Western Front - 1982 October 29

              A look at
campus styles
—page 3
The Front's D
election picks
—page 4
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Western Washington University
Friday, October 29, 1982
Vol. 74, No. 53
It'll get better,
Ross predicts
By MITCH EVICH
Stressing a strengthing of ties
between public higher education
and private enterprise—and
expressing uncommon optimism
about the future, university
presidential finalist G. Robert
Ross got his first glimpse of
Western this week.
The second of five candidates
to visit Western, Ross requested
several times Wednesday and
Thursday that the campus
community look beyond the
temporary "trough" into which
state higher education has fallen.
"If you study the situation, and
come to a conclusion about the
future of the state, I think you can
look forward to a return of
support for higher education,'.' he
said.
Ross, formerly chancellor at
the University of Arkansas at Little
Rock, says he believes that
support indeed will return if
university leaders send the right
signals to legislators, business
and industry leaders and the
public.
Ross, now a consultant for the
American Association of State
Colleges and Universities, said
the prevalent doom-and-gloom
mood about the future of higher
education in this state can be
counterproductive.
"I don't think things here are
quite as bad as people say they
are," Ross said. "Sometimes, you
can almost get into a self-fulfilling
prophecy."
Ross said viewing higher
education in Washington is like
examining a glass of water thafs
either "half empty or half filled,"
depending on your viewpoint"
"My nature would be to say it's
half filled," he said.
As president, Ross said, he
would emphasize Western's
importance in attracting
business and industry. He said he
would strive to convince private
sector business leaders that
higher education is a good
investment, even during tough
times.
"Universities have to prove to
business and industry the
importance of higher education
to what (the private sector) likes to
do best—and that's usually to
produce profits," he said.
While Ross spoke cautiously
about the future of most
programs at Western, he pointed
specifically to the computer
science program as an area
crucial to Western's future. The
buying and selling of information,
he predicted, will be a crucial
growth area of the future.
Describing himself as a "calm,
deliberate, low-key" admin­istrator,
Ross said universities
that can get private sector
leaders to tell legislators of the
virtue of higher education get a
tremendous boost.
"Getting an industrial leader to
tell the Legislature that Western's
a good school, that can be the
trigger," Ross said. "That's got a
lot more clout than the university
president saying it, which would
seem basically self-serving."
Despite his subdued style,
many of his Arkansas colleagues
applaud his knack for selling
higher education to lawmakers.
During his tenure as chancellor,
the enrollment at Little Rock
zoomed to about 10,000 last yean.-
from around 3,000 in 1969.
But Ross, surprisingly soft-spoken
despite his imposing
stature, attributed the university's
growth to economic and
demographic forces—not Robert
Ross.
"I wish I could give you a long
list of things I did that caused
great things to happen," Ross
said. "But I think there are a lot of
G. Robert Ross
\ things that were situational that
didn't have a lot to do with me.
"We were an expanding
institution at a time when others
weren't" Ross explained. "And
the Legislature loooked with
favor on our expanding
programs."
While Ross was chancellor, the
number of bachelors' degrees
offerings doubled, while several
graduate programs were created.
Despite his emphasis on
industrially attractive programs,
Ross also professed a deep
support for the liberal arts, an
element he says is indispensible
for a regional university such as
Western.
Choosing between liberal arts
or technical programs is "not an
either/or proposition," Ross said,
adding that one can't properly
exist without the other.
"Most business colleges will
tell you they'd need to have a
strong liberal arts program," Ross
said. "And most liberal arts
people say they'd love to have a
business school because its
students would need to take
liberal arts courses."
Ross expressed regret tnat
nationwide so many programs
created during the late 1960s like
Huxley College and Fairhaven
College have been eliminated He
called himself an earlier supporter of
non-traditional colleges, but
conceded that he could not
guarantee their survival at Western.
Although he played college football
himself, Ross said he did not see the
sport as "a requirement or necessary
ingredient at a university. But he said
he knew much too little about
Western to make a judgment about
the program here.
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| Huxley,
Fairhaven
battle for
survival
By LORI McGRIFF
Although fear pulses through
the academic veins of Fairhaven
and Huxley colleges, the fight to
preserve the two most contro­versial
programs at Western is
just beginning.
Preparing for threats of elimi­nation,
reduction or consolida­tion,
the colleges are not being
modest about their importance
to the university and their offer­ings
to their students. Next week
both institutions will send pleas
for survival to the Academic
Review Committee.
That survival, however, may
look bleak, if the whispers of
some top administrators and
faculty are heeded.
Enrollment drops that exceed
the percentage of the entire uni­versity's
decline, small classes
and extremely specialized stu­dies
may place Fairhaven and
Huxley in the danger zone of the
program review's calls for cuts.
Fairhaven's enrollment declined
about 15 percent from last fall
and Huxley's dropped about 20
percent. During fall 1981, 220 stu­dents
attended Fairhaven. That
fell to 190 in 1982.
Huxley's enrollment fell to 204
this fall from 275 in fall 1981.
The university's total enrol­lment
fell by about 10 percent to
9,352 from 10,291.
Fairhaven saw a decrease
because students panicked and
decided to take courses needed
for graduation, Fairhaven Dean
Dan Larner said. The college has
been allowed only one course as
a General University Require­ment.
Without a high number of
GURs during a time of high-cost
education, it's hard to attract
students outside the college,
Larner said.
Furthermore, students are not
taking as many classes from Fair­haven's
four new faculty
members, who replaced retiring
faculty, Larner said. But new
faculty always have a tougher
time attracting students, he said.
Dean J. Richard Mayer
explained Huxley's drop in enroll­ment
by pointing out that four
faculty members are not on cam­pus
this fall. Two are on sabbati­cal,
one is on leave without pay
and another is working on a pro­ject
off campus until spring.
Classes cannot be offered
without instructors, thus enroll­ment
drops, he said. Also, Huxley
gets about 40 percent of its stu­dents
from out of state. Skyrocket­ing
out-of-state tuition discour­aged
many of those students, he
said.
Some of the problem will be be
alleviated when the faculty
return, Mayer said.
Both deans agreed it is unfor­tunate
these circumstances
(continued on page 7)