ISU President Gregory Geoffroy met with members of the Daily on Friday to answer questions about the 2009–2010 school year.

Geoffroy fielded a range of questions over issues including strategic planning, university budget cuts, tuition increases and the future of Campustown.

Strategic Plan

Daily: Where does the strategic planning process start and what is your vision for the university in the future?

Geoffroy: About a year ago, I actually sort of kicked the process off by giving some overarching guidance to the campus. The executive vice president and provost, Betsy Hoffman, is really leading that process and she has appointed a number of committees that are working on various parts. Basically what I said is, I really want the university to take a long-range view and ask where it is we want to be in the year 2050 … We start taking steps now to move in that direction, it’s a long way off, but there are things that we can start doing now that will get us there. Some of the specific guidance that I gave is that by 2050 if we are to truly be a great university we have to be a magnet for attracting terrific students and outstanding faculty and staff. That’s just essential … We also have to be an institution that is recognized around the world as having a big impact, making a difference, on the most important problems facing our world. The ones I listed are energy, helping address the energy needs of the planet, water availability, food safety, food security, infrastructure, a lot of that is IT infrastructure, cyber infrastructure, but not only cyber, power, transportation, climate change and sustainability and animal and human health. Those were picked because those are areas in line with areas that we have natural strength in and fit our mission … Finally, we always must keep in mind that we’re Iowa’s land grant university and we must be regarded as a treasure resource for Iowa, but also for the nation and the world. That was the basic guidance I gave, and now the strategic planning committees are all at work figuring out “What does that mean?” and “What do we have to do to be a magnet?”

Budget

Daily: If there was another budget cut at Iowa State, would you pass the cut down across the board like the previous cut or distribute the cut differently?

Geoffroy: It depends on how big it is. If it’s in the 3 to 5 percent, we think that the best way to handle that would be to distribute it based on the expenditure budgets of the university units. The provost office has already been working with the university budget advisory committee looking at how that would be done. If it’s big, bigger than that, we’re going to have to step back and look at other possibilities.

Daily: If the budget cut is larger, would the university consider cutting programs?

Geoffroy: Well, it’s pretty hard to cut programs during the middle of the year. It’s not easy to make mid-year budget adjustments. You have to look around at what other universities are doing … You look at what is happening in California, there’s salary reductions and benefit reductions. I would hope we wouldn’t have to do any of those things, but if the budget cut is deep enough, we’ll have to look at every option available.

Daily: Salaries and benefits are a large part of the university budget, so would that be one of the first areas to be cut?

Geoffroy: Yes, that’s always one of the first things you look at because about three-quarters of the university budget is salary and benefits. There are a lot of issues about how to treat everybody fairly. There’s a bargaining contract with the AFSCME employees that specifies how things have to happen. You have to consider that and make sure to try and treat everybody fairly, so it gets very complicated when you start thinking about addressing issues of salaries, benefits and how to do it in a fair and equitable way, if it’s necessary to do so. That’s why last year we ended up … offering people the opportunity to voluntarily to take leave without pay, rather than mandate it.

Campustown revitalization

Daily: How intertwined do you see Campustown and the university? If some of the revitalization efforts get off the ground, how involved do you think the university will be?

Geoffroy: I think the university has to be fairly significantly involved. I don’t think Campustown redevelopment can occur without university involvement. It just won’t happen. The Intermodal Transportation Facility Proposal, for example, could not have even been put together if the university hadn’t been willing to be a player without land, and helping to put that package together. If that is funded, it will be a real big boom to Campustown. The next step to Campustown is finding a developer who would be willing to come in and work with the city, the university, the landlords and people who own property in Campustown to try to put together a long-range development plan. I think for any plan to work, it’s going to require the university to make a commitment that we would lease a certain amount of space, because to make it work, they are going to have to build some office buildings, but with retail space on the first floor, maybe offices above. From a developer’s standpoint, they are putting money at risk, so they need a commitment that somebody’s going to lease that space they are going to build … we’ve talked informally to maybe three or four or five developers … developers who have done other campustowns in other universities. I think what we do next is put out a request for proposal for a couple of ones we thought were interesting, and see what we get back — then make a pick.

Tuition

Daily: What is coming up at the Board of Regents meeting in October?

Geoffroy: The big topic will be the tuition discussion. That’s when the regents take a first vote on the tuition recommendation; of course, that’s not finalized until the December meeting … the regents have a policy that the tuition increase for Iowa residents should be somewhere in the Higher Education Price Index [HEPI] range. I don’t know exactly what the range is, but I know the mid-point of that range is 2.7 percent.

So, the way this all works, we get asked to submit our tuition recommendations to the board office. They are due at some period before the board meeting. But when we are asked to submit our tuition recommendations, we are told what to submit for Iowa residents. So we were told to submit 2.7 percent, which is the mid-point for HEPI. That’s what shows up on the table for the regents, but then you have regents weighing in on each side, and it will go from there. I understand we are not requesting an increase in mandatory student fees, so zero increase. The discussion we’re still having is what to request for out-of-state tuition.