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UNLV’s victory over Arizona basketball could dramatically hurt UA’s tournament hopes
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ASUA: fees considered, reforms delayed By Brian Mori and Shannon Maule ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Students could see an additional $120 added to their school bills if a proposal by University Libraries is passed by the Associated Students of the University of Arizona Senate. UA Dean of Libraries Carla Stoffle and director Robyn Huff-Eibl asked senators to consider increasing the student fees portion of the library budget
from $30 to $150 per student to prevent the loss of electronic databases and the acquisition of library materials. “We’ve cut 33 positions out of the staff in the last 27 months,” Stoffle said. “We just cut $400,000 in expenditures in the acquisitions budget and we’ll have to take out $600,000 in next years budget unless we get this fee.” Stoffle said that in addition to cutting the acquisition of books and scholarly materials, online article and electronic book database subscriptions could ei-
ther be dropped or students may have to start paying for electronic material. “We trying to provide material so that you can get the kind of education available at our peer institutions,”HuffEibl said. According to both women, the UA library system operates on a budget at nearly half of those at comparative institutions like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The budget for UA Libraries totals around $21 million, including state
funding, student fees, and gifts and endowments from private donors, according to Stoffle. “There’s a big gap among our peers where we are,” she said. Huff-Eibl said the Fine Arts Library located in the Music building might have to be merged with the Science and Engineering library to cut costs. Stoffle said that while library budgets have not been cut, they haven’t been increased in several years and the department can no longer continue to
do more with less when publishers’ fees continue to rise. “We don’t believe it’s going to be good for students to come back every year and ask for a fee,” she said and suggested the senators pass the fee now which is guaranteed to provide the necessary funding through at least 2012. Sen. Eduardo Atjian, a public management and policy junior, asked Stoffle if she thought a smaller increase now, ASUA, page 5
New UA institute to host weekend conference
Pre-business UA’s most popular major Gordon Bates/Arizona Daily Wildcat
McClellend Hall serves as home base for the Eller College of Management. Pre-business, one of the majors offered by the Eller college, is the most popular major on campus.
Fall 2009 Most Popular Undergraduate Majors
Eller growth attributed to recession, nationally-ranked status By Yael Schusterman ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Out of 110 undergraduate majors listed on campus, pre-business is ranked the No. 1 most popular, according to the fall 2009 enrollment research statistics. Paul Portney, dean of the Eller College of Management said that he thinks business has become an increasingly popular major at the UA for two reasons. “The terrible recession we’re enduring has made students more aware that they need to equip themselves with the skills necessary to get a job when they graduate,” he said.
“Second, the Eller College is one of the top-ranked undergraduate business schools in the country.” There are 3,373 students enrolled as pre-business majors, according to a list of the top-20 most popular majors obtained by the Daily Wildcat. Portney said Eller’s programs in entrepreneurship and also management information systems are ranked among the top three in the country — among both public and private universities. He said that to be pre-business, initially all a student has to do is declare interest, but poor academic performance can disqualify someone quickly.
To apply to Eller as a sophomore and start as a junior, Portney said a student must have at least a 2.75 overall GPA and at least a 2.75 GPA in his or her pre-business courses. Students must also go through a professional interview, he said. “It’s a demanding program, and that’s one reason why it’s highly ranked,” Portney said. “In addition to getting an excellent scholarly education, Eller students learn outstanding communication skills and develop the ability to work well in groups,” Portney said. “Both of the latter are valuable skills in government or the non-profit world, just as they are in business.”
Pre-business: 3373 students Undeclared: 2448 Psychology: 2045 Pre-physiology: 1241 Political science: 903 Pre-nursing: 651 History: 563 Biology: 547 Mathematics: 540 Pre-pharmacy: 537 —Courtesy Office of Institutional Research and Planning Support
Provost entertains GPSC concerns
Graduate and Professional Student Coucil President David Talenfeld listens to discussion at Wednesday’s meeting. Talenfeld said although he wants to work slowly on the graduate student statement of rights, he is hopeful some concrete progress will be made before the end of his tenure.
Colin Darland/ Arizona Daily Wildcat
By Tim McDonnell ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT In the midst of an ongoing campaign to discuss the UA transformation with a broad range of campus leaders, Provost Meredith Hay paid a visit last night to the graduate student governing body. Hay entertained questions from Graduate and Professional Student Council representatives during an open floor session at the council’s biweekly meeting, the last of the semester. Most questions pertained to benefits for graduate students and the UA’s increasing dependence on tuition revenue. The university is in a transitional period, Hay said, as it moves from being a “state-supported” school primarily dependent on state funding to a “state-assisted” school dependent primarily on tuition and other non-governmental revenue sources. The university will have to carefully lie out its budget, she said, “so that the ship stays on course.
But we’re very frugal about how we spend our money.” Rep. Lucy Blaney, a Spanish and Portuguese doctoral student, stressed to Hay the need to maintain what she described as the two most important benefits for graduate assistants: tuition remission and the current health care plan, adding that there is a dire need for a graduate assistant workload cap. “We’re fully aware that we’re an overworked, under-paid group,” Blaney said, but called the three issues “basic services and benefits that we actually need to survive.” A request from Blaney for a commitment from the provost’s office to preserve these benefits was not directly granted. “We’ll call upon the graduate council as we design the budget for next year,” Hay said. Rep. James Johnson , an optical sciences doctoral student, questioned Hay about the possibility that the rising cost of health care
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This weekend, renowned scientists from across the globe will meet at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, 7000 N. Resort Dr., for a conference titled “Emerging and Persistent Infectious Diseases,” hosted by the UA’s new Institute on Science for Global Policy. Daily Wildcat reporter Adam Lehrer spoke with the institute’s director, George Atkinson, to discuss the conference and the goals of the institute. Daily Wildcat: How was the Institute on Science for Global Policy, or ISGP, formed? George Atkinson: The concept was a George Atkinson product of my experience as Director of the Science and the Institute Technology of Science for Adviser to SecGlobal Policy retaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in the 2003-2007 period. That was how the ideas developed, and since I’ve been a member of the (University of) Arizona faculty for many years, we opened the institute here in May of this year. DW: You said you developed the ISGP concept after working as Science and Technology Adviser to U.S. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. How did this experience make you decide that there needs to be more opportunity for scientists to directly address policy makers? GA: In a practical world, we need to improve the degree at which scientists are able to articulate the choices we have to solve some of these great problems like climate change, infectious diseases, energy and so forth. The policy side needs a venue where they can more readily ask questions that are important to them. So, it’s quite important in my mind that the traditional way of writing a report in the science community, which often focuses on the science community’s arguments, needs to be restructured for the policy group. And, simultaneously, the policy community needs to be patient enough to listen to this information through morals of debate. DW: What are some of the issues that will be discussed at this conference? GA: There will be four of them. The most in-depth one will be infectious diseases. We’re also discussing new topics like food sustainability, energy and cyber security. DW: How are these topics going to be developed into programs for ISGP to work on? GA: The institute has a method of interviewing people around the world first. Based on that interview we put together
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