative ventures like the Arizona Regents University were being somehow de-emphasized. He said the Board wished to emphasize the theme of differentiation with cooperation. ARU is one of the many possible areas where cooperation among the universities provides programs that stretch across the three universities, draws on the strengths of each university, and avoids costly redundancy in academic programs and unnecessary duplication of student support services.

Mr. Christensen presented the national picture of 2 and 4 year institutions offering distance education by year and the number of enrollments in distance ed courses offered by 2 and 4 year institutions. He showed the number of distance learning courses and enrollments and projections in Arizona. He described the Tri-University Master of Engineering program and ARU’s support of distance learning in academics and support services. The next steps in ARU support of distance learning are seamless student services, marketing, academic program development, and quality standards.

President Herstam suggested the Department of Education be consulted about using computers from the schools, especially in the rural areas, at night and during the weekends when their students are not present. President Haeger stated some problems and advantages of ARU.

Regent Bulla said the right student services are very important. E-learning can help fill in gaps for enrollment growth and helps time and place bound students. He asked if the universities were committed to e-learning. All three presidents expressed their ongoing commitment to ARU.

President Herstam asked the Board members to review the Draft Action Plan that was presented with the meeting materials. Any wording or editing changes should be sent to President Herstam, Executive Director Blessing, or Dr. Art Ashton in the central office. The Action Plan will be refined based upon today’s discussions and brought back for Board review and approval in September.

MINUTES