Barometer The Daily
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012 • OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY CORVALLIS, OREGON 97331
DAILYBAROMETER.COM
VOLUME CXV, NUMBER 79
PAGE 8
SPORTS
8 – Men fall to UW 7 – Women win sixth straight
NEWS
2 – Student Affairs hosts events on sexual violence today in MU
MEN’S BASKETBALL: Beavers fall to Huskies by 3 at home.
FORUM
4 – Letters on fat tax 4 – Teacher evaluations
Provost Randhawa on progress, challenges n
Provost, Executive Vice President Sabah Randhawa discusses university challenges By Kristin Pugmire The Daily Barometer
Provost Randhawa recently sat down with senior reporter Kristin Pugmire to discuss his duties, improvements he’s seen to the university and the ssue of campus growth. Q: What are your duties as Provost? A: The simplest way to describe it is that I serve as the university’s chief academic officer and chief operating officer. As the chief academic officer, I provide oversight to all the academic programs on campus — the 11 academic colleges, the honors college, graduate school, as well as the academic support services, student affairs and academic affairs. As
role was interesting — I started in January 2001, and for about a year and a half, I served in that role as well as Interim Dean for the College of Business, because there was a vacancy there we could not fill. The provost, my boss at the time, asked me to serve in that role for a few weeks, and that turned into about a year and a half. It was a great learning experience. I served that role until I took over this position, which was in 2005. Q: Since you’ve been in this role, what improvements to the university have you been happiest with? A: We have continuously struggled with state funding cuts and other fiscal issues, so one of the things I’m most pleased with is that right now the university is on really solid financial footing. We hired 85 faculty members last year, we will be hiring another 60-70 this year and we have put in a lot of money in terms of
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the chief operating officer, my task includes executing the strategic plan and its priorities, and serving as the president when Ed Ray is out of town. Those are the two key roles of the position. Q: Before this, what did you do? A: I started at OSU as a faculty member in the College of Engineering. My background is in a combination of chemical engineering and industrial engineering. I started as a faculty member in the department of industrial and manufacturing engineering in 1987, and in 1993 I became department head of the same unit. I was there for about six years, then served about a year and a half in the College of Engineering dean’s office as the Associate Dean of Operations for the college. Then, in 2001, I moved into central university administration as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. That
I should say that I would take the challenges associated with growth over the challenges associated with budget cuts and downsizing.
contributed photo
| courtesy of OSU News and Communications
Smoking ban opposed by smokers, non-smokers still set for September
infrastructure upgrades. The second thing I’m proud of — and really the credit goes to the faculty and academic leaders — are the changes that have been made in the academic enterprise in terms of realignment, and in terms of the research growth the university has had in the last few years. The third thing I’m proud of is the capital campaign and how well the university has done. We started off, on our first capital campaign when President Ray came here in 2004, with a goal of $625 million. We exceeded it ahead of time and set the goal for $850 million for 2013. We are almost at $800 million now, and so we’ll probably be resetting [the goal] to a billion or so going forward. So I think a lot of positive things have been going on. Q: What are the biggest obstacles you are dealing with right now, in terms of trying to improve the university? A: I would say the biggest challenge right now is associated with growth. On the other hand, I should say that I would take the challenges associated with growth over the challenges associated with budget cuts and downsizing. Nevertheless, there are some significant challenges: student enrollment has gone up quite a bit and we are limited in terms of classrooms, lab space and faculty and instructors. We are doing a lot of work in both of those areas, but one of the big issues is that there is always a time lag…after students come to campus, it takes about a year to hire faculty, so there is almost a yearlong lag before we can get faculty
and instructors on board. And yet we need the students before we can actually [hire faculty]. So I would say right now the biggest challenge would be making sure we can increase the instructional capacity of the university, both in terms of faculty and in terms of the space and infrastructure that is needed to provide quality experience to students and support research growth and enterprise. The other thing that worries me, more than state funding cuts, are federal funding cuts. It does impact students in terms of Pell Grants and some of the federal support systems that are in place, and that, at times, is even more critical than state cuts. The other way the federal cuts impact us is through cuts in federal research funding. There’s always the fear that to balance the budget they’ll cut funding for the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health, and that’s where faculty get most of their research grants. Q: The Oregon University System recently announced that enrollment has surpassed 100,000 students. You’ve already addressed some of the negative consequences of growth. Are there any others? What are some of the positive outcomes? A: The governor has put forth the proposal that we [as a state] get to 40-40-20 — 40 percent of Oregonians with a bachelor’s degree, 40 percent with a community college diploma or credentials and 20 percent with high school credentials. To have 40 percent with a bachelor’s degree requires quite a bit of expansion, not See RANDHAWA | page 2
OSU Steel Band
Second poll sent out by ASOSU finds even nonsmokers opposed to smoke-free campus
Task Force gathered preliminary information to present to OSU President Ed Ray, the Associated Students of Oregon State University passed the “Students’ Freedom Act,” a resolution that stood firmly against any type of By Evan Anderson smoke-free campus, and supported current administraThe Daily Barometer tive policy. Shortly after this strong student statement, On Sept. 1 of this year, Oregon State University will the decision was made to implement the ban in the fall implement a smoke-free policy for the OSU Corvallis of 2012. Director of the Smoke-Free Initiative Stacey Edwards campus which will extend from Monroe Avenue to Western Boulevard, and from 15th Street to well beyond said that “before last year’s ASOSU we had a previous administration that supported the policy.” But the idea of 35th. a smoke-free campus is much older than that. No one — students, visitors or faculty — will be “[The] on-campus smoking ban at OSU started as a allowed to smoke within the designated areas. See SMOKING | page 3 Last school year, while the 13-member Smoke-Free n
‘Feeble-mindedness’ receives positive reviews Play focuses on themes of women in the work place, balancing work, marriage
found themselves stepping into a high-ceilinged, musty rehearsal room that is the OSU Lab Theatre. With space for about 110 people, many students, faculty, members of the Women’s Giving Circle that By Kim Kenny provided funding for the play and The Daily Barometer “The Feeble-Mindedness of OSU President Ed Ray gathered to Woman,” by Staci Swedeen, con- hear the story of Gerty Cori. Gerty Cori was the first American cluded its four-day run yesterday at the Oregon State University Lab woman to win a Nobel Prize in sciTheatre, a production which start- ence. Born in Austria in 1896, she ed Wednesday of last week. met her husband Carl Cori in mediNavigating through the labyrinth cal school in Prague before emiof hallways that make up the OSU grating to the United States in 1922 theatre department in Withycombe to begin work at a lab in Buffalo, Hall and guided by stationed stage N.Y. As pioneering biochemists, the assistants, audience members Coris won the Nobel Prize in physin
ology, or medicine, in 1947 together for their discovery of the mechanism for blood glucose recognition. This aided in the treatment of diabetes and other diseases with a metabolic basis. Gerty Cori died in 1957 at age 61 from a rare form of bone marrow cancer, likely due to exposure to radiation during her research. The play-within-a-play leads the audience not only through Gerty Cori’s life, from the mountains of Austria to biochemistry labs in the United States, but also through the process of the making of a play, See feeble | page 3
Hannah Gustin
| THE DAILY BAROMETER
Jason Schubothe from the OSU Steel Band played calypso music in the Memorial Union on Friday afternoon.