The University and several other schools in the Oregon University System could receive a substantial windfall of state and public funds for their engineering departments if the State Board of Higher Education approves an investment plan during its regular meeting at Southern Oregon University this weekend.
During a teleconference meeting on Monday, OUS representatives made their recommendation to the board for an eight-year, $85 million investment package that would draw on state and private funding in an attempt to make Oregon’s engineering schools top-tier institutions.
The computer and information science department at the University could stand to acquire approximately $8 million per year in the plan to support its data engineering programs, according to an OUS report.
Board members will decide on one of four options submitted by OUS during the morning session of their Friday meeting. The options differ mainly in how funds are spread out through a certain amount of time.
During the teleconference, board members and OUS representatives heard a report from Dan Leizel, a representative of the consulting firm that studied how the OUS can bring its institutions into the top tier of engineering schools.
“There’s a need for a major resource investment,” he said, citing several technology companies in Oregon that are in desperate need of skilled data engineers at all levels.
“They said the state needs to enhance the prestige and quality of engineering programs in the state,” he said.
Leizel said his firm determined OUS needs to invest $113 million to add 222 faculty, 45 staff members and 178 graduate assistants to improve engineering programs in the state. The University could hire nine faculty members, four staff members and 18 graduate assistants. The report did not factor in the costs of improving or adding facilities, which prompted a few board members to criticize it.
Board member Geri Richmond said she thinks the report’s estimated faculty costs were not accurate.
“It’s too low; it’s way too low,” she said.
Richmond also stressed that there are not enough funds to make an across-the-board commitment to engineering. She said the state should instead focus on specific programs and attempt to make those better.
“We can not afford to cover every area of engineering in this state,” she said. “We need to be focusing. Let’s narrow … what we mean [by] excellence.”
OUS Vice Chancellor Tom Andrews explained the funding situation for the engineering investment plan and said that Oregon will not be able to finance the investment using only state funds.
“The farther … an institution moves up the aspiration ladder, the further it gets from state funding,” he said.
OUS has already requested $30 million from the state Engineering Education Investment Fund, $17 million of which will come from private sources. More funds will be requested, depending on which option the board approves Friday, Andrews said.
If the board approves the plan proposed by the OUS, it would mean a state commitment of $10.63 million every two years, which would be matched by private funding, for a total of $21.26 million every two years. The funding would begin in 2001, Andrews said.
According to OUS reports, the bulk of the existing funding — $53.37 million every two years — would go to Oregon State University. The University of Oregon would stand to gain about $17 million every two years. Andrews also said that Oregon State University and Portland State University would receive most of the facilities improvements and new buildings because the two schools account for nearly 80 percent of all engineering degrees within the OUS, which explains the disparity in funding levels.
University Provost John Moseley, however, said that despite the small size of the University’s share, the investment would still mean an improvement for the University of Oregon.
“The investment at [the University] is entirely in computer science. With that investment we will move into the tier one for computer science,” he said.
Moseley also cautioned that Oregon schools can’t compare themselves to other schools in the nation that are larger and boast bigger engineering schools. He said states such as California, Michigan and North Carolina already have huge engineering schools and strong ties to the private sector, which keeps those schools well-funded. He said the Oregon University System should be careful to keep its plans to scale with its means and not try to keep up with larger schools.
“One of the fallacies of tier-one institutions is based on larger scales … they’re based on large scales based on larger economies,” he said.