The close of the legislative budget earlier in March resulted in the University of Wyoming receiving its full two-year funding request, in addition to $85 million for the new science initiative building.
Governor Matt Mead signed the budget bill totaling $380 million for 2019-2020.
“It’s significant because we rely so heavily on funding from the legislature because the university isn’t a self-sustaining institute,” President for the Board of Trustees John MacPherson said.
President Laurie Nichols said this funding is critical; without it, UW wouldn’t be able to maintain and operate in the manner students and faculty are accustomed to. She describes the funding they received as being the “status quo;” it won’t create new jobs, but it will hold onto the current 2,700 UW faculty and administrator jobs.
“Had we received any cut in this, we would have had to pass those cuts onto the colleges and departments as well,” Nichols said. “So when I say I’m so happy we didn’t take a cut, I really mean that for the whole campus.”
“It’s definitely a good thing there were no more budget cuts,” freshman Steph Myers said. “I remember my parents talking about them at the time. Scary stuff.”
Nichols and now retired Vice President for Governmental and Community Affairs Chris Boswell worked with Governor Mead and the Legislature to promote the funding request.
“I spent a lot of time last fall and all the way through the [legislative] session working one-on-one with legislatures to help them understand what we were asking for, why we were asking for it and then if they had any questions, to come back so we could try and provide them the best information possible,” Nichols said.
Nichols also requested three exception requests or additions to the basic budget. The first request was $100 million for the new science initiative building. The second request was $100,000 for the UW rodeo team in an effort to enhance the rodeo program and pay for an assistant coach. The final exception request was for $1 million to continue efforts in carbon engineering research.
“The state of Wyoming provides a lot of funding to this university, far more than many states do, so the first thing, I think, that’s really important to know is that our state really supports education in a big way,” Nichols said. “They exceed many other states in terms of the amount of money that they give.”
From that $380 million: $19.3 million will go towards the School of Energy Resources; $8.3 million towards Tier 1 Engineering; $1.8 million towards the National Center for Atmospheric Research – Wyoming Supercomputing Center.
Though the full $100 million was not received for the science initiative building, UW will cover the additional $15 million and move forward with the construction, which is set to begin in the spring of 2019. This new building, which will be built on Lewis Street, south of the STEM building, will be a science research facility for faculty that will include a 200-seat active learning classroom.
“The science initiative is largely for the faculty and really, to take our science research here that we’re doing in botany and microbiology and take it to a new level because we’ll have a much-enhanced lab facility for them to do their work,” Nichols said. “It’s really exciting. It will, I think, fundamentally change undergraduate education for our students.”
