Despite budget cuts, Iowa State has approved eight new faculty positions and requested colleges seek applicants immediately.

Funds for the new positions have been cleared and may be filled as early as fall 2004, said Mark Chidister, assistant to the president.

The new positions are one more step in ISU President Gregory Geoffroy’s goals to meet a 17—1 faculty to student ratio, Chidister said.

“It’s been a priority of his from the very beginning,” he said.

Iowa State currently carries a 19—1 faculty to student ratio, so these eight positions are only the beginning, Chidister said.

The positions will be dispersed among five colleges and two interdisciplinary areas with some of the positions serving jointly between two colleges, he said.

Through this year’s budget planning, $70,000 in salary and benefits per position have been made available, which is the average pay of an ISU faculty member.

“Resources for these new positions were from new tuition revenues,” Chidister said.

After appropriations made funds available, Chidister said each college is asked to submit proposals for possible new positions. This year, more than 100 were submitted to Provost Benjamin Allen. Allen and his advisers chose the top eight, which were approved by Geoffroy, he said.

Mark Engelbrecht, dean for the College of Design, said he and his constituents had some needed faculty positions in mind when choosing the proposals for his college.

“We were making sure we had our future properly charted and part of that involved trying to secure seven new faculty lines,” he said.

Last year, the College of Design was able to gain four of those seven positions, Engelbrecht said. This year, they have gained one more in the field of community design.

“We’re looking for people who can spread the net very widely,” he said. “In other words, people who can bring their expertise to a broad number of students.”

While no one has been hired yet, some deans said they have already begun to put together search committees to develop job descriptions and advertise for hiring.

Wendy Wintersteen, senior associate dean for the College of Agriculture, said to fill its two positions, the college was taking into account the current state of the departments. They will focus on the number of established faculty to aspiring faculty and see which group would benefit most from an addition, she said.

“Faculty are clearly the intellectual power behind those programs,” Wintersteen said. “They’re the key to our future.”

The College of Agriculture will be filling a dairy cattle quantitative and molecular genetics position and a genetics, development and cell biology position, she said.

The latter position will be run jointly with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wintersteen said.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be receiving another member in the field of analytical chemistry, said Peter Rabideau, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“We have some extraordinary faculty in the analytical chemistry department,” Rabideau said.

The university will also be adding two interdisciplinary initiatives including a human computer interaction and a bioeconomy position.

“Obviously with new positions it allows for moving into new directions, rather than just replacing faculty,” Rabideau said