The highest-dollar campus capital project in Gov. Phil Bredesen’s budget this year is the new $37.5 million engineering building at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The dean of the college of engineering says he’s grateful to the governor for his support of the project, which is the latest new non-research based building constructed on the engineering campus since Dougherty Hall in 1962. Not to be overlooked is that the school’s gratitude extends beyond state government.
Perhaps the most notable part of this development is the private donor who has offered up $12.5 million of the total cost. The result is a combined match of public and private funding that is exciting to Dean Way Kuo, the governor and other higher education officials who understand the need for a new approach to funding. They anticipate the day when the state’s budget total funding of campus capital projects becomes a thing of the past.
Richard Rhoda, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), says of the public-private funding, “It points in a direction that higher education in Tennessee is headed. The state is not in a position to fully fund the capital projects of higher education, and there is no reason to believe there will be any change.” Increasingly, Rhoda says, higher education is turning to other institutions, communities, individuals and the Federal government for necessary funds.
THEC now is working on developing a policy statement on public-private partnerships to fund capital projects, academic programs and operations in general. “It’s a direction in which we’re moving, and we need to deal with it systematically—not on an ad hoc basis.”
Another example of private funding that supports the state’s higher education building projects is underway at Tennessee Tech University. A year ago, the Cookeville school kicked off a campaign to raise private funds for a $21 million School of Nursing facility. Naming opportunities are available for the nursing school, its lecture halls and its planned Rural Health Center. Campus officials also have expressed a hope for state funding through bond issues. The new facility is expected to nearly triple the number of Tennessee Tech’s nursing graduates, but without the facility, about half
of the school’s nursing students would have to be turned away when they become juniors.
For U.T., the new electrical and computer engineering facility is its No. 1 budgetary priority this year. Dean Kuo says the college of engineering now has a critical need for the new space, which will offer state-of-the-art labs and equipment and help build up the college’s already-improving national ranking.
At the time of this article’s publishing, the appropriations bill had not yet been approved by the General Assembly. Until the bill passes and the matching funds are allocated to this project, Dean Kuo says he is not at liberty to release additional details about the new building and the donor. The identity of the donor, who requested anonymity, is expected to be revealed once state funding of the project is approved. The new building likely will be named for the donor.
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