Retired Provost Named UI Interim President Committee May Have Permanent Replacement For Start Of ‘96 School Year

The state Board of Education on Wednesday evening selected retired University of Idaho Provost Thomas Bell to serve as the school’s interim president.

The board authorized Board President Curtis Eaton to negotiate terms with Bell following a 90-minute, closed-door session to discuss the successor to outgoing President Elisabeth Zinser.

Zinser, who has served as president on the Moscow campus for six years, will take over as chancellor of the University of Kentucky in mid-July.

Bell’s salary will be the major subject of negotiations. Eaton said his objective is to obtain the most favorable deal possible. Zinser was paid $130,000 this year. The deal will include use of the president’s home on the campus and a university car.

He had previous served as vice president for academic affairs and research for seven years and as dean of the College of Education for four years.

Eaton said a committee to search for a permanent successor to Zinser should be put together next month so it could hold its first meeting in July. He hoped that a new president could be ready to take over for the 1996-1997 school year.

The board, meeting for a two-day work session in Boise, also began what could blossom into a major debate on the handling of future student fee increases.

Under the 1990 policy of annual fee hikes equal to the consumer price index for the previous year plus two percentage points, Idaho’s resident tuition has lagged further and further behind the average tuition for similar schools in the West.

The 25 percent loss of ground over the past five years has left the universities and Lewis-Clark State College with substantially less revenue to meet educational demands, and board members said the problem has been compounded by legislative skimping on state aid to higher education.

“When we limit the amount of increase, what we do is take the Legislature off the hook if they don’t fund education properly,” board member Thomas Dillon said.

But member Roy Mosman argued that even larger annual fee increases than those authorized now have an increasingly severe effect on students’ ability to stay in school.

Dillon agreed but pointed out that students indicated earlier this year that they were willing to pay a larger fee hike than authorized by the board to maintain or improve educational services. And he said the board cannot simply let university buildings continue to deteriorate and watch faculty flee to other schools because of the state’s poor salaries.

“I’d rather see student fees increase than things deteriorate,” he said. “Eventually we won’t have anything.”