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USU to strengthen reputation, Hall says By
Matt Stephens USU needs to strengthen its reputation and take better care of its faculty and students -- its greatest assets, President Kermit L. Hall told an overflow crowd of hundreds of faculty, students and community members at yesterday's annual State of the University address. Hall outlined 10 goals that resulted from the last year's compact planning process. "Our first and most significant goal is to enhance the reputation of the university for learning discovery and engagement," said Hall. One of the ways to do this is to reward outstanding professors and departments, he said. A provost's initiative suggests the distribution of $25,000 to the outstanding departments as well as $5,000 to be used for teaching purposes. Even with state funding reaching $129.3 million and a tuition increase, USU is still significantly behind its peer institutions. USU currently has a faculty-student ratio of 26 to 1, and faculty are paid one-fourth less than colleagues at peer institutions, Hall said. "Utah State's people are its most valuable asset and we simply cannot afford, even in the most difficult of budget times, to lose our best, as we have experienced over the last several months. "We regularly lose good junior colleagues to better-paying institutions." Hall emphasized the university's need to create more areas of revenue, suggesting increased state appropriations, tuition, technology commercialization and partnerships with private companies such as Coca-Cola, which gives more than $7 million to the university. "The elimination of the College of Family Life as an administrative entity resulted in an academic gain and a net savings of approximately $400,000," said Hall. "The burden is on us to reallocate the funds that we do have on a competitive basis to programs that will make a difference. The executive vice president of the university is working together with the deans, department heads, and the faculty, to examine whether other reorganization would be appropriate." Hall said the number of students who want to go to college is increasing. USU has one of the highest student-faculty ratios in the state. In addition, USU student numbers have doubled in the last 15 years and the number of faculty has stayed the same. The state of Utah has the highest number of high school and college-age youth, but one of the smallest numbers of working-age people. Tax support has declined, while there is an anticipated increase in students every year for the next 20 years. To help provide relief for this problem the provost suggested USU reallocate $500,000 to be distributed in the next budget year to outstanding faculty and staff. It is hoped that the state can match that amount, bringing the total to $1 million. Hall suggested options to help with the increasing costs and decreasing funds. He said USU could find new public revenue, limit access by increasing entrance standards, or maintain the status quo and watch the university erode. "Utah State, as a community of scholars and students, casts its vote for quality. We are not here to be caretakers, to leave this institution weaker than we found it, even in the most desperate of times," Hall said. "USU has to become a place where academics come first. We need to be stronger academically. "It makes no sense to bring people here knowing they have no chance to graduate," he said. To do this Hall said there are initiatives being implemented to build an enrollment profile that admits students with a strong likelihood of persisting and graduating, increasing the average ACT score, reducing the student-faculty ratio to 20-to-1 by the year 2005, and providing full implementation of the popular guaranteed time-to-graduation degree program. The compact planning process was the most intense and thorough self-examination of Utah State in its history, Hall said. "More than 120 units developed plans and prepared dashboards, and most plans have had at least three revisions." The compact planning process is an in-depth agreement between different departments in the university and the central administration. It describes the current state of affairs in separate departments, and describes where the departments want to go and how they are going to get there. The compact planning process also outlines financial agreements in terms of investments and expected outcomes. "The best way to predict the future is to create it," Hall said in reference to compact planning. The university needs to make choices to invest finite resources in the most worthy ambitions, he said. "We have our work cut out for us, planning for the future now yields the far greater challenge of creating our future," Hall said. "We have infinite ambition and finite resources. If we leave USU a place where those who came through it care about it more than they did when they arrived, then we will have succeeded."
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