The West campus will no longer change its name or lose its graduate programs, after University officials revised the list of changes late to the campus late last week.
Virgil Renzulli, vice president of public affairs, said Tuesday that administrators took a step back to reconsider what changes were needed for the West campus to meet mid-year budget cuts.
“Things are moving very quickly. Budgets are being cut,” he said. “[But] you need to sometimes rethink.”
Changing West’s name to New College, as proposed, would not have affected the budget, he said, so the University decided to keep the original name.
“That’s to try to give the campus a stronger academic identity,” he said.
The new name was intended to reflect the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, which would have been the only remaining college on that campus.
But graduate programs, including the W. P. Carey School of Business and the College of Teacher Education and Leadership, will no longer be phased out at the West campus as originally planned, Renzulli said.
There were no administrative costs for running the graduate programs at the West campus, he said, so keeping them there has little effect on the budget.
“The programs that were targeted for elimination were either very small or not very popular,” he said. “I think some people … are saying, ‘Well, maybe there’s more demand than we thought.’”
Community members responded to the proposed changes at the West campus, Renzulli said, and the University took that into account.
“We’re always open to having things pointed out to us,” he said, “so that did play a role in our reconsidering.”
One person who spoke out against the changes was Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, who called state, city and school officials to her office last week to discuss the earlier proposals.
Gray said she did not want to see academic programs moved out of the West Valley.
“It doesn’t fit [President Michael Crow’s] motto of ‘one university in many places,’” she said. “[West campus] provides a huge amount of education for people who don’t have to travel to Tempe or to Downtown.”
She also opposed renaming the campus because the name New College would not reflect the West Valley.
“To me, it was derogatory,” she said.
Both Gray and Elizabeth Langland, dean of the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, said the meeting last week was key to starting the reconsideration of the proposals.
“It was an opportunity really to hear from people who had been instrumental in founding the campus,” Langland said. “Once we had that input, we thought we could continue on the path we were on before.”
Langland said residents near the West campus often become attached to the school because of its role in their community.
“They feel very strongly that this university is critical to their development,” she said. “Were there to be such a change proposed, they would like to be a part of that discussion.”
The graduate programs at the West campus are important to the West Valley because of the degrees they produce, she said, and reversing several changes proposed will show members of the community that they are just as important to the school.
“It shows that we hear you, we hear our constituents, we care about what you think and we respond,” she said.
Reach the reporter at adam.sneed@asu.edu.
