The Arizona Board of Regents meeting on Friday focused on promoting collective creativity, the addition of a modern streetcar route through the UA and an increase in allowable transfer credits from the community college level.
Many items on the agenda were either postponed or not mentioned during the meeting. These included graduation trends, enrollment statistics and plans for enrollment increases and financial aid reports.
President Robert Shelton opened the meeting with a lengthy discussion on the merits of interdisciplinary research conducted by faculty at the UA.
He mentioned several high-profile areas of research at the UA as examples, including the Phoenix Mars Lander, the study of second languages and advances in medical research.
“”Creativity, discovery and innovation are trademarks of the UA,”” Shelton said.
One of the examples of innovative research presented by Leslie Tolbert, vice president of research at the UA, was the development of a national foreign language research center at the UA, one of 15 such institutions in the world.
The mission of the language center will be to provide better foreign language education at the K-12 and collegiate levels, Tolbert said.
Joel Valdez, vice president of business affairs at the UA, presented the UA 2009 Comprehensive Campus plan update, which focused on the need for increased campus density and an increase in growth opportunities, including the creation of a $35 million modern streetcar route.
The streetcar will run from the UA Health Sciences Center to downtown and will improve and enhance relations between the university and the community, Valdez said.
The board of regents approved an exception to transfer credit limits that will allow Arizona community college students to transfer up to 75 credits toward the completion of a Bachelor of Applied Science degree at the UA. The new policy will apply to community college students who have completed the Associate of Applied Science degree at an Arizona community college.
The policy will also allow community college graduates to transfer up to 15 additional credits in courses that transfer to the universities in mathematics, computer sciences, life sciences and social sciences and humanities.
Regents voted to update board policies to comply with A.R.S. 12-781, a new gun law that will require university officials to allow guns to be brought on campus as long as they remained locked in a vehicle.
The Arizona faculty council called for an exemption to the law for all state universities.
Board president Ernest Calderon said the regents plan to pursue a possible exemption from the state policy; however, the board is forced to comply with all current state laws.
