Amid a cluster of dusty World War II-era buildings on a closed Air Force base, Chuck Backus brought to life what until recently was called ASU East.
Now Backus sees the East Valley campus losing its identity and being turned into a pawn in a showdown over legislative plans to cleave as much as $150 million in Arizona State University funding. And he is not happy.
Backus retired in 2004 as the campus’s founding provost after devoting 12 years of his life to forming and nurturing what is now called ASU Polytechnic.
The former engineer is not given to 30-second sound bites. Picture a cattle rancher lean and tall in the saddle with a seasoned face that betrays little of what he really thinks and you’ve pictured
Backus, indeed, owns and runs a cattle ranch in the foothills of the Superstition Wilderness.
So it is not surprising that Backus chose his words carefully in assessing the university’s threat, as reported in last week’s Tribune, to shutter ASU Polytechnic in southeast Mesa in response to threatened state budget cuts.
Though the Gilbert resident remains active in the university community as the unpaid president of the ASU Research Park in Tempe, he emphasized that he has no special relationship with university leaders that would give him inside information.
Still, he has watched the interplay between politics and higher education for years and this is what he sees:
“My thought was, well, what should you close that might hurt the decision makers. Since most of the East Valley’s legislators are on the righter side of the aisle with not a great deal of support for education, maybe an East Valley cutback might have more impact.”
ASU President Michael Crow could well be playing a game of chicken (my words, not Backus’s) with the likes of House Speaker Kirk Adams and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Russell Pearce, both Mesa Republicans.
“You don’t know how serious they (the Crow Administration) are putting the extreme position out there,” Backus continued. “Shutting down a complete campus is a drastic move. There are things that could be reduced without shutting down a whole campus of close to 10,000 students.”
Now that’s the analytical Chuck Backus. Probe a little deeper and you know this is more than an intellectual exercise. It’s a personal matter:
“To me personally, it’s my campus. It consumed my life for about 12 years. Personally, it’s very painful to see this happen. “
“Elimination of this campus eliminates complete programs that are unique within ASU,” he continued.
For starters, the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness.
Closing ASU Polytechnic would have far greater impact than the loss of academic programs. The campus adjacent to Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport is integral to every study and every plan that foresees the airport area generating 100,000 jobs. It shares a campus with Chandler-Gilbert Community College and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University among others.
Shuttering ASU Poly could not help but severely wound Gateway economic development plans. You can bet a lot of East Valley leaders are hoping it’s only a ploy.
What isn’t a ploy and also distresses Backus has been a change in ASU Poly’s structure that portends a change in the campus’s relationship with surrounding East Valley communities.
ASU Poly no longer has a provost/vice president and to Backus that means the campus has lost its distinct identity and special role in East Valley life.
“There is no one who represents the campus to the community,” Backus said. “It’s important to the East Valley that there be a point person engaged in community activities.”
Backus said the elimination of the vice president and provost position has been part of the Crow administration’s move to centralize operations.
Whatever it is, it has not been done with the transparency and verve that has marked other changes under Crow.
Albert McHenry, a long time associate at ASU Polytechnic, succeeded Backus with little, if any, fanfare and retired with hardly a peep from Crow’s office.
There is no question that Crow is in a tough position. But the unsettling possibility exists that there may be more than a game of hardball politics going on when it comes to Crow’s commitment to ASU Polytechnic and the East Valley.
