News & Updates

Now that session is almost a distant memory, I’ve had some time to attend to other duties, one of which is providing an update on what’s happening in other states that are home to the UW’s global challenge peer universities.

You may recall that since the passage of legislation in the 2007 session establishing the so-called “global challenge states” as the official comparison states for measuring Washington’s progress in improving education funding, we have tried to keep much closer tabs on budget and policy matters in those states, particularly the impacts on research universities.

Today, I have posted the Spring 2008 Global Challenge State Update to the Spotlight section of the website, providing information on California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland.  As you might expect, with the exception of Colorado and Connecticut, most states are experiencing various levels of fiscal distress and our peer universities are facing some potentially significant budget cuts, particularly in California and New Jersey.

We’ll check back in with these states later this summer to report on how their legislative sessions wrapped-up.  In the meantime, I hope you will find this report informative and useful.

Western Washington University is close to naming a new president.

Bruce Shepard, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay is expected to be chosen by the Western trustees as the school’s 13th president at their meeting this Friday.  Shepard, 61, has been chancellor of the Green Bay campus since 2001.  He came to the school from Eastern Oregon University where he was provost.  He also spent more than two decades at Oregon State University as a political science faculty member and as state government liaison and in other administrative posts.

Shepard replaces Western president Karen Morse who is retiring September 1.

Governor Christine Gregoire announced this morning that Valoria Loveland, Director of the state Department of Agriculture is retiring.  Loveland, a former state senator and Franklin County Treasurer, has served as agriculture director under both Governor Gary Locke and Governor Gregoire.

In a prepared statement, Gregoire praised Loveland for expanding the markets for Washington state agricultural products.  Today, agriculture exports are at record highs.

Loveland was elected to the state Senate in 1992 and became caucus chair in her second term.  In 1999, she assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Ways and Means committee where she presided for two sessions.  She was defeated for re-election in 2000 by Mike Hewitt who is currently the Senate Republican leader.

Loveland’s retirement is effective May 5.

Take a look at yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine which is dubbed “The Green Issue” featuring a bevy of articles to help all of us keep our carbon footprints that much smaller.

In the “Learn” section of the magazine, the first item is titled “How Green is My Campus?” and features the environmental stewardship policies of the University of Washington for which we earned an A- on the College Sustainability Report Card, published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The UW is one of only six schools to receive this mark, the highest given in the most recent survey.

Nice to get some national recognition for our collective efforts to improve the environment.

While the Washington State legislature adjourned their 2008 session more than a month ago, many state legislatures are still meeting, with most of the hard work remaining over the next couple of months.

In California, the budget deficit appears to be getting worse with most of the revenue shortfall coming from lower corporate income taxes.  We have mentioned previously that Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget called for 10% across the board cuts to all state agencies, including higher education.  While the state legislature has criticized those cuts, there have been no alternatives presented yet, such as tax increases or alternative reductions.

Today, more than 1,000 students from California’s colleges and universities are expected to descend on Sacramento for a 10:30 a.m. rally on the north steps of the State Capitol building.  They are expected to be joined by former state legislature and current Lt. Governor John Garamendi and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles).  Similar student rallies are scheduled in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Barbara.

It was about three years ago this month that the Governor’s proposal to direct the state’s tobacco settlement bonus dollars into a new Life Sciences Discovery Fund to advance state research efforts in health sciences passed the state legislature.  The bill was a major victory for the Governor in the 2005 session and something the UW and many others worked hard to help get passed.

Well, here we are in 2008 and the first flow of monies from those bonus payments resulting from the Master Tobacco Settlement are coming into the aforementioned life sciences discovery fund.  Yesterday, the Life Sciences Discovery Fund announced a total of $22 million in research awards from the fund to five research projects, three of which will go to researchers at or associated with the University of Washington and on the other two awards, the UW is a collaborating organization.

The five grant awardees and their projects descriptions are:

• Gail Jarvik, UW.  An award of $5.3 million to build a new infrastructure that will enable clinical investigation using rapid, high volume analysis of genomic data in the area of medical genetics.  Collaborating organization include Group Health Cooperative, Rosetta Inpharmatics LLC and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center.
• Patricia Kuhl, UW.  An award of $4.0 million to establish a regional child brain imaging center to utilize the latest in brain imaging technology to measure the young brain in action and explore the basic mechanisms, and the potential underlying problems, the drive early learning and lay the foundation for life-long learning.
• Martin Cheever, Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium Phase 1 Clinical Trials Program.  An award of $2.2 million to develop a phase 1 cancer clinical trials program for accelerating the development of new cancer fighting drugs.  Collaborating organizations include Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles, Skagit Valley Hospital and Clinic Cancer Care in Great Falls, Montana.
• Richard Smith, Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  An award of $4.8 million to develop a new proteomics technology and apply it in search of blood biomarkers for liver disease and in subsequent use as a powerful tool in the study of cancer, diabetes and other conditions.  The University of Washington is a collaborating organization.
• Gerald Nepom, Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason.  An award of $5.6 million to apply genetic and immunologic discoveries to benefit people with autoimmune diseases, such as Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis (MS) and lupus.  The University of Washington is a collaborating organization.

In their press release, the Fund states that these five projects were selected by the board from a total of 75 submissions that were evaluated by national experts convened by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Although this is the first research competition to be funded from tobacco settlement funds, the Fund held an inaugural round last fall using private donor funds.  Another $7 million in grant awards will be made this July.

Dave Ammons, the “Dean” of state political reporters in Olympia and a 37-year veteran state government correspondent for the Associated Press is stepping down.  After almost four decades covering the state legislature, Governor’s office and state government in general, Ammons (a UW Communications grad) will become a state employee himself, as he assumes the job of chief spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed.

As the senior reporter for the AP news service in Olympia, Dave’s stories and columns have been picked up by a large percentage of the newspapers and radio stations in the state.  In an era where only the largest daily newspapers can afford to hire their own Olympia correspondents, Ammons has essentially been the journalistic voice of Olympia for much of Washington State.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Olympia that doesn’t admire, respect and plain like the guy.  As both a legislative staffer and lobbyist, I always found Dave to be fair, balanced, inquisitive, discrete, and a gentleman through and through.  His longevity also gives him some institutional memory and perspective that is beginning to be a dangerously diminishing commodity in the state capitol.  Over the past few years, he has also found a niche as resident host of the TVW program “Inside Olympia” where he has proved to be a patient and capable interviewer of both prominent elected and appointed government officials.

Here’s a really nice piece about Dave written seven years ago by David Postman, chief political reporter for the Seattle Times.

Back from a quick family vacation and during the drive home yesterday, I realized that I missed updating all of you on an important staff change in the Governor’s policy office.

In late February, Debora Merle (who has served as the Governor’s higher education policy advisor since the beginning of her administration), left Olympia to become Executive Director of the California State Board of Education.  As someone who came from California to Olympia many years ago, I joked that she was literally jumping from one frying pan into another, and in Sacramento, it gets so hot in the summer it is both figuratively and literally like a frying pan.  Moreover, their sessions go on forever, but Deb was undeterred and ready for a new challenge.  We wish her the best of luck.

Recently, the Governor’s policy office announced the hiring of Chris Alejano as the Governor’s new higher education policy advisor.  Chris is a doctoral student at the UW in educational policy and leadership and was a member of the Washington Learns Higher Education Advisory Committee.  He also recently served as a research analyst during the 2007 session on the House Early Learning and Children’s Services Committee.  Chris started work on April 1 and all of us in the higher education community are looking forward to working with Chris as we move forward in developing our 2009 policy agendas.

I’m off this week for a little R & R with the family.  We’ll check in later.

Just got a chance to review the Governor’s veto message on the 2008 supplemental capital budget and there are no changes that impact the University.  On the positive side, this means the $3 million for the UW Tacoma campus land acquisition and soils remediation project remains intact and $300,000 to conduct a pre-design study for a future expansion of the Burke Museum is preserved.

On the negative side, the UW’s request for a gubernatorial veto of the legislative cut to the four year institution’s cost allocation pool was not granted.  This means there is no funding remaining in that pool to allocate to the Playhouse Theater renovation project which is $1.3 million overbudget.

With the Governor’s signature on the operating and capital budgets and all remaining legislation yesterday, the 2008 session is now officially over.