In my last installment of Office Hours, we talked about the fact that this would 
be the moment to understand what really happened in Olympia this year and so 
now that the session wrapped up we can talk about it today. The fact is that we 
had a very, very good year in Olympia. For the biennium, our operating budget 
is up higher than it’s been in 20 years and our capital budget grew by more than 
it’s done in the past decade or so. We’ve got funding now for more than 1,700 
new students to come to the University of Washington. 500 of those students 
coming into programs in high demand areas like science and engineering and 
some related fields. Similarly we got funding for some great new opportunities 
in medical and dental education creating programs in Spokane where students 
will transfer then over to the Seattle campus. And we’ve got funding for some 
bold new initiatives in global health that’ll have some great impacts for us in the 
future.

This legislative session also included critically important changes in the way 
higher education is to be funded in the future. With great support from 
Governor Gregoire, the legislature set aside a clear set of goals for funding 
higher education consistent with our competitors around the country. It said that 
higher education should be funded at the same levels as those schools in the 
global challenge states, a collection of states that are well prepared for the 21st 
century economy. The other thing that it did is it allows us to then look at the 
funding gap in the way we fund higher education on a per student basis and to 
close that funding gap over a multi-year period. This legislative session for this 
biennium was a good step closing almost a third of that gap in one biennial 
session. It’ll there fore allow us to fund students the way that we need them to in 
terms of providing the resources they need and the educational experiences we 
want them to have and it will also allow us to increase faculty and staff pay so 
that they too are more competitive in the marketplace. Similarly this session 
included funding for new student aid programs which when combined with the 
husky promise is going to make the University of Washington more accessible, 
more affordable than ever before. 

Probably one of the most heavily debated issues in the legislative session was 
the creation of a new campus in Snohomish, Island and Skagit counties. At the 
end what the legislature concluded, and the governor signed into law, is a 
budget proviso that calls on the University of Washington to create a new 
campus some where in that three county area. We’ll be working over the next 
number of months and being ready to report back to the governor in October on 
where we think that campus should be and what we think the campus should 
look like. It’s going to be a very challenging job but we’re going to work 
aggressively with the communities, with the legislative leadership and with the 
office of financial management to find out how we want to move forward and to 
build a budget plan for building the new campus into the future.

On the capital budget side, we had some significant success in this session as 
well. One of the most important projects for the Seattle campus has been the 
restore the core project that’s been going on for a number of years now. It’s 
critical, of course, that we maintain these wonderful buildings that surround the 
quad and the core part of the institution. What we’re doing with Savery Hall for 
example, is renovating the building and completely changing out the facility and 
use of it for the philosophy, economics and sociology departments. Because the 
building right now looks pretty much the way it looked when I took classes in it 
in 1970’s and that’s not the way we want it for the 2007 year. So with this new 
budget we have funding now to renovate Savery, to continue the restore the core 
project and to do the cycled renovation we have planned over the next coming 
years. Similarly we have a chance, with funding from this session, to completely 
renovate and renew the Playhouse Theatre. One of the great old buildings on 
campus but something that really doesn’t work for modern theatre productions. 
With support from private donations and the state now we’ll be able to raise the 
roof on that building, expand it into a full functional theatre, it’ll be terrific for 
our students and for their guests. Clark Hall will get renovations, as will the H-
wing building down in the Health Sciences which is desperately needed for the 
entire University. 

Along with funding for new projects at both Bothell and Tacoma we also 
received critically needed funding for a new data center in the UW tower. As 
technology advances the calls on space to build data centers and to improve the 
capacity for the University to meet all of our needs around wireless and other 
technology and technological innovations has just become critical and this data 
center will really have a big impact on all of us.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on these or any other topics. So please feel free to 
shoot me an email or make comments on the message board associated with 
these Office Hour broadcasts. Thanks for your attention and I look forward to 
talking to you again next month.