KU News Release

Feb. 20, 2007
Contact: Lynn Bretz, University Communications, (785) 864-7100.

Chancellor testifies before Senate Ways and Means Subcommittee on Higher Education

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway testified today before the Senate Ways and Means Subcommittee on Higher Education. The following is the text of his remarks.

Chairman Morris: Thank you for allowing me to come before the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Higher Education to visit with you regarding progress the University of Kansas is making and where KU is going.

Joining me this afternoon are the academic leaders of the Lawrence and KU Medical Center campuses: Richard Lariviere, executive vice chancellor and provost of the Lawrence campus, and Dr. Barbara Atkinson, executive vice chancellor for the KU Medical Center and executive dean of the medical school.

I want to be respectful of your time. There are three topics I would like to cover:

1. The university’s strong momentum in fulfilling its mission,
2. Our careful stewardship of the state’s investment in the university and
3. Our progress on the KU Cancer Center initiative to become a Comprehensive Cancer Center to serve the people of Kansas.

Today, KU is stronger than ever before. We have sustained record high enrollments and have attracted an excellent student body. Our alumni association is active throughout the state, and our endowment association is one of the oldest and most successful in the nation.

KU is a public university, and 24 percent of our fiscal year 2006 budget comes from state appropriations. We make sure this state investment creates a first-rate education for undergraduate, graduate, professional school, nursing, allied health and medical students. This is why we support the governor’s proposed 5 percent increase in the Regents operating block grant. It’s austere but fair.

However, I want to be honest with the subcommittee. Our success has not been easy. Since 1985, higher education funding has declined as a state priority. A recent Kansas Board of Regents report alerted Kansans that by the year 2010, if current state funding trends continue, hard-working students and their families will contribute more to the operation of the state universities (through tuition payments) than the state will (through annual appropriations).

Tuition increases last year paid for additional faculty positions, improved technology and additional financial aid for the neediest students. More than $7 million — or 20 percent of new tuition revenue — has been committed to KU tuition grants for the university’s neediest students, helping more than 12,000 students pay for college.

KU is a formidable state asset that returns great rewards throughout Kansas. More than 142,000 KU alumni live and work in Kansas; most of them vote. These alumni carry a KU education back to their Kansas community where they work as business men and women, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, city managers and law enforcement officials.

Obviously, KU’s contributions to the state are a matter of size and scale.

— On the Lawrence campus, our enrollment is 26,773. Seventy percent of our students are Kansans. We enroll students from all 105 Kansas counties. We enroll more Kansans than any Regents institution.
— The KU Medical Center enrollment is 2,840; 66 percent of its students are Kansans.
— Our educational offerings extend beyond undergraduate and graduate programs. Eighty-five Kansans graduated in December from the KU Public Management Center’s Certified Public Managers program. For the first time, the course was offered in southwestern Kansas with classes in Liberal, Dodge City and Garden City. We are continuing the southwestern Kansas courses this year, too.

KU is also highly regarded as a top public research university.

— KU ranked 39th among the nation’s top 162 national public universities in U.S. News’ survey of undergraduate programs.
— Twenty-four KU graduate programs were ranked 25th or higher among public universities by U.S. News. Two programs, Special Education and Public Administration, are rated No.1 in the nation among all public universities.
— Last month, Kiplinger’s magazine listed KU as one of the nation’s top values for the quality of education we deliver.

These achievements demonstrate our commitment to provide an affordable and accessible college education that enables our students and our state to compete in the global marketplace. Our graduates attain the skill sets and critical thinking demanded by employers, whether in Garden City, Kansas City or Paris or Berlin.

KU is a research university

Like the Kansas economy, KU’s research mission continues to grow. In January, we announced that research awards at the University of Kansas soared to a record $218 million in the past fiscal year, a 50 percent increase in just the past five years. Our total research expenditures reached $292 million.

What these numbers tell us is that by any standard, we are winning competitive research grants. This includes awards from the nation’s life science research agency — the National Institutes of Health. The NIH funded $86 million in KU research projects, a 15 percent increase over the previous year.

NIH funds are important to the Kansas economy. It is these NIH research grants that are the engine of life science businesses. It is NIH funding levels that economic development analysts note in state-to-state comparisons. No state or community can have a life science industry without a university that competes for and wins funding from NIH.

The University of Kansas Medical Center also had a banner year last year building on an unprecedented five-year performance record. The medical center’s funding from the National Institutes of Health rose from $38.4 million to $46.7 million — a 22 percent increase.

Last month, the medical center opened its new 200,000-square-foot Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center. This new building provides our state with a state-of-the-art life sciences laboratory where world-class investigators are working to discover new treatments and cures to enhance human health.

The medical school rolled out a new curriculum this year that will train doctors for the medicine of the 21st century — using case-based problem solving in multidisciplinary team environments. This new curriculum will also encourage students to develop better communication skills and to interact effectively with technology in the clinical setting.

Cancer

Last year, the Legislature embraced our dream to build a world-class cancer center at the University of Kansas. I have declared this effort to be our university’s top priority — reflecting my belief that KU is uniquely positioned in Kansas to lead the fight against cancer.

The Legislature’s decision to appropriate $5 million in this year’s budget is already bearing fruit as we work to advance our goal of eliminating suffering and death from cancer. With your investment we are putting in place the people and infrastructure to support clinical trials as well as prevention, screening and survivorship programs. We also have the goal of becoming a center for cancer drug development and discovery. Our cancer initiative is supported by our partners at the University of Kansas Hospital, where a new cancer treatment center is currently under construction in Westwood. Let me say thank you for your support and leadership. We appreciate the trust the Legislature has placed in us and we are working hard to continue to produce impressive results.

KU also considers our obligation to serve the medical needs of Kansans to be a high priority. KU-trained doctors now practice in 85 Kansas counties and represent collectively 52 percent of all the doctors practicing in our state. We work hard through our rural health office to link Kansas communities with the doctors they need. The American Academy of Family Physicians recently ranked the KU School of Medicine No. 1 in the nation for placing graduates in family medicine residencies. With our telemedicine program and our outreach efforts to bring specialists to clinics throughout Kansas we have provided health treatment to thousands of Kansas in dozens of counties.

KU is a careful steward of state funds

We appreciate the Legislature and the governor’s response this year to the deferred maintenance issue at Regents institutions. We also appreciate last year’s provision by the Legislature to allow tuition interest to go toward addressing this need. And we greatly appreciate the support of the Legislature when we bring before you legislation needed to assist us in securing continued efficiencies. But investment in the University of Kansas has never been left solely to the state. KU actively seeks innovative ways to save and maximize taxpayer investment in our operations.

Here are two recent examples — one small, one large and both significant.

Last summer, in collaboration with the Department of Administration, KU independently contracted with an international long-distance service provider to reduce long-distance costs. The projected savings for fiscal year 2007 are expected to exceed $24,000. We are moving forward on domestic long-distance rates as well, and the savings are expected to be substantial.

Through creative purchasing options and energy conservation, the KU Medical Center has protected itself against rising costs for natural gas. The combination of participating in a natural gas purchasing management program and a 1 percent reduction in natural gas consumption insulated us against price increases that would have approached $300,000 in fiscal year 2006.

We also continually seek ways to involve the private sector in supporting our public university. We do not view the state as our sole source of support. The most recent example of private sector investment may well be the extraordinarily generous $4 million donation from your former colleague Rep. Carl Krehbiel that we announced last month. Karl’s gift will establish our 12th scholarship hall — a beautiful 18,000-square-foot facility for 50 men. It will be a beacon of contemporary energy efficiency, with a noise-free, environmentally friendly geothermal heating and cooling system and a structure that will blend in with an historic, late 19th century neighborhood.

Mr. Chairman, we are proud to acknowledge today the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students and our university programs. Their performance shows that your investment in the University of Kansas is a sound investment and an investment in the future of the great state of Kansas.

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