Board revisits UI architecture school

MOSCOW, Idaho – While trying to slash $30 million from its budget in 2002, the University of Idaho may have improperly shuttered its College of Art and Architecture, leaving the school and state exposed to potential lawsuits, members of the Idaho Board of Education say.

Meeting in Moscow on Thursday, the board briefly considered overturning the 2002 decision to consolidate programs in the stand-alone college with humanities programs in the separate College of Letters and Science.

Instead, the board scheduled another hearing in October on the propriety of the dissolution of the art and architecture college at the financially plagued university.

A foundation established by UI art and architecture graduates and former faculty has been lobbying since 2002 to re-establish the college. They argue the merger diluted the necessary alliance between the fields of art and architecture and threatens the accreditation graduates need to take licensing exams necessary for a career.

“There was no due process,” Eric Roberts, who graduated from the UI in May with a degree in architecture, told the board.

All attempts by the UI to negotiate a compromise with the foundation – the UI has suggested elevating the architecture program from department level to a school within the humanities college – have failed, said Mike Patano of the foundation.

“We’ve had a total breakdown in communication,” he said. “It’s time to end this nonsense.”

The board is trying to unravel how the 2002 decision to disband the college was made without coming to a vote of the panel, which oversees major policy and budget decisions at the state’s public higher education institutions.

At the time, institutions were required to get a vote from the board on all decisions with a fiscal impact of more than $150,000, a level that was raised to $250,000 in October 2002. UI officials said the financial impact of the college consolidation was less than the amount required for board consideration, so then-UI President Robert Hoover closed the college after getting the OK from state board Executive Director Gary Stivers.

“Personally, I am convinced that that action was beyond the legal authority of the executive director,” Board of Education member Blake Hall of Idaho Falls said. “There is no documentation that the fiscal impact was less than $250,000. And that begs the question of whether this was the right thing to do.”

Hoover resigned in the wake of mounting budget deficits and a financial scandal involving the failed University Place campus building in Boise. His successor, UI President Tim White, told the board that reinstating the college would be difficult during the school’s current academic restructuring brought about by continuing deficits.

“I don’t object to a College of Art and Architecture, but I also can’t commit to it,” he said.