November 29, 2007
In the first step of the lengthy state appropriation process, I presented the university’s funding priorities for the coming fiscal year during Governor Bredesen’s budget hearing in Nashville on Thursday.
These priorities are focused on outcomes and tied to our strategic plan emphasis on Student Access / Student Success, Research and Economic Development, Outreach and Globalization. Our priorities reflect the several points of emphasis in which we expect to serve the state in the coming year.
Looking to the coming year, we have several points of emphasis where we expect to serve the state, and our budget requests reflect those priorities.
We are working to increase recruitment, retention, and graduation rates to educate and provide a highly-skilled workforce. We had record enrollments at two of our campuses this fall and for the current freshman class across all campuses, we offered admission to 75 percent of our applicants. Our graduation rates at the UT Knoxville campus are the highest in the state at 58 percent cent and during the past year, Knoxville’s freshman retention increased from 81 to 84 percent cent.
As part of our student access priorities, we are committed to working to improve articulation between all of our system campuses—and are prepared to work with TBR to maximize articulation efficiencies with their campuses as well.
OnLine education is an important part of reaching out to adult learners and those with partial degrees, as well as our ability to accommodate future growth. We expect to strongly emphasize distance education within our campuses, and see this as an area for potential collaboration with TBR to develop an even stronger program.
The ability to pay our faculty and staff at competitive levels continues to be a high priority, as is the specific commitment to continue to improve compensation among lower paid staff. We strongly support THEC’s compensation recommendation.
We want to help establish new technology-based industries to increase the state’s economic capacity and generate better jobs for Tennesseans. The state’s investment earlier this year of $49 million in our switchgrass / biofuels initiative has already led to total biofuels grant funding of $225 million over three years. This is yet another example of your investment being leveraged for additional federal and private funding.
We want to develop a statewide cyber infrastructure to position Tennessee as a world leader in computational science, biofuels, nanoscience and biological sciences. The state's investments in our joint institutes at ORNL and in our Governors Chairs directly impacted our ability to win a $65 million NSF grant to build a petascale supercomputer for science and engineering—one of only four in the nation and the only one in the southeastern United States.
Drawing on the unique resources of the UT/Oak Ridge Partnership, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to develop a statewide petascale computation environment that will give Tennessee an unprecedented competitive advantage that will draw the world’s best technology opportunities—bringing major new industry, private investments, technology jobs and significant economic development.
We propose to explore a statewide infrastructure over five years that will connect the state’s research centers and provide “next-door” access to the super computing capabilities at Oak Ridge and UT. The beginning points of this cyber infrastructure are underway with the Cherokee Farms project in Knoxville, the Sim Center National Simulation Center in Chattanooga and the Bio Works Foundation in Memphis—all research centers connected with the University of Tennessee.
What remains is connectivity. We would like the opportunity to explore those possibilities further with you and to present cost and outcomes options for your investment consideration.
The UT Health Science Center has just filed an application to become one of the nation’s 62 Clinical and Translational Science Institutes. This designation is critical for the state and UT to maintain the status as one of the nation’s leading medical research institutions. The THEC recommendation includes three health-related program improvements that support the CTSI effort:
We believe all of those requests are sound and offer opportunity for continuing productive returns on the state’s investment.
There is one area outside the THEC recommendations that I would be remiss if I did not bring to your attention and request additional budgetary consideration.
Over the years, funding for non-formula units such as the Health Science Center, has led to a serious gap in resources that has contributed to potentially dire consequences for the long term well-being of this important statewide facility.
The THEC recommendation shows the UT College of Medicine is currently funded at only 42 percent of the stated operating requirement. Based on that formula, we are left with a gap of $63.4 million between THEC’s recommended funding and projected need.
We realize it is unrealistic to expect to close that gap in one year….but we also recognize that unless we start to address the problem, we are on a path to place the state’s most critical healthcare institution in jeopardy—Approximately 4500 licensed physicians practicing in our state graduated from our College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center produces 75 percent of all dentists in Tennessee and 50 per cent of all licensed pharmacists.
We are working closely with our Health Science Center leadership and with our corporate and community partners in Memphis to maximize our efficiencies and effectiveness with resources available. To help with that effort, we want to suggest consideration of funding which would address a portion of the immediate needs and then suggest that we and TBR work together to look at a multi-year solution to close the formula gap for BOTH medical centers.
We appreciate the governor’s efforts to support the state’s educational needs. We are committed to leading the way in providing quality education at the lowest possible cost to our students and look forward to working on these efforts.
-- John Petersen
