COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS In re: 1998-1999 Appropriations Hearings Penn State University * * * Stenographic report of hearing held in Majority Caucus Room, Main Capitol Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Tuesday March 3, 1998 1.2:50 p.m. HON JOHN E. BARLEY, CHAIRMAN Hon. Gene DiGirolamo, Secretary Hon. Patrick E. Fleagle, Subcommittee on Education Hon. George Kenney, Jr., Subcommittee on Health & WeLfare Hon. James C. Lynch, Subcommittee on Capital Budget Hon. Dwight Evans, Minority Chairman MEMBERS OF APPROPRIATION COMMITTEE Hon. William F. Adolph Hon. Joseph Preston, Jr. Hon. Matthew E. Baker Hon. Ron C. Raymond Hon. Teresa E. Brown Hon. James R. Roebuck, Jr. Hon. Lita I. Cohen Hon. Samuel E. Rohrer Hon. Anthony DeLuca Hon. Stanley E. Saylor Hon. Stanley J. Jarolin Hon. Jere W. Schuler Hon. Babette Josephs Hon. Paul W. Semmel Hon. Frank LaGrotta Hon. Jerry A. Stern Hon. John A. Lawless Hon. Stephen H. Stetler Hon. Keith R. McCall Hon. Jere L. Strittmatter Hon. Phyllis Mundy Hon. Thomas Tangretti Hon. Steven R. Nickol Hon. Leo J. Trich, Jr. Hon. Jane C. One Hon. Peter J. Zug ALSO PRESENT: Michael B. Rosenstem, Executive Director Mary Soderberg, Minority Executive Director Hon. Lynn B. Herman Reported by: Nancy J. Grega, RPR 2 INDEX TO WITNESSES Witnesses: Page Dr. Graham Spanier, President 3 Dr. Steve McCollister Evarts, 63 Senior Vice-President for Health Affairs, Dean, and Chief. Academic Office of Penn State - Geismger 3 CHAIRMAN BARLEY: I'd like to reconvene the hearing. We have before us the budget presentation of Penn State University. We have the President of the University, Dr. Spanier, welcome, and we will now give you an opportunity to have a very brief opening statement. If you have something formal you would like to present for the record, that's fine and you now have the floor. DR. SPANIER: I'm joined by a number of my colleagues and we appreciate the opportunity to discuss our 98-99 budget request with you. As the Commonwealth's Land Grant University and Pennsylvania's largest university, Penn State reaches all of the 67 counties in the state that is not only large and diverse but also very influential in our nation's progress. Pennsylvania has a continuing responsibility to be a leader among the states. An important part of such leadership is a nationally competitive public higher education system. Recognizing this, Penn State joined this year with Pennsylvania's other colleges and universities to work together in an effort to allow us to become more competitive nationally and also to meet the increasing demand for qual ity education in Pennsylvania. We are eager to work together to develop an increasingly educated and able 4 populous; research necessary to develop a new knowledge across a wide and increasing range of areas, with a special focus on business and industry; and a network of services designed to make life better for people who live in Pennsylvania. Our appropriation request consists of two parts. The first is for funds to meet basic needs such as increases in fuel and utilities, employee benefits, and salary adjustments. These funds will help protect our collective investment in Penn State. The second part of our request seeks additional funds to make us more competitive nationally at Penn State such as additional funds would be invested in new faculty positions to reduce class size; information technology and libraries; the life sciences and other critical academic program priorities including children, youth and families, materials science and environmental studies, deferred maintenance, agricultural research and cooperative extension and the Pennsylvania College of Technology. As many of you recognize, today's work force requires employees who are skilled at problem solving, critical thinking, team work, communications and the ability to learn continuously. We develop these skills through educational programs ranging from the associate 5 degree level to the Ph.D. and first professional degrees. Our students do well in the workplace. Penn State works hard to eliminate financial, geographic and programmatic barriers to quality higher education. Yet we must all have a strong partnership with the Commonwealth to continue the tradition of excellence and to assure access to higher education for the people of Pennsylvania. An increased investment in Penn State by the Commonwealth will return far more value than the dollars involved. In this era of attention to the important role of our nation's research universities and economic development, there is the disturbing possibility of forgetting that places 1Lke Penn State exist as well to foster much that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. I pledge that the members of this academic community will be good stewards of the funding our University receives, and that every part of the Penn State community will work to assure a substantial return on this investment. Thank you. CHAIRMAN BARLEY: Before we continue WLth recognition of members on the panel, I would just 1Lke to note the presence and the attendance of Representative Herman who is the legislator — that his legislative district is where Penn State is located. Representative Herman, weLcome. 6 I now recognize Representative Evans for the opportunity to ask questions or make comments. BY CHAIRMAN EVANS: Q I'd like to just welcome you, Mr. President. A Thank you. Q One question I would like to ask. I see this article that you have on Penn State focusing on high tech workers. Is that something that you also are doing in the area of manufacturing; in terms of Penn State, any type of focus in terms of manufacturing? A Both educating workers in the information technology area that you refer to and educating future workers in manufacturing and other areas all continue to be very high priorities for Penn State. The manufacturing area is not growing as rapidly but certainly we are producing quite a number of our graduates in our College of Engineering, in particular at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, at both the associate and baccalaureate level and in the associate degree programs where we have 7,000 students enrolled in the technical areas at many of our other campuses that continue to be a high priority for us. We are very heavily involved in that area and our research programs as well. We operate PENNTAP/the Pennsylvania Technology Assistance Program. We are involved in the Ben Franklin 7 Research and Technology transfer and have a number of programs that are related to manufacturing in the state. The article that you referred to points most directly to information technology where there are about 345,000 vacant positions in the United States right now and quite a good number of those are in Pennsylvania. It also is a very great potential growth area for Pennsylvania and we have a study underway to see if we can be helpful by increasing educational opportunit Les in that area. Just to make one final comment about our efforts in producing future workers in manufacturing, information technology and other areas, I might point to this publication that I brought along with me just hot off the press and it's on its way to all the members of this Committee and your other colleagues in the Legislature. It's called Integrated Impact. It's a summary of our efforts in this area of technology transfer and how Penn State, through its teaching is assisting business and industry in the state, ma;ior employers, to help them move along and it's really a very impressive summary of some of those activities and we'd be happy to share that with you. Q Thank you, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN BARLEY: I now recognize Representative Lawless. 8 BY REPRESENTATIVE LAWLESS: Q Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, President Spanier. A Thank you. Q As I said last year and I'll continue to say, I'm concerned about the growth of Penn State. While it's a fine academic university and I would be the first one to support the academic part of that university, the learning part, the teaching part of that university, and I'm not so sold on the research, but there is probably some money that should be put for certain research projects. I have great concern this year as we continue to expand Penn State and what I believe is a monopoly of Penn State, a monopoly to Central Pennsylvania and a monopoly to this state. Pennsylvania is a land grant institution with a charter. If you could briefly state to me what its mission statement says about getting into the other areas, please explain to me why Penn State University, a publicly funded university receiving hundreds of millions of dollars, the taxpayer's dollars, taxpayers who own businesses and pay taxes, is getting into selling clothes, tennis shoes, lamps, books, restaurants, hotel businesses, expanding their medical ventures, buying medical practices, getting into the retirement homes, retirement villages, daycare, 9 catering, health clubs, spas; enough is enough. You are directly competing in my opinion against the taxpayers of this Commonwealth and you are subsidized by these taxpayers while you are putting these taxpayers out of jobs. Would you please respond' A Addressing the first part of your question, Penn State was founded in 1855 and since that time and since our designation as a land grant institution, our mission has been to serve the people of Pennsylvania, to provide educational services in the areas relating to three principal functions: teaching, research and service. Our goal for Penn State is to be the top institution in the United States in the integration of teaching, research and service and we think we do a pretty good job of it.