News Magazine of the UW Department of Communication
Nicholas Trost, COM 361
October 15, 2008
University of Washington President Mark Emmert, in his annual state of the university address, reassured the university community that despite the difficult economic times, the UW has enough assets to stay focused on current and long-term goals.
"Our financial situation, despite what is going on right now with our markets is fine,” Emmert said to an anxious crowd in Kane Halle 130 Tuesday night. “We are in a very good shape in terms of the safeguarding of our finances.”
This statement comes after Emmert announced the need to close a $10 million budget gap for the next fiscal year as well as a plan to reorganize the way the university does business.
“When there is not a lot of money one of the things you can do is seek flexibility,” said Emmert. “We need to make sure that we can generate all of the revenue that we can with the resources that we have.”
Emmert suggested that a way to do that is to be especially careful and to ‘count pennies.’ He suggested spending money in areas that are going to have the biggest and best impact.
Emmert then made the point that even though the UW is reorganizing the way it spends money, the quality of a UW education will not be sacrificed.
“At what point does thinning down the soup become a ridiculous problem?” Emmert said with a smile. “They [students] come to us because we have great quality. We can’t sacrifice that because of a two-year blip in the budget cycle. And we won’t.”
Emmert also stressed that amid these financial problems the UW cannot lose momentum in those areas that have made a critical difference in the past four years. He cited faculty salaries and the need to continue capital projects as areas that cannot be forgotten.
Emmert also proposed ways to take advantage of this ‘down market’ in order to gain momentum during these tough financial times.
“This may be a time where we have an opportunity to do some really good poaching,” Emmert said to a laughing audience. “We have a really good chance to steal a great professor, grab a new staff member or bring in some terrific new graduate students.”
Throughout the speech Emmert advised the university community to keep their eye on the future and to never lose sight of what we still have to do.
“We just welcomed to the university the biggest and best class of undergraduates that have ever walked on our campuses, “said Emmert. “They expect a great education and we are going to give it.”
Towards the end of the speech Emmert warned that though we are in a better position than most at this time, we must not forget that there is still a lot of work to be done.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Emmert said cautiously. “This is still a very turbulent situation. But I would not want to trade our position with anyone right now.”
