Olympia
Update No. 19 • May 10, 2007
Turtle on a
Fence Post
From: Larry
Ganders, Assistant to the President
Printable Adobe PDF Version
Posting the Rawlins Legacy
Lane
Rawlins is notorious for his country expressions. One of them is, “If you see a
turtle on a fence post, you know it didn’t get there by itself.”
The WSU
Alumni Association turned the table at the Board of Regents meeting last week
when it presented President Rawlins with a plaque with a turtle perched
on a post. WSU has been posted as one of the top 50 universities in the country
during the last seven years. The plaque made it clear Lane Rawlins had his large
handprints all over that development. The Olympia perspective is similar.
If
legislators see freshmen students attending WSU Vancouver this year, new medical
students at WSU Spokane next year, a new pedestrian mall down the center of the
Pullman campus, a new wine researcher at WSU Prosser, a reinvigorated apple
breeding program, ten new scientists working on biofuels at WSU Tri-Cities, a
new WSU PhD nursing student, or a new Small Business Development Center, they
know they didn’t get there without the help of a WSU president. If they hear of
campuses that were once “branches,” referred to as “four-year institutions,”
they know Lane Rawlins had a hand in that. And when they see a new WSU
biotechnology research and education complex in Pullman, they are certain it
didn’t have a chance of being built so soon without his hand.
Lane
Rawlins’ final year as president was capped with one of the most successful
legislative sessions in history for WSU.
In the next week, the Governor will sign 2007-2009 Operating and Capital Budgets
that will complete many improvements at WSU and move forward his initiatives in
quality undergraduate education and research that started seven years ago.
There are
unquestionably many factors that influenced a 17.9 percent state budget increase
for WSU and a record $180.6 million construction budget: Gov. Christine
Gregoire, the “Washington Learns” Study Team, the Washington Roundtable, the
Prosperity Partnership, enlightened industry leaders and legislators that
sincerely wanted to make a difference for the state. However, all of these
influencers cite Lane Rawlins as shaping their higher education positions and
posting WSU’s gains.
Public Education Is
“The Main Thing”
On May 21,
President Rawlins will go back to the faculty ranks as an economics professor.
But he will leave behind profound changes to the state’s higher education system
and WSU. Here’s an incomplete summary from a state legislative perspective:
One of
Lane’s favorite expressions is “Make the Main Thing, The Main Thing.” And he always makes it clear that while he loves WSU
specifically, his “main thing” is his passion for public higher education. The
only WSU president to emerge from the university’s faculty ranks, his strategy
was based on his conviction that outstanding undergraduate education for
students grew out of its continuous interaction with world class research. It is
the kind of interaction that occurs at a research university.
At a
time when many institutions were considering “privatization,” Lane affirmed that
WSU would not be confused about its clear mission as a public institution to
serve the state of Washington and its citizens.
From the beginning of his presidency he was a relentless
advocate in Olympia for state funding to assure that state needs are met.
He argued
that increases in tuition paid by students should never be considered without
corresponding increases in state funding. He argued for benchmarks to compare
both tuition funding and state funding against other institutions that were
globally competitive. That concept was advocated by the governor and signed into
law April 20 as Second Substitute Senate Bill 5806.
Despite
his lobbying for state funding, Lane steadfastly refused to allow WSU’s quality
of student education and the excellence of its faculty to be defined exclusively
by the size of its state legislative appropriations. The Rawlins years featured
creative reallocations of existing dollars and a more focused effort to secure
more federal funding. The university reached its second highest mark in the WSU
Foundation’s 27-year history with $54,116,173 in gifts and pledges during FY
2006, which ended June 30.
Straight Fences for
Quality Education
Lane
believes it is nearly as important to do the job right, as it is to do the job. As a youth on the potato farm, Lane said he learned that fences should
be built straight, even if people couldn’t tell the difference from where they
were standing.
President Rawlins rearranged the WSU budget to use other local funds to make up
the difference on faculty salaries and other critical issues when the Legislature could not find general state funding. Over the past
two years, the WSU faculty was appropriated funding equal to an average 4.8
percent salary increase. President Rawlins’ realignment of the budget led to an
average of 8 percent salary increases for WSU faculty instead.
Always
bothered by the return on WSU trust land investments, voters this year will consider a legislatively-approved constitutional
amendment to improve funding for higher education projects that was requested by
President Rawlins and the Board of Regents. (Substitute House Joint Resolution
4215.)
He
passionately argues that the tuition
a WSU student pays should be retained at WSU to enhance programs that benefit
the student. The final legislative budget this year held that position despite
an initial state Senate position that it shouldn’t matter, as long as there’s
still enough money to do the job.
Opportunity
for
22,250 Students
Now
more than ever, WSU is the university sought by some of the state’s brightest
students. For Fall
2007, WSU has a record number of applications. Nearly 40 percent of WSU’s
incoming class in 2006 had grade point averages of 3.6 or higher. Average
entering freshman SAT scores increased by more than 65 points in past five
years. Almost 40 percent of entering freshmen at WSU come from the top 10
percent of their high school class. The final legislative budget will now allow
850 more bright students to attend the WSU system. Thanks to the Rawlins years,
22,250 students will be enrolled at WSU in 2008, marking a 16.2 percent increase
in enrollment during his tenure as president.
Sharp Shovels for
Science
President Rawlins always advised his staff to keep their tools sharp. He said it
made it easier to do the job. He sharpened his shovel by digging in on science
and research.
When
Lane took over in 2000, there had not been a major state-funded university
research building built in the state in decades.
Legislators believed research
was a federal mission, not state. They believed that university research could
not make big changes in the economy. It’s a cynicism that is not dead in the
Legislature, but was forced underground in the Rawlins years.
Against
all internal and external political advice, Lane Rawlins put a $12.4 million
“Shock Physics” building near the top of his 2001 capital construction list. The WSU legislative request package was dubbed “A
New Way of Doing Business at WSU” and the Legislature funded the building. He
expanded, relocated, and accelerated a new Nursing Building for Spokane. The
Legislature not only accepted the recommendation, it put it on a faster track.
His
next project would not be a single science research building but several
buildings! President Rawlins proposed a major biotechnology complex of buildings
in Pullman. The
first part of the complex was proposed in 2003 with a $35 million request for a
Plant Biotechnology Building, reconfiguring a project that was previously a
building addition. Later, he
sought and has received some federal funding for a nearby Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) building. That same year he secured design money for a Life
Sciences Building for National Institute of Health-sponsored researchers in
Pullman. But that would prove to be his most controversial legislative proposal.
Ironically, there wasn’t so much opposition to the Life Sciences Building
proposal as there was support for other projects that Lane had moved higher on
WSU’s priority list. In many ways, Lane’s top priority fell victim to other
ideas he proposed that were more popular with legislators. The Legislature
refused in 2005 to fund the Life Sciences project but still gave the university
a $114 million construction budget with new buildings in Spokane, Vancouver,
Tri-Cities and Prosser.
Among the
highlights in 2005, WSU requested and received $13.1 million for a new WSU
Biological Sciences and Engineering Laboratory (BSEL) in Tri-Cities to house
researchers for the university and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. And
the nursing building in Spokane received its construction appropriation, $31.6
million.
These
state projects were all debatable priorities before the Rawlins presidency. The
2007-2009 capital construction budget that will soon be signed will appropriate
$58 million to complete the Pullman Life Sciences Building. It is the highlight
of a record $180.6 million WSU construction budget. A $29 million classroom
building for WSU Vancouver and $59 million in critical dollars to improve and
preserve existing facilities are in this construction budget. Other
accomplishments include securing funding for the long-planned Spokane Student
Academic Building during the 2004 supplemental budget session. It became the
library centerpiece of the Riverpoint Campus.
Of course,
these were buildings. His work focused on ensuring that there would be programs
to fill them.
Diggin' with the
Meerkats & the Huskies
Always a Cougar, Lane nevertheless has a curious fondness for “Meerkats,”
a mongoose-like African creature noted for its ability to team up altruistically
and partner with other species around a network of underground burrows. In
developing WSU’s network around the state, Lane followed the lead of his beloved
meerkats.
The
Rawlins Presidency brought unprecedented cooperation between WSU and the
University of Washington.
He reasoned that if outstanding research universities were the answer to making
substantial improvements to the state, how could one overlook the University of
Washington, one of the most successful institutions in the country? UW
Presidents Richard McCormick, Lee Huntsman, and of course, Mark Emmert, all
worked closely with Lane on common agendas from student funding to a new
proposed Washington Academy of Sciences. President Emmert and President Rawlins
had great fun advocating for the others programs and finishing the other’s
sentences. Cooperation between the presidents was never muted except around
football…and later basketball.
With
this budget, The UW-WSU partnership will create a new program to educate doctors
in Spokane,
effectively delivering the services of a medical school to the WSU Riverpoint
campus. This is the first expansion of medical school opportunities to
Washington residents in decades. WSU’s Spokane health sciences faculty and
facilities will serve to educate those students in their first year of medical
school. The medical students will spend their second year at the UW Seattle
campus before returning to the Spokane region to complete their education.
Under
his presidency WSU Spokane and WSU Pullman were designated as a single campus
to efficiently
advance research and instruction His presidency fostered many shared
research and professional education programs between the two locations in areas
like chromosome research, sleep research, nursing education, architecture,
applied sciences, etc. A similar partnership with UW and EWU will provide dental
education in the Spokane region, the first major expansion of the UW College of
Dentistry in 20 years.
Partnerships for
Growing & Fueling Washington
Working
with the agriculture industry,
Rawlins and his Agriculture
Dean Dan Bernardo fashioned the “Unified Agriculture Initiative.” The proposal
involved dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of commodities and attracted support
from across agriculture, Washington’s largest industry. The 2007 Legislature
invested $5.3 million in the unusual concept that largely used farmers and industry
leaders to
write the research agenda. It is one of the largest state appropriations for WSU
agricultural research in history. This happened in a Legislature dominated by
Democrats on an issue thought to be owned by Republicans. The unprecedented
alliance involved organizations as diverse as the Washington Farm Bureau, the
Northwest Turf grass Association, the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers, the
Washington Wine Institute, and the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming
Network. More than 35 agricultural organizations formally endorsed and lobbied
for the proposal. The result is an assortment of new research programs
benefiting everything from organic farming to livestock production to apple and
cherry varieties.
The new
state budget provides the first core funding for another joint venture with UW,
the William R. Ruckelshaus Policy Consensus Center.
The joint academic center has
been charged, among other things, with resolving differences between agriculture
and environmentalists over the growth management and “critical area ordinances.”
Depending on the final allocation, the
budget provides $5 million to $6 million in biofuels and bioproducts research
funding. Part of
that funding will provide the state match for a team of ten scientists, reporting to WSU and Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratories at WSU
Tri-Cities.
“WSU Is Not A
Place”
Insisting that “WSU is not a place”
he promoted development of the university statewide. He supported the
successful efforts to add freshman and sophomore students at WSU Vancouver and
WSU Tri-Cities. He maintained WSU's historic position that a degree attained
from the newer campuses had the same quality as a degree granted in Pullman. He
personally visited WSU many locations statewide, even the more remote ones such
as the Goldendale Learning Center. Funding was secured this session for operation of new facilities
at WSU Mount Vernon and some of the first state improvements in decades have been made to WSU Prosser.
The Path To Success
Lane
Rawlins says it is puzzling that cattle will often follow the same trail, even
when the utility of the path has diminished. He tells the story of how one herd
would follow a path for generations that led around an irrigation pond…even
though the pond had dried up in later years.
Lane
Rawlins didn’t always follow the beaten path as president. And we suspect he
will keep making his own trails.
WSU thanks
him for the seven-year ride. It was fun, productive, world class, and he got us
there quick.
Olympia
Update is produced for persons interested in state government developments
impacting Washington State University. For more information, go to
www.olympia.wsu.edu. Contacts: Larry Ganders, Assistant to the President,
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