November 30, 2021
Dear Colleagues,
Over the course of the semester, Provost Chilton and I have had the wonderful
opportunity to meet with many of you (virtually) at our town halls. We really
appreciate the thoughtful feedback, questions, and lively discussions we have
had at these events. Though these discussions are targeted for areas of interest
for each of your units, we have noticed recurring questions around budget,
recruitment, and retention. With this in mind, I wanted to provide a few key
updates on where we are as an institution.
First, effective January 1, 2022, I will be dropping the “designate” from
WSU Pullman Chancellor Chilton’s title. Chancellor Chilton will be taking on
more of the operational leadership of the Pullman campus, including emergency
response management in collaboration with Vice President Stacy Pearson and
Associate Vice President and Executive Director of Public Safety Bill Gardner.
This shift will allow me to spend more time traveling and meeting with donors
and legislators to advocate for the advancement of WSU.
Second, I want to give a particular shout out to Vice President Stacy Pearson
and the entire Finance and Administration team for their efforts to mitigate the
effects of revenue loss from mandatory closures and our current decrease in
enrollment. In her email to the University at the start of the semester, Stacy
detailed the three budget principles that WSU will be committed to for FY 2022:
- Prioritize core and mission critical activities to
support high quality academic delivery and student success functions.
- Work to sustain as many WSU jobs as possible.
- Maintain a focus on revenue generation, including
accelerating revenue enhancement opportunities in fiscally responsible ways.
Using these principles as the basis for our supplemental budget request to
the state, the largest portion of our ask ($9.365 million) is for a merit-based
retention and compensation increase in FY 2023. These funds would be used to ease
a chronic recruitment and retention problem among the university’s faculty and
staff ranks and keep pace with the rising cost of living. We also want to use
this compensation increase to recognize the continued excellent work from each
of you throughout the pandemic. You are ensuring the success of the next
generation of Cougs.
We also requested an additional $4.5 million to support the establishment of
undergraduate programs in cybersecurity—critical to the success of
Washington’s workforce. These programs would be established on three of our campuses:
WSU Everett, WSU Tri‑Cities, and WSU Pullman, specifically in the Voiland College
of Engineering and the Carson College of Business. Additionally, we submitted a
joint request in partnership with the University of Washington to develop separate
one‑year residency programs to address mental and behavioral health across the
state of Washington. If funded, this proposal would create a pathway to train
postgraduate pharmacists in behavioral health—an opportunity that does not
currently exist in Washington. Trainees from this unique program will serve as
primary care providers throughout rural Washington, enhancing access to care
and helping to improve health disparities. We anticipate we will have more
information about all these requests in the spring of next year.
In other positive news, our fundraising efforts have been going exceedingly
well. A huge congratulations to Cougar Athletics on surpassing their fundraising
goals for both the Indoor Practice Facility ($27 million) and the Champion’s Complex
($12.8 million). We have also made great progress on securing private support for
two new facilities for WSU: the WSU Vancouver Sciences building (which broke ground
this month) and the VCEA Student Success building. It is important to remember that
most of the time when donors support WSU, they specifically earmark where they want
their donation to go. It is WSU’s job to steward those gifts to meet the donor’s
wishes.
In the coming months, I’m looking forward to spending more time garnering support
for the WSU system. In addition to traveling more, I will be working out of
WSU Spokane for a portion of each month and hope to do the same at all of our
campuses as we continue through our OneWSU evolution. I’ve also noticed more and
more of our system leadership doing the same—which I highly encourage. Being on‑site
and getting to interact with our students, faculty, and staff across the state
ensures that we are continuing to meet WSU’s land-grant mission of providing
education to all. I’m also excited to participate in two commencement ceremonies
Saturday, December 11. One will recognize our graduates this fall, and the other is
for all our students whose ceremonies were conducted virtually last year. This second
ceremony is such a wonderful way to provide an in‑person congratulations to all of
our Cougs across the system who persevered through the pandemic. Please email
commencement@wsu.edu if you are in Pullman on the 11th
and are interested in volunteering for either ceremony.
In closing, I want to wish you all well as we head into the holiday season. I hope you
are able to disconnect and spend time with your loved ones.
Go Cougs!
Kirk Schulz, President
Washington State University
P.S. — Congratulations to our Cougar Football
team for the win on Friday! Being able to finally hoist the Apple Cup trophy was an
incredible experience! I cannot wait to see what is next for this program under
Coach Dickert’s leadership.