Despite her recently announced quasi-retirement from teaching at UNLV, Dina Titus says she’s not leaving politics any time soon.

Asked last night if she plans to run for Congress again, Titus told CityBlog, “Oh, yeah. Politics is in my genes; I won’t ever stop.”

Titus, a former lawmaker for Nevada’s Third Congressional District and longtime political science professor at UNLV, is one of about 48 faculty members there (including her husband, history professor Thomas Wright) taking a buyout that will pay them one and one-half times their annual salary. Titus will receive more than $161,000 as part of the deal, which will see her continue to teach part time (including one class this fall semester) and to host her weekly radio show on KUNV, the university station.

“It was just time to do other things,” Titus said when asked why she took the buyout.

Those other things have included substantive work with the United States Agency for International Development. Titus helped lead a recent USAID delegation to Ukraine, where she and others worked with women’s groups to help push the former Soviet state toward full democracy. Titus said she hopes to continue such outreach efforts, as well as her involvement with local and state charities.

But as for politics, Titus said it’s a bit of a waiting game. Although she’ll run again, she said, the former congresswoman is waiting to see how state redistricting pans out as she keeps her options open.

Titus’ critics, however, call her buyout a scandal.

“She’s getting one and one-half times her salary whether she works at UNLV again or not,” said UNLV College Republican President Mark Ciavola, who also lamented that university officials will pay Titus an additional $3,000 for every class she teaches in the future. “The problem is, she’s still allowed to teach part time for money.”

Ciavola calls Titus’ arrangement the worst kind of sweetheart deal for the longtime political insider who’ll be paid big bucks, he said, for doing not much of anything.

Ciavola and his organization have been highly critical of Titus since she returned to UNLV last fall, after losing a re-election bid to new U.S. Rep. Joe Heck. College Republicans have repeatedly lambasted Titus and the UNLV administration for the six-figure salary ($107,855) she received for, initially, teaching just one class.

“Only in academia could Dina Titus make more of the taxpayer’s money by retiring than by actually doing her job,” Ciavola said. “I have no doubt that Dina Titus will do everything in her power to continue making a living off the taxpayers” – be that in Congress or at UNLV, he added.

Titus laughed off the criticism. She said her detractors played no role in her decision to leave full-time teaching. “It has been very disappointing to see the lies [UNLV College Republicans] told about me, and the university didn’t do very much to defend me, either. But I wouldn’t give [UNLV College Republicans] any credit for ‘running me off.’”