Washington State University recently submitted its operating and capital budget requests to the state’s budget office for the upcoming 2017-19 biennium, prioritizing support for the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine and capital requests to promote food safety and food security.
In the operating budget, WSU seeks $10.8 million in funding from the Legislature to support the implementation of the medical education program at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. Receipt of preliminary accreditation in October 2016 would allow the college to begin accepting its first class of 60 students for the fall of 2017. This is the university’s next step in its continuing commitment to address Washington’s critical shortage of primary care physicians and the uneven distribution of physicians across the state.
The university’s top capital budget priority is to secure $58.9 million to construct the Plant Sciences Building and $38.1 million to construct the Global Animal Health Building Phase II facility, both in Pullman. Washington’s agriculture industries are challenged by evolving diseases and pests, unpredictable weather patterns, and ever-changing state, national, and international markets. Research at WSU plays a key role in developing new agricultural products to enhance competitiveness and to guard against these threats to protect crop, animal and human health. To do this critical work, the university needs modern facilities capable of state-of-the-art research and student training.
Additionally for the operating budget, WSU requests $37 million for merit-based retention and compensation increases of four percent in both years of the biennium to ease a chronic recruitment and retention problem among the university’s faculty and staff; and requests $5 million to expand capacity for high-demand engineering instruction at WSU locations in Vancouver and Everett, deliver new Bremerton-based engineering electives to support the maritime industry, and establish a new Center for Engineering and Science in Advanced Manufacturing Materials to meet the workforce needs of industries critical to the Washington state economy.
The first day of the regular 105-day state legislative session is scheduled for Monday, January 9 in Olympia.