By
Eric Swedlund
Arizona Daily Wildcat
PHOENIX - Faculty salary raises and an increase in the graduate teaching assistant work force are the top UA budget requests, University of Arizona President Peter Likins said to a panel of state senators yesterday.
Likins spoke before both the Arizona Senate and House of Representatives Appropriations Committees in a budget presentation by the state's three public universities.
"The top priority in our request for funds beyond the (Joint Legislative Budget Committee) recommendation is a response to our decision package that will increase the graduate student teaching assistant work force," Likins told the Senate panel.
Teaching assistants have seen an increasingly heavy workload in recent years, working on average 22 percent more hours than assigned, Likins said. Some work up to 50 percent more hours, he added.
The additional TA workload is a result of the university's strategy for retaining key faculty members, many of whom leave the UA for higher salaries at other institutions.
The university has had to re-allocate $13 million since 1995 to maintain competitive faculty salaries. However, the number of faculty has still decreased, which in turn increases the burden on graduate teaching assistants, Likins said.
As an example, Likins said the Eller College of Business and Public Administration saw faculty representation drop from 115 to 82 members between 1992 and 1998. In contrast, the college's enrollment increased by 25 percent during that time.
Likins said it was a decade of decline that brought the university to the problems it now has, and it will take many years to get back to average levels.
"We're not going to materially improve our position," Likins said. "We'll halt the slide."
Likins said the Joint Legislative Budget Committee's recommendation of a five percent pay increase for faculty is "far superior to anything we've seen in a long time." He added that last year's funding for faculty salary increases - the last budget set raises at two percent - was "devastating."
"To show us you care about what we do means so much when I go back to my faculty," Likins told the committee. "The Legislature has shifted its values and is striving to meet the needs we have to retain quality faculty."
The appropriations committees are chaired by Sen. Ruth Solomon, D-Tucson, and Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe, both vocal supporters of Arizona's higher education system.
"We have a sense of a greater harmony of spirit in our common enterprise in serving the people of the state of Arizona," Likins said. "Both budgets (the Joint Legislative Budget Committee and executive proposals) represent a genuine effort to respond to our specific needs."
The JLBC's expected budget for universities is $785 million in the 2002 fiscal year, an increase of $19.8 million. The executive budget proposal gives universities $783 million, a $17.5 million increase from the 2001 fiscal year to the 2002 fiscal year.
For the second year of the biennial budget, the JLBC recommendation is $793 million, while the governor's proposal is only $781 million. Solomon also told Likins that this Legislature recognizes the need for increased university funding, but praised the system's efforts in the face of funding problems.
"With what we've given you, the universities do an absolutely incredible, amazing job," Solomon said.
The Arizona Board of Regents will receive almost $50 million from Proposition 301 to use for the Technology and Research Initiative fund to split between Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.
"Proposition 301 enables us to do some very important things in stimulating Arizona's capacity to compete in the new economy," Likins said.
The UA plans to use the Prop. 301 funds in the fields of biotechnology, information technology, optics and hydrology.
James Dalen, dean of the UA College of Medicine and vice president of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, presented the Senate committee with the top AHSC priorities.
First on Dalen's list is a $1.1 million funding package for the UA Program in Integrative Medicine that will provide permanent money for teaching.
The research for the nation's leading program will still be self-supporting.
Also on the agenda for this legislative session is a joint effort between the UA and Pima Community College for a campus on Tucson's northwest side.
The facility will serve as the new location for the Arizona International College and provide a place for a joint program between Pima Community College and the UA College of Education aimed to increase the number of school teachers in Arizona. Likins said the program parallels the ASU East concept.
