Regents announced Thursday that they will name a classroom building on campus after UNLV President Carol Harter. Photo by Isaac Brekken/Review-Journal

A day after a regents committee endorsed her successor, Carol Harter got her namesake.

After 11 years as UNLV president, the campus honored Harter on Thursday with a building. The classroom building complex will be the Carol C. Harter Classroom Building Complex from here on out.

Gov. Kenny Guinn also proclaimed May 11, 2006, "A Day in Honor of Carol Harter" to recognize her service.

The complex of three buildings, constructed in 1994, holds nearly half the classrooms on campus. "That every student should walk through that building or take a class here long after we here have gone ... simply takes my breath away," Harter said during a naming ceremony on Thursday.

Harter steps down June 30 and probably will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Bill Lennox, head of the U.S. Military School at West Point. The UNLV presidential search committee selected him Wednesday to bring before the full board next week for approval.

Members of the faculty have had a cool response to Lennox and his military background. But many said Thursday that they were more concerned about the way in which he was appointed.

"It was quite different," Harter said of the search process that brought her to the community.

That committee, led by Regent Jill Derby, spent almost a year appointing Harter. She visited the campus three times, once when the committee brought its top 10 finalists to campus and twice more to meet the campus and community.

In the Lennox search, the committee and public saw only on paper the top 10 finalists, who were selected from a larger pool by a search firm.

The committee complained that making the list of finalists public endangered the positions of applicants who don't get the job and thus deterred many from applying.

Derby's committee got to review every applicant and so did the public. But none of the names was published in newspapers until the committee narrowed it down, she said. That was not out of respect for the candidates, but because of news value, she said.

"Why would you publish 80 names? Who would be interested?" she said.

Chairman of the UNLV presidential search committee, Regent Steve Sisolak, said expediency was necessary.

"Had we hired a president in the middle of summer when no one was there, it would have been 100 percent worse," he said. "There would have been no faculty around meeting these candidates."