Thursday, November 20, 2008

UNT departments double classes offered in Dallas

By Arlinda Arriaga of North Texas Daily

UNT is nearly doubling the number of classes at the Universities Center of Dallas next semester, meaning more students will travel to downtown Dallas to take courses.

In the spring semester, UNT will offer 24 classes at the Universities Center of Dallas. This semester, NT offered 13 classes from five UNT colleges, including the College of Public Affairs and Community Service, the College of Business Administration, the College of Visual Arts and Design, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education.

UCD spokeswoman Brenda Fanara said classes held at the center are upper-division and graduate-level classes.

"Because of the popularity of the location, different colleges are getting the word out to a lot of the professors," Fanara said.

Twenty-three of the 24 classes offered next semester are classes that were not offered at the UCD this semester.

"The classes are rarely the same each semester because we interchange the classes to progress with the degree plans," Fanara said.

Departments offering classes at the Universities Center of Dallas are accounting, art, criminal justice, journalism and social work. Of the departments, the journalism department will hold the most classes.

The department will hold 13 classes at the center, two of which are required classes for undergraduate journalism majors. The department offered four Dallas classes this semester.

Mitch Land, chairman of the journalism department, said he sees the UCD classes as a good opportunity for journalism students.

"You're down there in the fifth-largest media market in the nation," he said.

Land said this could help students get acquainted with people who have worked in the industry for years.

The NT criminal justice department in the College of Public Affairs and Community Service will offer its corporate security and loss prevention course at the center.

"We offer a full program in Dallas, and we're offering this course to support the Dallas Campus and to further collaborate with UCD," said Peggy Tobolowsky, chairwoman of the criminal justice department.

Donna Asher, assistant vice president of academic affairs, said NT reimburses academic departments that have professors teaching at the universities center.

The NT Dallas campus' university budget reimburses the NT Denton campus' departments 23 percent of a faculty member's salary if the professor teaches classes in Dallas between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. For classes 5:01 p.m. and later, it reimburses 20 percent of the faculty member's salary, Asher said.

Twenty-one of the 24 classes offered by NT in the spring semester are offered after 5 p.m., based on the course schedule listing.

Full-time budgeted faculty, which includes lecturers, associate professors and professors, are eligible for the 23 percent or 20 percent reimbursements. The reimbursements do not apply to adjunct professors. In fact, the Dallas campus' university budget reimburses the department the full salary of an adjunct. Asher dated the incentives back to 2001 but was unsure when they were put in place.

Asher said a generic amount of how much a department is reimbursed could not be estimated because of the range of pay scales.

"You have some professors who are tenured and some who don't have as many years under their belt, so the amounts will vary, but there is a cap of $100,000 per academic year for reimbursements," Asher said.

Berri O'Neal, executive director of the Universities Center, said the center charges NT $35 per semester credit hour for each student who registers at the UCD for building and operations costs, including wireless, printing facilities and computer labs. NT then charges students $15 per credit hour, she said.

The fees charged to students taking classes at the UCD are less than those charged at the NT Denton campus, according to student accounting.

However, to balance the fee, NT students are not charged certain Denton on-campus fees such as medical services, transportation, University Union and recreation center usage fees.

The Universities Center at Dallas, formerly the Dallas Education Center, was established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in 1994 to provide access to public higher education to citizens who live, work and find it convenient to take their education in downtown Dallas.

The center is at 1901 Main St. in downtown Dallas and, according to Google Maps, is about a 78-mile roundtrip from the NT Denton campus.

Allen Clark, assistant vice president of institutional research and effectiveness, said there is no university policy or check on department decisions to change the location of a course.

"We leave it to the discretion of the department who we feel will know the best interests of its students," Clark said.

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