UNLV gets temporary reprieve

UNLV's troubled orthodontics program has been given six months to turn things around before it faces the possibility of shutting down.

Officials gave a Board of Regents committee Thursday the first look in recent months at the financial situation at the program.

"It's not a pretty picture," the university's provost said.

The School of Dental Medicine will dip into millions of dollars of student fees over the next few years to pay for debts at the orthodontics program.

The school's dean told the Review-Journal in August that the program would continue to be self-supporting.

Regent Steve Sisolak was livid over the report and was the lone vote against giving the program more time to turn things around.

"I've been lied to," he said. "I've got too many taxpayers in the state of Nevada being lied to."

Sisolak and Regent Mark Alden said they haven't been receiving straight answers from university officials about the program.

"It's been smoke and mirrors from day one," Alden said.

UNLV Executive Vice President and Provost Neal Smatresk said the program had a "rocky start" with an "unrealistic financial model."

Since then, it has suffered from "poor leadership decisions" and "a level of hostility I've never seen in an educational enterprise," he said.

The program's founding director left UNLV this year and has joined the University of Southern Nevada, the private institution in Henderson, to start an orthodontics program there.

UNLV's orthodontics program has had problems since a company it partnered with backed out last year.

But its future hasn't been in jeopardy until this year, when a national organization threatened to revoke the program's accreditation.

The unusually scathing report by the Commission on Dental Accreditation expressed serious doubts about the quality of education being offered and said the program had too many students and too few faculty.

The commission gave UNLV a Feb. 1 deadline to comply with its recommendations.

Since the report, the School of Dental Medicine has been grappling with meeting those recommendations.

It has halved its entering class this year and brought in new faculty. But those changes have brought a new concern over how the school will be financed.

The report given Thursday projected losses in four of the next five years as the program shifts from a money-making commercial plan to a money-losing academic plan.

That's even after drawing more than $600,000 each year from capital improvement fees, money that all UNLV students pay that typically go to capital projects.

And the program will draw $270,000 over the next five years from general improvement fees, which typically go to student projects and services.

Those fees will go toward covering building bond costs for the orthodontics building being built on the university's Shadow Lane campus. No state funding would be used.

"You're going to ask students to subsidize our mistakes," Sisolak said.

He said he would have UNLV officials bring the plan to the Budget and Finance Committee, of which he is chairman, to be approved during the next Board of Regents meeting.

University system Chancellor Jim Rogers pleaded for regents not to close the program, saying it was crucial to the Health Sciences System, the project to coordinate all university health programs in the state.

"To close this program sends a very bad message," Rogers said. "Give us a year to straighten it out."

In six months, university officials will have to come back to regents with a report on the progress -- or lack of progress -- the program has made.

A number of variables could determine the program's fate, including whether it has its accreditation revoked in February and whether it's able to attract more patients.

One of the commission's criticisms was that UNLV orthodontics students, who rely on treating patients for their education, weren't seeing enough of those patients.

School of Dental Medicine Dean Karen West said the original plan was to have an average of 50 patients per student, but the school has been able to attract only about 30 patients per student.

Two orthodontics students asked the regents during public comment to keep the program.

"Let's make this work," student Matthew Jones said. "Let's find a way."

Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0440.