Investing in Our Future

The University of Alabama is a university in transition. I would like to use my time with you this afternoon to talk about the investments The University is making to ensure we are able to turn our vision for the future of The University into reality. All the investments we are making are important, but two rise above the others in terms of relative importance –investments in our faculty and staff, and investments in our students.

Approximately three-and-a-half years ago, we set a very aggressive goal of having a faculty merit raise pool that was at least 35 percent over a four-year period, with a staff merit raise pool as close to that as possible and ideally within 2-3 percentage points. As of last fall, the faculty merit raise pool over a three-year period totaled 27 percent, with a staff pool of 25 percent. I am very optimistic that, when we begin our next academic year, the 35 percent goal and the 33 percent goal will have been achieved.

I believe it is time to set a new goal. By the fall of 2009, I would like to be able to report that the merit raise pool over a six-year period was 50 percent for faculty and 46-47 percent for staff. Effective this fall, our professors and associate professors passed the Southern University Group (SUG) 50th percentile in compensation, and have begun to make progress toward the SUG 75th. Our assistant professors are still slightly below the 50th percentile, and we are going to work very aggressively to correct that in this year’s budget cycle.

If we can achieve our new faculty and staff merit raise goals, and I believe we can, I think we will have done two very important things – recognized the quality of our faculty and staff, and increased the likelihood that we will be able to recruit and retain the people we want. To put those percentages into perspective, over a three-year period, we have invested more than $52 million in compensation – $20 million to faculty, $18 million to staff, about $4 million to retirement benefits, $8.5 million to PEEHIP, with another million going into health insurance. And, those numbers will continue to increase.

Investing in faculty and staff is about more than increasing salaries. Our University has grown rapidly. Over the past four years, enrollment has increased 22 percent. It is now time to begin a carefully planned program of additions to both faculty and staff. Under the leadership of Executive Vice President Bonner, we have allocated $2.5 million for hiring additional staff this year, and a comparable $2.5 million budget will exist next year so that we can begin to add more faculty members. Staff will be added on an ongoing basis in areas of need.

It is equally important to invest in our students. We have been able to report with great pride that, last fall, we attracted the largest and best academically qualified freshman class in the history of The University. Out of more than 4,300 students, 749 had high school GPAs of 4.0 or higher, and 83 were National Merit Scholars, which ranked Alabama 11th in the country among public universities. We are attracting the best and brightest, and we must continue to invest in ways that enable us to continue to do so.

Financial aid plays a critical role in our ability to attract the best and brightest. Over the last three years, we have increased need-based aid, primarily federal funding, from $56 million to $75 million, a 34 percent increase. During the same period, we have increased merit-based aid by 43 percent, from $23 million to $33 million, with a total of more than $109 million in financial aid being spent in the past fiscal year. Both need-based and merit-based aid will be substantially higher this year, and we will continue to make increases.

As you know, fully half of our $500 million capital campaign goal is dedicated to scholarship support. We are devoting a great deal of time and effort to attract the best and the brightest to The University. Financial aid, particularly scholarship support, is critically important to this goal.

We have talked a great deal over the past three years about investing in our enrollment growth. During that same period, we have been making significant investments in The University’s research capacity. Two years ago, we created a program that allows faculty members to draw on a scholarship pool that covers the out-of-state portion cost of a graduate research assistant’s tuition. This made our faculty significantly more competitive in pursuing external funds.

Last year we provided health insurance to graduate teaching and research assistants, another significant step forward. Under the leadership of Provost Bonner and Vice President Keith McDowell, we are now taking two additional, important steps forward. Currently, 40 percent of the indirect cost recovery generated by The University is returned to the colleges and schools and, in most cases, is divided among the college or school, the academic department of the principal investigator and the faculty member involved in the research. Effective next year, 10 percentage points more of the 60 percentage points retained by the central administration are going to be allocated to the center, if there is one, where the faculty member’s research is being conducted. We are going to continue to return the 40 percent to the academic unit, and use the 10 percent to strengthen the research centers that are increasingly important to The University, particularly as more interdisciplinary research is done.

The other program that will make a significant impact on our research capability is a cluster hire program that the provost will implement next year. Deans will be invited to submit proposals for cluster hires. A cluster hire will be the simultaneous hiring of several faculty members in a focused area, with the goal of having maximum impact on the research capability of the area.

We have been engaged in a very aggressive program to upgrade and expand our facilities. By next fall, we will have opened 20 new facilities over a four-and-a-half year period. As we move forward, the number of new buildings being opened will continue, but at a slower rate because we have to turn our attention to upgrading some of our existing facilities. The recently rededicated Graves Hall, for example, is one of the most attractive older buildings on our campus, but it was in serious need of renovation. About three weeks ago, we rededicated that building. I think it is fair to say that it is now a state-of-the-art teaching and research facility supporting our College of Education.

The next major renovation project is scheduled to begin this summer. It will be a multi-year renovation of Lloyd Hall. The cost of that much-needed renovation will approach $25 million. In Fall Semester, we will break ground on the second building in the new science and engineering quad. The second building will be adjacent to the existing Shelby building.

Achieving our goal, turning our vision for the future of The University into reality, will require a multi-year balanced investment in excellence. It is imperative that we continue to invest in our people – faculty, staff and students. It is imperative that we continue to invest in academic programs, from Honors College to research initiatives. And, we must continue to invest in our facilities. When your goal is to attract the best and brightest, not only among students but also among faculty, you have to accept the reality that they come with very high expectations, and it is imperative that we meet these expectations.

We are making the investments we need to make and, as we make those investments, others are investing with and for us. At the end of March, we announced that we were at the $379 million mark in cash and pledges on our capital campaign. That campaign will conclude in June 2009, and I am confident that we will go well beyond our $500 million goal.

One of the most important driving forces behind the success of our capital campaign is that potential donors can look at our campus today and see focused intensity, a tremendous amount of momentum, and a faculty and staff – an academic community – that has a plan for turning its vision for the future into reality. Our academic community is executing that plan, and our success is producing the kind of confidence and pride that puts numbers like $379 million on the board.

I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank you for making our progress possible. I spend a great deal of my time traveling, visiting with potential supporters of The University, some financial and some who open their homes for recruiting receptions to support our effort to attract the best and brightest. I wish each one of you could travel with me and hear the positive feedback that I hear about what you are accomplishing. People frequently say The University is accomplishing this, The University has made progress in this area or that area. It is not The University; it is you. You are responsible for the intensity, you are responsible for the momentum, you are responsible for the success, and I thank you all very much.