President Tim Hall

Austin Peay’s Retirees Association is up and running, having held its inaugural reception at Emerald Hill this past week. The association, created through the efforts of Dr. Al Beakus and other retired university faculty and staff, will allow the members of our academic community to stay connected with Austin Peay after they lay down the burden of day-to-day work for the university. I hope many of APSU’s retirees will re-connect with the university and with one another through this association.

For more information, check out the web page at

http://www.apsu.edu/retirees_association/

Well, the summer is hurrying along. I can’t wait for the heat to be gone and for our students to be back on campus—those, at least, who are not already here for summer school. This blog will focus on our tuition for next year.

Because Tennessee’s tax revenues are significantly lower than expected, the state has had to make significant reductions in its expenses. These reductions include state funding for higher education. For Austin Peay State University in particular, state funding for the coming year will be roughly $6,000,000 less than last year. If we were to try to make up this loss with an increase in tuition, we would need an increase of more than twenty percent. We have no intention of doing that to our students! Instead, Austin Peay curtailed many of our normal expenses and will rely on anticipated enrollment growth and federal stimulus funds to keep our need for new tuition revenues as low as possible.

This past week, the Board of Regents voted to make modest increases in tuition for the coming year. As you know, last year the Board decided to begin moving toward tuition rates that correct the disparity between part-time and full-time students. Previously, part-time students have paid the full hourly cost of each course they took. Full-time students, on the other hand, paid only the cost of about 11.4 hours—additional hours were taken at no charge. Because providing these additional hours does, in fact, cost money, the full tuition being paid by part-time students has partially subsidized the reduced tuition being paid by full-time students. The Board of Regents thought we should begin correcting this inequity. For the coming year, there will be a 1.06% across the board tuition increase that will affect both part-time and full-time students (each hour will cost $2 more than last year). In addition, full-time students will pay the full hourly cost of their first 12 hours. (As I mentioned above, they have previously paid for about the equivalent of 11.4 hours.) Finally, although full-time students taking more than 12 hours will pay for these additional hours, the cost will be deeply discounted: hours above 12 will cost only $10 per hour.

One of the odd things about our current financial situation is that, while our state funding is being significantly reduced this year and for the foreseeable future, we will have a significant amount of federal stimulus money for the next two years. We are using some of this money to fill the hole in our budget left by the loss of state funding. Most of the federal stimulus money, though, has to be used on projects that will eventually allow us to reduce our overall university expenses. Austin Peay will seek to use most of the stimulus money on energy-efficiency projects which we anticipate will eventually lower our utility costs. This means you will see a lot of construction going on over the coming year. Part of this construction is the result of long-term projects that have been in the works for a while, but part of it will also include new projects funded by federal stimulus dollars.

Well, I hope that wasn’t too long-winded for you. These are challenging financial times, both for the university and for our students, I’m sure. But it’s still a great time to invest in your future by getting the education you need at Austin Peay for that future.

Yesterday, Austin Peay formally announced plans to begin offering a degree in business at the Renaissance Center in Dickson. Working with Nashville State Community College, APSU will offer classes beginning this fall leading to a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in management.

Students will be able to take most of their first two years of college work with Nashville State, at community college rates, and then complete the business degree with Austin Peay.

The new venture is made possible by the generosity of state senator Doug Jackson, an Austin Peay alum, and the Jackson Foundation, who have made classrooms in the Renaissance Center available to Austin Peay and Nashville State, and with the cooperation of Dickson County Mayor Robert Stone, Dickson County Chamber of Commerce president David Hamilton, and the other members of the Higher Education Foundation in Dickson County.

This is the season when we try to visit with our Austin Peay alumni. Over the past few weeks I’ve joined with Dave Loos, Rick Christophel, Roy Gregory, and members of our alumni office to visit alumni in Memphis, Nashville, Huntsville, Columbia, and Knoxville. These visits are part of the job I enjoy most. I’m still getting to know many of our alumni and discovering all the time how far a degree from Austin Peay has taken them. We have many more visits scheduled during the month of June, and I hope to see many of you at one of the “traveling tailgates” our alumni office has arranged.

I visited the Austin Peay farm last week to see the magnificent bull donated to the university by Marshall Ross, an Austin Peay alum and Clarksville resident. This gift follows one Marshall made last fall of a herd of belted galloways. The bull wasn’t exactly keen about the idea, but I managed to get close enough to touch him. That was a LOT of bull!

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I joined our provost and several faculty members last week for the Faculty Got Talent event at Rivers & Spires. Mickey Wadia, a professor of English at Austin Peay, regaled the crowd with a rousing rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kris Kristofferson, one of the song’s authors, and Janis Joplin, who produced the most memorable recording of the song, would have been proud!

Yesterday I traveled with Coach Carrie Daniels and the Lady Govs basketball team to the state capitol, where the Tennessee legislature adopted a resolution commending the team for its fantastic OVC tournament win. I think this was the first time many of our players had ever been to the capitol, and it was a pleasure seeing them receive a standing ovation for their achievements this season. We are thankful for Representatives Joe Pitts, Curtis Johnson, and Phillip Johnson and state senator Tim Barnes for supporting this well-deserved recognition.

The Tennessee Board of Regents and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission recently approved Austin Peay’s plan to re-create its colleges of Business and Education. We expect to have the new colleges in place by the fall of 2009. Their deans will help to lead these important academic divisions forward. In particular, the dean of the college of Business will have the exciting challenge of leading our business faculty toward the ultimate accreditation of our business programs. And the dean of the college of education will help to keep our education faculty and students plugged in to the very important developments in education happening in Tennessee. The college of Professional Programs and Social Sciences will become the college of Behavioral and Health Sciences and its current dean, Dr. David Denton, will continue forward as dean of the new college. In fact, Dr. Denton is chiefly responsible for the new organization, which he planned and for which he obtained approval while he served as interim provost of Austin Peay.

I discovered jazz standards only in mid-life, but have been hooked on them ever since. A colleague of mine at the University of Mississippi introduced me to them in the early 1990s and today, if you walk into my library at home, there’s a good chance you will hear Miles Davis, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, or Michael Feinstein. So, you can imagine my pleasure at discovering that Austin Peay has the VocalEase ensemble. Last Friday night, my wife and daughter and I enjoyed the ensemble’s spring concert, which included one of my favorite songs, “Here’s that Rainy Day.” Our students, directed by Valerie Oyen-Larsen, put on a fine performance. I still can’t get over living two-minutes away from a fabulous concert hall, filled virtually every week with the performances of students, faculty, or visiting musicians.

After serving at Austin Peay for a year and a half, I am already identifying some of my favorite events. The opening of our annual student art show is one of these. Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing some of the work our our students. The exhibit in our Trahern gallery is fantastic, definitely worth visiting. You’ll be proud of the accomplishments of our students when you see the show.