Viewpoints
Ketchikan Campus Director
Resigns
by Robert D. Warner
April 2, 2005
Saturday
Is there a bit of irony in the resignation of the UAS Ketchikan
Campus Director? Without doubt the current director has
been a significant improvement over previous UAS directors of
the 1990's. In my opinion, her low key approach and clear
focus on education has been a delightful change from years of micromanagement
and administrative incompetence.
According to the news, the campus is pleased with rising enrollments.
It now boasts a 30 per cent increase in credits and 825 full
and part time students. The former Ketchikan Community
College, however, sometimes registered up to 1000 students
per semester. After it was eliminated in 1987, registrations
went into sharp decline; there was almost a 200 per cent turnover
in full time faculty and classified staff between 1990 and 1998.
Several faculty positions were eliminated to hire more administrators.
The campus still lacks a trained professional counselor and academically
focused library staff.
UAS has announced that a nation wide search will begin for a
new director. A five person committee with one or two members
from Ketchikan will select finalists for interviews. Only
one or two members will be from Ketchikan? Under the
community college system, campus resident directors were
appointed by the Board of Regents subject to the approval of
the local borough assembly or school board. Selection committees
were comprised of local citizens. In other words, we
had some local control over appointments and Juneau based administrators
weren't needed to dictate decisions.
In my opinion, UAS Ketchikan will continue as a second class
campus. It is doubtful that appointment of a new director will
do anything to change this situation. The local director,
faculty and community have little control over decisions,
budgets and programs. The campus will remain "dead in the
water" as long as it is under autocratic control of the
UAS Juneau bureaucracy.
Robert D. Warner
Ketchikan, Alaska
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