"There is a tsunami of faces coming toward higher education," he said.

UVSC will be a major player in meeting educational needs, Sederburg said.

"The state needs to be prepared for funding those students and getting the facilities for them and really meet the demand," he said.

Regent James Jardine, chairman of the Planning Committee, agrees that UVSC should maintain its open-enrollment policy.

"I don't see them having an enrollment cap — at least any time in the near future — because their mission is to accommodate students in Utah County," said Jardine, in an interview after the committee meeting.

"We will just have to cross each of those difficult funding bridges as they come," Jardine said.

Sederburg said UVSC is experiencing growing pains. The school is trying to find offices for 90 new staff by July.

Among other challenges as UVSC becomes a university: 200,000 Web pages need to be translated to the new Web site: www.uvu.edu. And the revision of internal policies, such as faculty tenure, awaits to be aligned with the school's new mission, he said.

There are many other hurdles UVSC must clear, say UVSC bosses who attended Sederburg's presentation Friday.

Janette Hales Beckham, chairwoman of the UVSC Board of Trustees, said she feels the main challenge in the transition is "establishing our identity in the process of that change so it fits with what the state intends and also with what the local needs are."

UVSC received the green light to become a university from the legislature in March 2007. Regents finalized the institutional mission in December 2007.

The final $2 million of the requested $10 million ongoing transition project funding is expected to come from the 2008 state Legislature. An additional $35 million is from fundraising.

UVSC will officially become UVU with a celebration in July. This fall the school will welcome its first master's degree cohort in education.

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E-mail: astewart@desnews.com