Spring 2001
From the dean: Our stake in the legislature
Photo by Tom Foley
As I write, the college's future hangs in the balance.
Over the past four years I have reported on the magnificent changes that have occurred in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA)--changes that have transformed the educational experience we provide our students. I have described, with great pride, how we have begun to dig out from the deep retrenchments of the 1980s and early 1990s to rebuild CLA.
We have pulled ourselves out of a hole by recruiting to Minnesota stellar new teachers and scholars who have built the excellence of our programs. We have introduced freshman seminars, reduced class size, revamped the writing curriculum, redesigned academic advising, invested in technology-enhanced learning, and introduced curricular innovations across the college to meet the challenges of the new century.
We have created new interdisciplinary centers to fuel the interdisciplinary appetites and creative energies of our faculty and students and to address the concerns of a world that is increasingly without boundaries and where branches of knowledge are converging and colliding. We are renovating our facilities to create learning environments fit for the 21st century. And we've made sure that every one of our students is on line, and that no student will have to stand in line the way many of you did.
By focusing on priorities and meting out our scarce resources with deliberate care, we have worked to ensure that CLA provides an affordable, world-class education that will keep Minnesota's best and brightest right here in Minnesota.
The changes truly are dramatic.
But everything we have accomplished these past four years is now in jeopardy.
As you no doubt know, the governor's recommendation to the Minnesota Legislature calls for an incremental $56.6 million for the University over the next two years. This is a far cry from the $221.5 million that President Yudof has requested for us to stay on track.
The governor's budget includes no funds for competitive compensation for our faculty and staff; no funds for undergraduate education or for even a single new academic initiative; no funds for renewing and caring for our facilities; and no funds for library acquisitions. And it includes no funds for technology-enhanced classrooms or for upgrading and maintaining the core technological infrastructure of the university--a very critical need at a time when states like California and Wisconsin are pumping tens of millions of dollars into technology for their systems of higher education.
In short, the Governor's budget fails on every front to meet the needs of our students.
The College of Liberal Arts, our students, and our academic programs will be seriously damaged if such a budget--or anything close to it--is passed by the legislature. With such deep cuts we stand to lose our best teachers, scholars, and artists. We will lose Minnesota's most promising students to other states. We will suffer giant setbacks in nearly all that we have accomplished together these past four years.
In a word, our losses will be devastating.
We stand at a critical juncture in the University's history. The questions before us are simple: What kind of university and state do we want? Do we want a university that is affordable and accessible to all Minnesotans or do we want a school that is too expensive for middle- and working-class families? Do we want a university that offers our sons and daughters a world-class education, or do we want to lose our best students to competing states?
Do we want a university with small classes taught by professors, or a school with large, impersonal classes with no professor in sight? Do we want a university that turns out creative, imaginative, and innovative graduates who will lead our businesses and communities, or do we want to slip behind as a state? Do we want a faculty on the leading edge of research and development, or do we want industries to go elsewhere for this new talent?
Please call or write your legislators and ask them to fully fund the University's request. (To find your legislator go to http://www.umn.edu/govrel.) Please also share the urgency of the University's request with family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
The governor has spoken--but the legislature has not. So now is the time to act. We must raise our collective voices so that legislators will understand what's at stake. It's not just the University's future that hangs in the balance, it's the future of our state.
Thank you for speaking out for the University of Minnesota.