by Joe Sullivan

After five years of stagnation and even atrophy in some quarters, UT-Knoxville seems poised for a significant leap forward into the 21st century.

Winds of change are blowing both from without and within that could just fill the sails of UT's flagship campus with enough momentum to propel it from the back of the pack to the front ranks of the nation's public universities.

Externally, a transformed Gov. Don Sundquist appears committed to raising state revenue sufficiently to fund the recent recommendations of a blue-ribbon council aimed at achieving "21st Century Higher Education Excellence." These recommendations call for a 7 percent average annual increase in state funding over the next five years. Assuming UTK retains its present share of total state funding, that would yield increases of $10 million to $12 million a year in its state appropriations that have been held flat at $148 million for the past four years.

Internally, UTK's administration is pursuing a new set of priorities established a year ago that places more emphasis on eight academic areas of focus while de-emphasizing certain others. About $1 million has been reallocated this year to reward faculty performance in these areas with merit raises ranging up to 10 percent. This represents a selective start toward overcoming a $20,000-a-year gap between the average UT professor's salary and the national norm—a gap that would take $6 million to close.

In addition, a $500,000 allocation for graduate student recruitment has helped reverse a disturbing, five-year decline in this important area of enrollment from 6,500 to 6,000 presently. Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs John Peters foresees the number of grad students pushing back up toward 6,200 next year. Increasing their stipends is another goal that he believes will contribute to further growth in this important source of research support (and also to UTK's funding support under the state's complex, enrollment-based formula for allocating money that gives graduate students twice as much weight as undergraduates).

Furthering relationships with Oak Ridge is also being pursued as an area of great opportunity for strengthening UT in the sciences. A Joint Institute in Neutron Science was recently formed in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, keying to last year's Congressional funding of the spallation neutron resource. The Institute is conducting a search for a director whom Peters says "will bring us a nationally prominent figure in neutron science...someone who can help us build a post-doctoral program with National Science Foundation or Department of Energy funding."

At the same time, UTK has formed an ambitious joint venture with the Battelle Institute to take over the management of ORNL from Lockheed Martin. Peters and Chancellor Bill Snyder profess optimism about chances for gaining this selection, which is due to be announced next fall. "That would instantly establish UT as a major player in science and technology and help us attract the best scientists and engineers as well as stimulate investment," Peters says.

The avuncular Snyder, at 66, appears increasingly deferential to the 53-year-old Peters, who came to UTK five years ago from the University of Nebraska where he was dean of arts and sciences. One gets the sense that Snyder is anticipating retirement in perhaps a year and that bestowing more titles (e.g. provost) and accolades on Peters is part of a succession plan.

The academic process requires a search for a new chancellor, and UT's next president, for whom a search is already underway, will also have a major voice in the selection. As for the presidential search to succeed the retiring Joe Johnson, the chairman of that search committee, UT Trustee Bill Sansom, says, "I'm really excited about our prospects for attracting a leader this state can really be proud of. Right now, we're still cultivating candidates, but I hope we'll be ready to start interviews by the end of March and to make a selection by June."

A big factor in making the position more attractive is Sundquist's embrace of the blue-ribbon council's recommendations and his tax increase proposal that would help make good on them. In addition, the council rebuffed a proposal by its own chairman, Nashville banker Dennis Bottorff, to virtually dismantle the UT system by folding it into an amalgamation of all the state's universities under a single governing board with its own chief executive. To say the obvious, the prospect of such a restructuring would not have been conducive to filling the UT presidency, since the position might have become extinct.

For all the signs of progress, implementation of the council's funding recommendations is anything but assured. A swirl of controversy surrounds Sundquist's tax increase proposal; and even if the Legislature adopts some variation of it, there's no assurance that higher education will win out over competing claimants for additional state revenues.

Moreover, UTK's administration doesn't share all elements of the council's vision for which increased funding is recommended—at least where the Knoxville campus' mission is concerned. One of the council's prime points of emphasis is on increasing higher education enrollments by 40 percent or more over the next decade to bring Tennessee's laggard college participation rate in line with the nation as a whole. But Snyder and Peters foresee keeping UTK's undergraduate enrollment in the 18,000 to 19,000 range while making admissions to the flagship campus increasingly selective. "We've got a 10 percent increase in applications for next year and a 200 percent increase in the number with ACT scores of 31 or higher," Peters boasts. The downside is that more stringent admission standards may reduce UTK's slice of an enrollment-driven funding pie.

If more money isn't forthcoming from the state, Snyder has a Plan B at least for the year ahead. "Our tuition is still 8 percent below the median for the Southern states, and increasing it by that amount would produce about $4.7 million in additional revenue." The number one priority for deployment of additional funds: raising faculty salaries.

Is it possible that some day UT will some day match up as well academically as it does athletically?