The Arizona Board of Regents approved a $35 million improvement project for Hayden Library at its first meeting for the 2012-13 academic year Thursday, among other agenda items.
The newly approved fiscal ABOR fiscal budget for 2014 is awaiting approval by the governor’s office.
ASU President Michael Crow emphasized at the meeting that the library needed to meet the standard of the growing ASU population.
“We need to completely take the heart of the information enterprise at the University (and) we need to re-conceptualize (Hayden Library) physically and technologically,” Crow said.
NAU and UA will receive $15 million for health and fire code upgrades under the budget.
NAU President John Haeger expressed the urgency to fix some of the school’s buildings that are unsafe for students and faculty.
“We have entire buildings without sprinkler systems,” Haeger said. “Unless we attack some of those issues now, the situation will deteriorate.”
The board also added a critical issues request to the budget, which is a $10 million pool for the universities to recruit high-quality professors.
This request is not included in the approved ABOR budget, but will be sent to the governor’s office for consideration along with the approved budget.
The board’s academic affairs committee also discussed changing the language of some of its policies, such as redefining online enrollment.
LuAnne Leonard, chair of ABOR’s academic affairs committee, said the definition of an online student needed to be clearly outlined.
“We found it very interesting that there is no real definition of online students,” Leonard said.
She said her committee noticed this during their last meeting.
Leonard presented a working definition of an online student to the board. Her definition is limited to students who work in programs exclusively offered online.
Executive committee chair Rick Myers said ABOR also decided to redesign its logo because it wasn’t forward-looking.
“A number of our ABOR members have commented that the logo is outdated,” Myers said.
Caliber, a Tucson-based design and marketing company, will develop the new logo.
Reach the reporter at shurst2@asu.edu
