Cuts would do little damage to Polytechnic

The budget cuts likely to hit ASU Polytechnic in the coming months would rearrange where many professors teach, but do little damage to the east Mesa campus.

Arizona State University officials announced earlier this month plans to eliminate four dozen degree programs to cover part of the $60 million state funding lost this year.

However, at Polytechnic, only two programs are threatened with closure.

The campus had appeared particularly threatened. ASU President Michael Crow said last month the entire branch campus might be shuttered as lawmakers considered cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in public higher education spending.

The state closed a $1.6 billion deficit this fiscal year, with another of equal size awaiting next year.

Ultimately, several of Polytechnic's academic units could be shifted to other ASU campuses to save on administrative costs, including a contingent of the nursing program that enrolls 40 students. The School of Applied Arts and Sciences might technically close, but its programs would survive as parts of other colleges, said Keith Hjelmstad, dean of the College of Technology and Innovation.

Even the Polytechnic programs that the university plans to eliminate - fire service and professional golf management - might be spared through negotiations. The Arizona Board of Regents must decide whether to approve the proposed changes to academic units at its meeting in March.

Charles Kime, coordinator of ASU's fire service program, is lobbying Crow to reverse his decision to end firefighter training.

Operating the fire service bachelor's and master's degree programs cost little, said Kime, a former Phoenix firefighter. "We have no fancy labs, there's no support staff that goes away if we go away."

Increasingly, Kime said fire chiefs need advanced degrees to prepare them for their administrative responsibilities, like managing a department's budget.

"It goes beyond just being able to squirt water on fire," he said.

The Professional Golfers' Association of America is attempting to dissuade ASU from dismantling the golf management program, said Virgil Renzulli, a university spokesman. But the PGA hasn't offered any funds to pay the program's expenses.

"There have been programs cut at all campuses," Renzulli said. "And these tended to be programs that either were not very popular, or not really germane to the basic mission of a university - and I think the golf program fits into that category."

The programs at Polytechnic threatened with reduction or elimination enroll just more than 1,000 students.

Kime said fire service has nearly 70 students. Golf management has about 200 from across the country, said Paul Patterson, dean of the School of Management and Agribusiness.

With its adjoining airport, Polytechnic is the planned centerpiece of east Mesa's future economic development.

The university opened the campus in 1996 on more than a square mile of unused land previously occupied by Williams Air Force Base, which had closed three years earlier.

Initially called ASU East, the campus added "polytechnic" to its name when Crow became university president in 2002. Polytechnic then set out to offer more hands-on educational methods than are traditionally used at ASU's main campus in Tempe.

It has since become a sort of higher education laboratory.

Polytechnic houses its own teacher preparation program, separate from the College of Education, which will specialize in training science and math teachers. The campus also operates its own engineering program that ASU is using to research how best to educate future engineers: hands-on projects or lecture-based classes?

Renzulli said Polytechnic remains a critical part of ASU's future, despite earlier preparations to close the campus.

"These kinds of (plans) need to be refined after they're initially announced," he said.