District 11 represents Sparks, North Reno and Washoe County, along with Humboldt and Pershing counties. The Board of Regents is a nonpartisan governing body for public colleges in Nevada. They have the authority to set policies and hire or fire institution presidents.
The candidates answered questions at a forum held by the Nevada Faculty Alliance on April 29.
Jeffrey Downs has been a professor at Western Nevada College since 2004. He said he’s a big advocate for staff wages and supports collective bargaining and striking. And unlike the other candidates, he’s open to allowing concealed weapons on campuses.
“Running for regent is something that I’ve had an interest in, and representing faculty perspectives is, I think, important; we haven’t seen it for quite some time,” Downs said. “And I feel there’s a bit of a tone-deafness on the board right now.”
And there’s John Gwaltney. He’s mostly retired and teaching one class at Truckee Meadows Community College, where he used to be the president in the late ’80s to early ’90s. Gwaltney said his priority is ensuring students have access to new ideas.
“I am running for the office because I believe there are fundamental flaws in NSHE at the current time,” Gwaltney said. “We started by recognizing the fact that we have consumed several chancellors because the office apparently is just structurally difficult to do, if not impossible.”
There’s also Steve Laden, who prides himself on having a different background. He worked in the financial services industry for three decades, where he said he learned how to build trust and solve problems. He said college has been incredibly important to his family.
“My wife is a first-gen — I get emotional about this,” Laden explained. “Her parents never made it past the eighth grade; only three of her 11 siblings made it out of high school. When I look at the impact she’s had with earning four college degrees and working at UNR for 35 years, I want that for other families.”
Following the nonpartisan primary, two of these three candidates will move on to the general election unless one person receives more than 50% of the vote.
You can learn more about the NSHE Board of Regents candidates for District 11 in this questionnaire by the Nevada Faculty Alliance here.
As a note of disclosure, the Board of Regents to the Nevada System of Higher Education owns the license to this station and KUNR employees are NSHE employees.
This story aired on KUNR FM on Monday, May 2.
Lucia Starbuck is a corps member forReport for America, an initiative of theGroundTruth Project.
