Floyd pitches WSU story in Clarkston

Washington State University President Elson S. Floyd vowed Tuesday to deepen the school's land grant institution roots while making necessary budget cuts without watering down academic programs.

Floyd said he refused to let WSU get embroiled in a sports "arms race" to build new facilities and pay inflated salaries to coaches and athletic directors. "We want clean programs. We want competitive programs," Floyd said. "We can't continue to increase tuition at 14 percent clips, and then make those types of investments, if you will, in nonacademic areas."

Floyd offered his comments in Clarkston during what he's calling a series of town hall gatherings throughout the state.

"So let me tell you why I'm here beyond the fact that this is exactly where I need to be," Floyd told a group of about 15 people, most of them WSU alumni. "Over the last week and a half, we have engaged in this audacious journey across our state." Tuesday's meeting was the seventh.

Floyd said he's determined, amid staggering budget cuts, to pitch the WSU story everywhere, to make the case for higher education, and to explain the necessity to fortify what are already university strongholds.

"At the very end of the day, it's my responsibility and my obligation to make sure that I am enhancing the value of the degrees that you've earned," Floyd said. "It's what I call the ROI, or the return on the investment."

WSU, Floyd said, cannot be everything to everybody, especially in today's economic climate. But its campuses across the state should be geared to specific missions aimed at strengthening the university's stature throughout the state, country and world.

"I inherited an institution that had, in some respects, wavered from what we view as a core mission," Floyd said. "That is to support our agricultural-related programs. The reality is we must go back to our core, we must go back to our basics."

Land grant institutions, Floyd said, were given tracts of land by the federal government to either sell to build an endowment or sell to pay for academic buildings. He said WSU has done a combination. In exchange for the land, universities are supposed to strive to make education affordable.

"I take the commitment very strongly," Floyd said. "And I maintain that agriculture is what we do exceedingly well as an institution. And we're going back to our roots in that regard. We're going to support our farmers, and we're going to support our ranchers because at the very end of the day they are feeding ... this entire nation."

Floyd also said WSU will continue to "celebrate" its college of veterinary medicine. "We have worked mightily to continue to build the prestige and visibility of that college," Floyd said, "and we'll continue to do that in the foreseeable future."

WSU should also celebrate its continued dedication to diversity, Floyd said, especially at the university's Tri-Cities campus. "In fact, we predict that within the next three or four years it will probably have over 50 percent of its students of Latino origin." Floyd said that will enable WSU to apply for what's called Hispanic serving institution status. The federal designation allows access to additional federal funds.

"We made a strategic decision to be very clear about the role and mission of all of our campuses," Floyd said. His hardest decision as president, for example, was to eliminate the theater arts program on the Pullman campus recently. But the reality, he said, was that the University of Idaho, less than 10 miles away, has a thriving theater program and competing didn't make economic sense.

Floyd said one of the first building blocks to WSU's future is to ensure stable enrollment. He said WSU's freshman enrollment on the Pullman campus will be stabilized at 3,200 students and the number bodes well for quality education. "We want to keep our student-faculty ratios at the proportions they are right now."

State funding reductions, Floyd said, have forced WSU to "cannibalize" its budget, and administrators will be forced to take more bites. He refused, however, to spread the cuts evenly throughout the various colleges. "All of a sudden everything is watered down yet again, and I'm not going to do that. You've invested too much in Washington State University to have us do that."

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Johnson may be contacted at djohnson@lmtribune.com or (208) 883-0564.