PULLMAN, Wash.–The Washington State University Board of Regents will consider the 1999-01 biennial budget requests when it meets Friday, June 26, at 9 a.m. on the Seattle Central Community College campus.
The two-year operating budget proposal of $492.3 million is 7 percent higher than the university’s current biennial funding. The request includes additional funds for faculty retention, improving instructional quality through technology, higher enrollments, and new university initiatives to advance technology and safe food programs.
The proposal also seeks additional, but unspecified, appropriations for a 4.5 percent salary increase for all employees and funding to cover WSU’s new leadership role for the WSU Spokane Riverpoint campus.
WSU’s capital budget requests include $29.5 million to construct a Teaching and Learning Center, $12 million for a new shock physics building, $4.9 million to renovate White Hall to house the Honors College, and for construction of a $39 million health sciences building in Spokane and a $29.6 million engineering and life sciences building in Vancouver.
Other action items on the regents’ agenda include consideration of a new Statement of Policies for student publications and amended bylaws for the student bookstore, approval to proceed with construction plans for the WSU Vancouver campus, merger of academic programs to form the School of Accounting, Information Systems and Business Law, and approval of new degree programs. Regents also are expected to take action on an agreement with the Washington Water Power Co. for design, installation and ongoing maintenance of new utility-owned electrical services on campus and an allocation to the Annual Greater WSU Fund.
Reports from university groups, discussion of higher education issues in Spokane, and presentations by university vice presidents are included in the meeting’s agenda. Following the regular meeting, regents and university leaders will convene Friday afternoon and Saturday morning at Seattle’s Madison Hotel for a planning retreat.
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