Monday, January 22, 2001
A fitting memorial
$2.45 million NSF grant will strengthen math grad programs
Former U.S. senator will share his political experiences at Charter Lecture
Georgia General Assembly
Budget proposal includes 4.5 percent pool for raises
By Tom Jackson
tjackson@uga.edu

A 4.5 percent salary increase pool headlines University of Georgia initiatives contained within Gov. Roy Barnes’s state budget proposal for fiscal year 2002, announced in his address to the General Assembly Jan. 11. The salary proposal is half-again larger than last year’s 3 percent pool.
“This salary proposal is larger than last year’s increase and reflects the governor’s continuing support for higher education,” says UGA President Michael F. Adams. “Taken together with the supplemental fiscal year 2001 budget announced earlier, this is a terrific budget year for the University of Georgia.” (Details of the supplemental fiscal year 2001 budget proposal were in the Jan. 16 Columns).
The university’s biomedical initiative to capitalize on program overlaps with the Medical College of Georgia is funded at $1 million in the governor’s proposal. “This will develop our two priority areas with the Medical College,” says Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Karen Holbrook, “those being collaborative programs in public health and seed grants for basic scientific research.” A goal will be to leverage the state investment into more federal grants, particularly from the National Institutes of Health, she says.
UGA will receive a portion of the $35 million increase generated by the University System funding formula, an increase primarily due to enrollment growth. Likewise, the university will participate in $18 million proposed by the governor to offset the continuing semester-conversion credit-hour shortfall. “The governor has been true to his pledge in this regard,” Adams says.
The fiscal year 2002 plan includes another $10 million, on top of $15 million in the fiscal year 2001 supplemental proposal, to cover a further potential shortfall in the System health insurance plan. “Depending on claims experience for the remainder of this academic year, it is our hope that all of this will not be required,” says Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Henry M. Huckaby. “However, health insurance offerings nationwide are in great flux and require constant surveillance.”
In other university-related funding proposals, the governor plans:
• $333,000 for the required state match this year to a $6.5 million federal department of education grant to UGA over five years to support better teacher training;
• $350,000 for a UGA feasibility study for converting some Georgia farms to growing mushrooms as a cash crop; and
• an increase of $401,000 in maintenance and operations funding for units of the Cooperative Extension Service and $695,000 for the Agricultural Experiment Stations.
The budget is one of the key pieces of legislation under consideration by the General Assembly as it enters the third week of its 2001 session.
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