Simply put, that’s the forecast in the 2010 Economic Report to the Governor, an annual report prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“The recession that began in December 2007 has now had more than two years to wreak havoc on the state economy,” wrote Matt Murray, CBER associate director and director of the study. “It will take well over two years for the economy to fully rebound.”

The report notes that the federal stimulus package has helped stabilize the economy: Federal government spending has increased and this will add 1.3 percentage points to growth in the gross domestic product in 2010. The stimulus package has allowed states to stave off aggressive actions, including debilitating budget cuts, raised taxes and depletion of rainy day funds.

The question is how much the economy will falter when stimulus funds run out at the end of the 2010-11 federal fiscal year.

“Concerns are mounting daily on how the states will be able to respond when fiscal stimulus funds are exhausted,” the report says.

Here are some of the major themes in this year’s report:

Employment

“The state unemployment rate will likely average 10.4 percent (in 2010) and remain stuck above 10 percent through 2011,” the report says. “This will translate into more than 300,000 unemployed people in Tennessee in 2010 and 2011 and put sustained pressure on the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund.”

The only sectors expected to see job growth in the coming year are wholesale trade, professional and business services, education and health services, and government.

As for the long-term outlook, the report states that the state unemployment rate is expected to “remain stubbornly high for several years to come, not falling below 7 percent until 2016.”

Tennessee is now into its fourth consecutive quarter with a statewide unemployment rate in excess of 10 percent.

“The number of unemployed people has nearly doubled since the start of the recession,” the report says.

Personal income

“Personal income growth in Tennessee lagged the nation between 1999 and 2009,” the report said. “The long-run forecast indicates that same pattern will emerge in the years out to 2019.”

Nevertheless, some improvement is forecasted.

“A slower rate of job loss, along with the expectation of rising average wage, should produce 2.5 percent growth in wage and salary income in 2010,” the report says. In addition, labor income, proprietors’ income and rent, and interest and dividend income also are expected to grow in the coming year.

As a result, nominal personal income — the sum of wage and salary disbursements, proprietors’ income, personal dividend income, personal interest income, and transfer payments to persons — should grow 2.1 percent in 2010 and 3.5 percent in 2011.

By comparison, nominal personal income rose only 0.2 percent in 2009. Individually, wage and salary income, proprietors’ income and rent, and interest and dividend income all fell.

Sales tax revenue

Taxable sales should show improvement in the coming year, too — partly because the economy will improve and also because sales are at such a severely depressed level now.

“For the year as a whole, taxable sales should advance 2.1 percent in 2010,” the report says.

Before the recession, sales tax revenue peaked in the 2007-08 fiscal year, and revenues aren’t expected to rise beyond that pre-recession peak until the 2012-13 fiscal year.

“In the meantime, the state will find that federal stimulus funds in support of the budget will have been exhausted,” the report says.

Agriculture

Weather conditions are ripe for improvement in the agriculture sector. Now, it’s just a matter of market.

The state’s agriculture sector — which accounts for 11.4 percent of Tennessee’s economy — saw some improvement in the past year.

“Good moisture levels in 2009 resulted in increased soybean, corn, hay and cotton production,” the report said. “Tobacco production and winter wheat production both fell. While 2009 crop prices did not hit the highs seen in 2008, they were sufficient to ensure profitability in the crop sector.”

Livestock producers didn’t fare as well, mostly because higher crop prices meant higher feed costs.

Because of significant rain during the fall, spring planting looks good.

“The big issue for crop farmers in 2010 will be price, as the market is currently on the downward side of a price spike that peaked in 2008,” the report said.

Livestock farmers have reduced the number of animals they keep, but “it remains to be seen if the reduction is large enough to restore profitability to the sector.”

Automobile industry

“Despite some growing pains, Tennessee has successfully moved from a small player in the transportation equipment sector to a major player in the national arena,” the report notes in a special section that examines the future of the U.S. automobile industry and the impact it is likely to have on Tennessee.

The report notes that Tennessee was successful in expanding its role in the transportation equipment sector in the 1980s when it recruited Nissan and Saturn assembly facilities. At its peak in 2000, there were 68,500 jobs in transportation equipment production in Tennessee.

Tennessee has taken a hard hit in this business sector during the economic downturn with Peterbilt and former Saturn production facilities closing.

“But there are bright spots as well for the state’s transportation equipment sector,” the report says, noting that Nissan will be building its zero emissions Leaf car in Rutherford County, and Volkswagen will soon begin production in Hamilton County.

However, the report suggests the state will have to work to maintain that status:

“Tennessee will need to offer a highly skilled workforce and complements to the design, production and assembly processes (like research and development capacity) to maintain and support this important industry cluster.”

Read the full report on CBER’s Web site.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Gen. Wesley Clark

KNOXVILLE — Retired Gen. Wesley Clark will visit the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on Tuesday, Feb. 9, to speak on war and the media.

“An Evening with Wesley Clark” will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Cox Auditorium in Alumni Memorial Building. The event is free and open to the public.

Clark served in the U.S. Army for 34 years and is widely known for his candidacy in the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries. He rose to the rank of four-star general as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Previously, he served as the commander-in-chief, U.S. Southern Command, where he was responsible for all U.S. military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean. He also served as the director of Strategic Plans and Policy, J-5, in the Joint Staff, where he helped negotiate the end to the war in Bosnia.

In his final military command assignment, Clark commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO’s first major combat action, which saved 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. In this position he also was responsible for the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

His military awards and honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the State Department Distinguished Service Award, the U.S. Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments.

Clark retired from the military in 2000, and went on to become an investment banker, author, commentator and businessman. He is the author of the best-selling book “Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat,” as well as “Winning Modern War: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire.” Clark graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1966 and completed degrees at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Clark’s visit to UT Knoxville is sponsored by the Issues Committee, which strives to bring informative issues to the campus. For more information on the Issues Committee, visit http://cpc.utk.edu/Committees/issues.

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C O N T A C T :

Rebekah Winkler (865-974-8304, rwinkler@utk.edu)

Kay Ryan by Christina Koci Hernandez

The nation’s most highly regarded poet will visit the University of Tennessee, Knoxville this month for a poetry reading and book-signing event.

Kay Ryan, the 2008-2009 U.S. Poet Laureate, will read and talk about her poetry at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, in the University Center auditorium. A book-signing event will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

In her poems, Ryan enjoys re-examining the beauty of everyday phrases and describes poetry as an intensely personal experience for both the writer and the reader.

“Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading,” she said.

As the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate, Ryan succeeds Charles Simic and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including the likes of Robert Frost.

The Poet Laureate, also known as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. In making the appointment, the Librarian of Congress consults with former appointees, the current Laureate and distinguished poetry critics. The Laureate gives an annual lecture and reading of his or her poetry and usually introduces poets in the Library’s annual poetry series, the oldest in the Washington area, and among the oldest in the U.S.

“Kay Ryan is a distinctive and original voice within the rich variety of contemporary American poetry,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “She writes easily understandable short poems on improbable subjects. Within her compact compositions there are many surprises in rhyme and rhythm and in sly wit pointing to subtle wisdom.”

Ryan has written six books of poetry, plus a limited edition artist’s book, along with a number of essays. She received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives a quiet life in Marin County, California.

Ryan’s visit is sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office, Ready for the World, the Department of English, the Commission for Women, the Commission for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People, the Office of Equity and Diversity and UT Libraries.

To print the flier for the event, visit http://cfw.utk.edu/ryan.html.

About Kay Ryan

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Her father was an oil well driller and sometime-prospector. She received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1971, Ryan has lived in Marin County.

For more than 30 years, Ryan limited her professional responsibilities to the part-time teaching of remedial English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif., thus leaving much of her life free for “a lot of mountain bike riding plus the idle maunderings poets feed upon.” She said at one point that she has never taken a creative writing class, and in a 2004 interview in The Christian Science Monitor, she noted, “I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.”

In her poems Ryan enjoys re-examining the beauty of everyday phrases and mining the cracks in common human experience. Unlike many poets writing today, she seldom writes in the first person. She has said, “I don’t use ‘I’ because the personal is too hot and sticky for me to work with. I like the cooling properties of the impersonal.” In her poem “Hide and Seek,” for instance, she describes the feelings of the person hiding without ever saying, “I am hiding”:

It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

She describes poetry as an intensely personal experience for both the writer and the reader: “Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading.”

Ryan’s poems are characterized by the deft use of unusual kinds of slant and internal rhyming — which she has referred to as “recombinant rhyme” — in combination with strong, exact rhymes and even puns. The poems are peppered with wit and philosophical questioning and rely on short lines, often no more than two to three words each. She has said of her ascetic preferences, “An almost empty suitcase — that’s what I want my poems to be. A few things. The reader starts taking them out, but they keep multiplying.” Because her craft is both exacting and playfully elastic, it is possible for both readers who like formal poems and readers who like free verse to find her work rewarding.

John Barr, president of The Poetry Foundation, said: “Halfway into a Ryan poem, one is ready for either a joke or a profundity; typically it ends in both. Before we know it the poem arrives at some unexpected, deep insight that likely will alter forever the way we see that thing.”

Ryan has written six books of poetry, plus a limited edition artist’s book, along with a number of essays. Her books are: “Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends” (1983), “Strangely Marked Metal” (Copper Beech, 1985), “Flamingo Watching” (Copper Beech, 1994), “Elephant Rocks” (Grove Press,1996), “Say Uncle” (Grove Press, 2000), “Believe It or Not!” (2002, Jungle Garden Press, edition of 125 copies), and “The Niagara River” (Grove Press, 2005).

Her awards include the Gold Medal for poetry, 2005, from the San Francisco Commonwealth Club; the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from The Poetry Foundation in 2004; a Guggenheim fellowship the same year; a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship as well as the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2001; the Union League Poetry Prize in 2000; and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in 1995. She has won four Pushcart Prizes and has been selected four different years for the annual volumes of the Best American Poetry. Her poems have been widely reprinted and internationally anthologized. Since 2006, she has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

What does it mean to be the U.S. Poet Laureate?

The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.

The Poet Laureate is appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and serves from October to May. In making the appointment, the Librarian consults with former appointees, the current Laureate and distinguished poetry critics. The position has existed under two separate titles: from 1937 to 1986 as “Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” and from 1986 forward as “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.” The name was changed by an act of Congress in 1985.

The Library keeps to a minimum the specific duties in order to afford incumbents maximum freedom to work on their own projects while at the Library. The Laureate gives an annual lecture and reading of his or her poetry and usually introduces poets in the Library’s annual poetry series, the oldest in the Washington area, and among the oldest in the United States. This annual series of public poetry and fiction readings, lectures, symposia, and occasional dramatic performances began in the 1940s. Collectively the Laureates have brought more than 2,000 poets and authors to the Library to read for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.

Those interested in reading a more detailed history of the poetry consultantship at the Library of Congress should refer to William McGuire’s Poetry’s Catbird Seat: The Consultantship in Poetry in the English Language at the Library of Congress, 1937-1987 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1988. LC Call No.: Z733.U6M38 1988).

Each Laureate brings a different emphasis to the position. Joseph Brodsky initiated the idea of providing poetry in airports, supermarkets and hotel rooms. Maxine Kumin started a popular series of poetry workshops for women at the Library of Congress. Gwendolyn Brooks met with elementary school students to encourage them to write poetry. Rita Dove brought together writers to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists. She also championed children’s poetry and jazz with poetry events. Robert Hass organized the “Watershed” conference that brought together noted novelists, poets and storytellers to talk about writing, nature and community.

Kate Vitasek

Vitasek, a UT Knoxville alumna, lives in Washington state and travels to Knoxville several times a year to teach the new Vested Outsourcing course on campus and travels elsewhere to teach customized versions at company locations. For the past four years, she’s taught courses in contracting, logistics and outsourcing at UT.

Vested Outsourcing — which is currently being piloted by such Fortune 100 companies as Microsoft and Intel — is steeped in research funded by the U.S. Air Force, which has studied some of the most progressive outsourcing relationships by the world’s leading companies. Vitasek and her colleagues coined the term “Vested Outsourcing” because it involves a fundamental shift in how both the supplier and vendor in outsourcing relationships must be vested to ignite innovation, improve service, lower costs and increase profit.

Vitasek’s team identified the top 10 flaws in most outsourced business models and then developed five rules to help companies rethink their outsourcing relationships in a way that will lower costs, improve service and increase innovation.

“At its heart, Vested Outsourcing is about structuring the outsourcing agreements and its economics around achieving desired outcomes rather than a transaction-based approach,” Vitasek said. “Vested Outsourcing uses properly aligned incentives that encourage all parties in the business arrangement to unlock the most efficient and effective solutions to the work being performed.”

Experts within the outsourcing industry predict that Vested Outsourcing will change the industry.

“In the outsourcing world, a genuinely new concept comes along only once every 10 years or so. I believe Vested Outsourcing is one of them,” said Cliff Lynch, author of “Logistics Outsourcing: A Management Guide.”

Frank Casale, CEO of the Outsourcing Institute, added, “Vested Outsourcing is a game-changing approach that will quickly become the new gold standard for advanced outsourcing relationships.”

Vitasek’s book about Vested Outsourcing, “Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing” — based on a research study conducted with UT and the U.S. Air Force — is being released today, Feb. 2.

For more information about Vested Outsourcing and the courses that Vitasek teaches for UT, see http://vo.utk.edu.

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C O N T A C T :

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, craines1@utk.edu)

The donor, a longtime supporter of the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, has offered to give $1 million in memory of the late J. Clayton Arnold if the college can collect at least $1 million in contributions from other supporters.

The J. Clayton Arnold Challenge is based upon the inspiration of a man whose desire was “investing in the human race.” Arnold, a rural mail carrier in Williamson County, began providing financial assistance to students studying to be teachers in 1965. While Arnold only earned a $60-per-month salary and never attended college, he was a smart man who made investments throughout his 95 years. These investments allowed him to give UT Knoxville its first million-dollar gift.

“I am loyal to the human race. I believe it is capable of scarcely dreamed of development. Education has the most important role in the development. The responsibility for this development rests upon us,” Arnold said.

Arnold believed by investing in the preparation of teachers his gift could influence 25 million students: “Out of the fund I have set up, 5,000 students who are planning to be teachers can be helped in the next 50 years. If each of them influences 5,000 children, I feel that my money will help 25 million children.”

Even with his generous gift, Arnold was never content. Instead, he challenged UT alumni to help contribute to his efforts, which has resulted in large gains to the university’s annual giving program. In 2009, 82 teacher education interns received a J. Clayton Arnold Scholarship.

“The J. Clayton Arnold Challenge invites others to follow Arnold’s lead and make a transformational gift to honor a teacher who has touched their lives,” said Bob Rider, dean of the college. “The perfect way to do that is to nominate an educator for the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences’ Educators Hall of Honor.”

With a $1,000 contribution, a donor can nominate an educator for the Hall of Honor. For a contribution of $25,000 or more, a separate scholarship endowment fund will be established in the honoree’s or donor’s name.

The next group of Hall of Honor inductees will be announced during a ceremony on March 25.

To learn more about the Educators Hall of Honor and how to nominate someone, see: http://cehhs.utk.edu/AlumniTest/hall_of_honor.html.

“By making a charitable gift to the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, you are not only helping to meet the J. Clayton Arnold Challenge, but also making an investment in future educators whose impact will last beyond a lifetime,” Rider said

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

The College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been working with health care professionals for more than 10 years, teaching them the business of health care to improve quality, improve patient outcomes and lower costs.

“We have shown that when the health care community understands and implements good business principles, the health care system improves,” said Mike Stahl, William B. Stokely Distinguished Professor in Management and director of UT’s Physician Executive MBA (PEMBA) program. “Physicians are thirsting for knowledge about how to run patient-centered practices that improve patient outcomes, eliminate redundancies, shorten patient wait times, put an end to reworks, simplify paperwork and lower costs.”

PEMBA — which for the past six years has been ranked “the No. 1 preferred MBA program exclusively for physicians” by Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician magazines — teaches physicians to think as physician leaders.

“PEMBA physicians already think of their patients first due to taking the Hippocratic Oath. What they learn in the program enhances the value they add to their patients,” Stahl said.

Jody Crane, a 2004 PEMBA graduate and business director of Fredericksburg Emergency Medical Alliance in Fredericksburg, Va., applied lean principles to improve performance in one of the busiest emergency departments in the country. By applying lean principles in his emergency department, he and his team at Mary Washington Hospital have reduced the length of stay in the emergency department by over 38 percent — from over four hours in 2004 to two hours and 30 minutes in 2009. They also have decreased the rate with which patients leave without being seen by almost 90 percent — from a high of 13 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2009.

“This tremendous increase in capacity came without significant investments in human resources or costly physical plant modifications, but through creating a learning organization and applying human ingenuity,” Crane said. In essence, the Fredericksburg team created the capacity to treat 38 percent more patients with similar resources.

“Toyota used these principles to improve manufacturing efficiencies in the automotive industry; the concepts are just as applicable in a healthcare environment,” he said.

Crane believes so strongly in lean that he and Chuck Noon, a founding faculty member of PEMBA, encouraged the college to introduce a Lean for Healthcare five-day course as a deep-dive into lean principles, in which he is a lead faculty member. Other college faculty members are working with college staff in developing an entire curriculum of healthcare leadership courses to be available in 2010.

Here are several other examples of healthcare professionals around the country who have used the business principles learned in UT’s Physician Executive MBA program to make changes that increased efficiency and improved patient outcomes:

• Dr. Ramesh Gandhi practices gastroenterology in Dayton, Ohio, and is president of Digestive Specialists and Digestive Endoscopy Center LLC, an outpatient practice with 20 gastroenterologists, anesthesiologists and pathologists; they perform thousands of colonoscopies yearly. With the implementation of continuous process improvements learned in PEMBA, his center has reduced significantly expected complications from colonoscopies, including an 85 percent reduction in perforation rates. This has led to improved satisfaction among patients and referring physicians, more referrals, and business growth.
• Dr. Thomas L. “Tim” Stover is president of outpatient services at Akron General Health System in Akron, Ohio. Before the concept of wellness became popular, he developed Akron General Health and Wellness Centers, an outpatient, lower-cost, higher-quality delivery system based around prevention, wellness, rehabilitation and lifestyle change. The Centers offer free-standing, 24/7, full-service emergency departments; outpatient clinical services, including diagnostic and surgical services; physician offices; and an award-winning medical fitness center.
• Dr. John H. Hajjar, chief executive officer of Urology Specialty Care and Surgicare Surgical Associates in New Jersey, lowered patient costs and improved quality of urology services by moving procedures from an in-patient to an outpatient setting. SurgiCare manages more than 10 ambulatory surgery centers in New Jersey, New York, and Florida.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Laura Bower (865-599-7152, laurambower@hotmail.com)

James Agee

KNOXVILLE — “Baldwin Lee, James Agee and Walker Evans: Photography, Poverty, Politics in the South and Abroad” will be theme of a mini-summit to be held Feb. 4 and 11 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” by author James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, will be the used in various discussions on the first day. The second day will fast forward 50 years to the 1980s, with an exhibit and a presentation about photographs taken by UT Professor Baldwin Lee.

Three mini-summits looking at various aspects of poverty and work being done at UT Knoxville in these areas will be held this spring. Ready for the World, UT’s international and intercultural initiatives, has devoted this academic year to “Our World in Need” with a particular emphasis on the issue of poverty. A mini-summit on Poverty and Health Care is being planned for March and a mini-summit on Poverty, Energy and the Environment is being planned for April.

All of the events are free and open to the public.

The first mini-summit kicks off Feb. 4 with four short presentations and discussions about “Poverty and the Politics of Outreach and Engagement.” These will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. at UT’s Howard Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, 1640 Cumberland Ave.

Presenters include Michael Lofaro, English professor; Steven Dandaneau, associate provost and director of the Chancellor’s Honors Program; Rosalind Hackett, professor of religious studies; and a student panel led by Marvelene Moore, music professor.

Then, from 7 to 9 p.m., a community discussion of “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” will be held at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay St. It will be led by Nissa Dahlin-Brown, associate director of the Baker Center, and Robert Kronick, professor of educational psychology and counseling.

In 1936, Agee the author, and Evans, the photographer, were on an assignment for Fortune magazine to write about sharecroppers in the South. Their work culminated in this book of stories and photos that provides a picture of life in the 1930s.

The mini-summit will continue on Feb. 11 when the study moves forward to the 1980s with a program titled, “Photography, Poverty and Culture in the South.”

From 7 to 9 p.m. in the Baker Center’s Toyota Auditorium, Lee — who earned his graduate degree from Yale School of Art where he studied under Evans — will provide an illustrated lecture of his journey through the South as he photographed families living in poverty and witnessed their culture and learned about their lives. His work will be featured in an upcoming book, “In Consideration of Photographing the South.”

Lee’s presentation will be followed by a tour of his photos exhibited in the Baker Center rotunda and a reception. An exhibit of Lee’s photography also will be displayed in Hodges Library. A display of Walker Evans’ photographs from “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” from the UT Ewing Gallery also will be featured in the Baker Center. All of the photo exhibits will be displayed through March 31.

This mini-summit is being sponsored by the Provost’s Office, Ready for the World, the Baker Center, the College of Education Health and Human Sciences, the Council on Academic Outreach and Engagement, UT Libraries, the School of Art and the Knox County Public Library.

For more information about each of the poverty mini-summits, see http://www.bakercenter.utk.edu.

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Note: James Agee photo is courtesy of Florence Homolka.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

The plan was outlined at the UT Board of Trustees’ Trusteeship Committee and Executive and Compensation Committee meeting on Jan. 20. If approved by the Board of Trustees in February, the differential tuition program would go into effect at the beginning of the fall semester 2010.

Under the plan, juniors and seniors in the Colleges of Nursing, undergraduates taking business courses and all students taking engineering courses would pay differential tuition – that is, a supplemental per-credit-hour charge in addition to university tuition. These differential tuition charges would increase in the future at the same percentage rate as university tuition increases. The extra funds are needed because those three colleges are facing extraordinary growth and need additional staffing and state-of-the-art technology to keep pace with the demand.

“UT graduates in business, engineering and nursing are among the most employable college graduates in the state; these areas are where there are jobs – well-paying jobs,” Cheek said. “Consequently, student demand for these areas of study is outpacing our ability to accommodate students. Without this differential tuition, we will have to limit enrollment in these areas.

“Officials in all three colleges have spoken with groups of their students and have gotten tremendous support for these plans,” he said. “UT Knoxville students realize they are getting a top-notch education at an affordable price. Students tell us they want to maintain, and grow, the caliber of their education because they know a UT Knoxville degree is a tremendous asset to their future.”

Cheek said many of UT’s peer institutions already charge differential tuition in these areas.

Here is a detailed look at each college’s differential tuition proposal:

College of Nursing

The college would charge juniors and seniors an extra $90 per credit hour.

Juniors in nursing take 30 credits per year and seniors take 31 credits per year. At those levels, juniors and seniors would pay an extra $2,700 and $2,790 per year, respectively. That amounts to an extra $5,490 for the two years.

UT nursing students now pay undergraduate tuition and fees of $6,850 per year. The differential tuition would push that amount to $9,550 for juniors and $9,640 for seniors.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, nursing students’ annual tuition now ranges from $6,343 per year at East Tennessee State University – the only school with tuition lower than UT Knoxville — to $22,360 per year at Belmont University.

Many colleges and universities nationwide already charge differential tuition for nursing students. Fees and surcharges are also common. For example, nursing students at the University of Arizona pay $8,358 per year plus a $383 per semester surcharge; students at West Virginia University pay $12,692 per year plus a fee of $150 per semester; and students at the University of Pittsburgh pay $14,104 per year plus lab fees of $35 to $70 per course.

UT’s nursing curriculum consists of two years of prerequisite courses, such as English, science, math and humanities, followed by two years of upper-division nursing courses.

The College of Nursing currently admits 96 students per year. Plans are to increase enrollment by eight students next year and eight more students the next year. By 2010, the college will have 200 students in its upper-division nursing courses.

Based on that number, the College of Nursing anticipates net revenue from the differential tuition to be $548,640 per year. That money would be used to hire 2.5 new faculty members and upgrade technology.

Joan Creasia, dean of the College of Nursing, said the cost of educating nurses is high because the college is mandated to have a faculty-student ratio of 1-to-8 and hospitals are pressing for a 1-to-6 ratio.

“Although there is a current nursing shortage which is projected to worsen over the next decade, there is no shortage of applicants seeking admission to the College of Nursing,” Creasia said. “We had more than 500 applicants for our fall 2009 freshman class who indicated they wanted to major in nursing. During the past several years, applications from juniors who want to be in our clinical nursing major have outnumbered available slots nearly 3-to-1. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to accommodate the demand; enrollment in the College of Nursing clinical major has been limited by available fiscal resources.”

Also, Creasia notes, hospitals that provide students with their clinical education mandate the college maintain a faculty-student ratio of 1-to-8.

College of Business Administration

The college would charge all undergraduates taking business courses an extra $50 per credit hour.

For students taking a typical full load, the differential tuition will equate to an additional $700 in the sophomore year and $1,200 in each of the junior and senior years. It will result in about $3,100 in differential tuition for a business major over the three years in which a student takes business courses. For a business minor, the total amount will be about $1,200 over the three years the student takes business courses.

In the past five years, the number of undergraduates studying business has more than doubled, from 2,516 to 5,135, while the number of faculty in the college has declined by six.

Funds from the differential tuition will prevent the college from having to reduce faculty when stimulus funding goes away in 2011-12. The funding will be used to hire eight new tenure-track faculty and nine new non-tenure faculty.

The college also would hire four new undergraduate advisers and one new career placement staff member. At UT Knoxville now, the student-to-adviser ratio is 1-to-978 — compared to 1-to-712 at the University of Florida; 1-to-500 at the University of Alabama; and 1-to-233 at the University of Georgia.

The differential tuition will raise about $4.5 million and “will allow us to keep up with the growth that we expect to continue without infringing on the budgets of other units on campus or requiring us to significantly reduce the number of students majoring and minoring in business,” college Dean Jan Williams said.

Differential tuition in businesses schools is common at many colleges and universities across the country.

“In the SEC, the universities of Arkansas, Kentucky and Alabama and Auburn University are examples of schools that currently have undergraduate business fees or differential tuition, and the University of South Carolina differential is approved for 2010-11,” Williams said. “When considered in the context of the HOPE Scholarship for UT undergraduate students, a UT degree in business provides significant value at a relatively low cost.”

About $500,000 received from differential tuition funds would be used to augment instruction in other courses that business majors are required to take, fund computer hardware and software improvements, and provide other forms of educational enrichment.

College officials said they plan to solicit private monies for scholarships for business majors who may need assistance.

College of Engineering

For eight years, the College of Engineering has charged differential tuition of $25 per credit hour on the first eight hours of coursework. The college’s new proposal would increase that by $20 — to $45 per credit hour for all engineering courses taken by undergraduate and graduate students.

The differential tuition will mean about $680 per year, or about $2,700 for a student completing a four-year degree.

“Our differential tuition was established to cover the costs of laboratory courses, and purchase critical equipment and engineering software – all to ensure that engineering students are ready to enter the workplace with the tools needed to compete in a technological world that is rapidly advancing in complexity,” Dean Wayne Davis said. “In the past eight years, substantial increases in the costs of software, equipment and instruction tools have often surpassed that of inflation.”

Also, during the past five years, undergraduate enrollment in the College of Engineering has increased by 18 percent and number of doctoral students has increased by 37 percent. At the same time, however, there has been little or no increase in full-time tenure track or tenured faculty.

Davis said a survey done last year by the SEC Deans’ Group that found that differential tuition at SEC engineering schools now ranges from $35 to $50 per credit hour – which means UT’s proposed $45-per-credit-hour charge will be in line with other schools in the region

The College of Engineering has about 3,000 students, or about 11 percent of UT Knoxville’s enrollment. The college’s current projected enrollment growth is 25 to 30 percent over the next five years.

Based on fiscal year 2009 student credit hours, the proposed differential tuition would raise about $2 million.

The money would be used to add faculty lines; enhance program advising and career services, including programs to provide students with greater access to international exchange programs; provide state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, as well as access to software and tools that graduates will encounter in the work world; provide enhanced research experiences and offer need-based scholarships for students.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

It is the first time UT faculty — who have delivered the course for organizations in Italy, Germany, Canada and across the U.S. — have tailored the course for healthcare professionals in the Middle East.

A customized one-day lean healthcare overview will be delivered to approximately 40 senior King Faisal healthcare executives; a customized five-day Lean for Healthcare course will be delivered to approximately 40 King Faisal healthcare practitioners.

“We’re excited to take the expertise we’ve developed in this area to another part of the world,” said Ted Stank, associate dean of executive education in UT’s College of Business Administration. “This opportunity illustrates how global the reputation of our college and curriculum has become.”

Developed in 2007, Lean for Healthcare is a five-day program offered through the College of Business Administration’s Center for Executive Education. Designed for hospital executives, physician leaders, nursing executive and medical suppliers, the course teaches how to efficiently deliver quality healthcare by identifying and eliminating waste. Instructors include academics, lean practitioners and physicians who have gone through the program and have successfully implemented lean in their work environments.

The opportunity to take the Lean for Healthcare course to Saudi Arabia came about, in part, because five physicians associated with King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center graduated from the University of Tennessee’s Physician Executive MBA program (PEMBA). PEMBA has trained over 350 physician leaders from 45 U.S. states; Saipan; Puerto Rico; and eight other countries, including Saudi Arabia. Lean is one of the organizational improvement philosophies taught in PEMBA.

“In Lean for Healthcare, the patient is the center of everything,” said Jody Crane, a 2004 PEMBA graduate who helped develop and is a lead faculty member for the Lean for Healthcare program. Crane is an emergency physician at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Va., and business director of Fredericksburg Emergency Medical Alliance.

By applying lean principles, Crane and his team reduced the length of stay in the Mary Washington Hospital emergency department by more than 38 percent — from over four hours in 2004 to two hours and 30 minutes in 2009. They also decreased the rate with which patients leave without being seen by almost 90 percent — from a high of 13 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2009. In essence, the team created the capacity to treat 38 percent more patients with similar resources.

Crane, who is traveling to Saudi Arabia, said UT’s Lean for Healthcare curriculum applies to for-profit and nonprofit healthcare facilities, as well as facilities that operate in countries having a government-run healthcare system.

“The curriculum is the same; it’s robust enough to apply to just about any healthcare setting,” Crane said.

For more about the Lean for Healthcare program, see http://LeanHealthcare.utk.edu.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, craines1@utk.edu)

The discovery sets a landmark in research to understand the way bacteria are able to respond and adapt to changes in their environment, a trait shared by nearly all living things, and it could lead to innovations in fields from medicine to agriculture.

Gladys Alexandre

In the long-term, the researchers think that scientists will be able to take these findings and use them to tailor medicines in new ways to fight harmful bacteria or to find enhanced ways to use bacteria in agricultural or other applications.

The findings are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a top academic journal.

Biology typically looks at the common bacteria Escherichia coli as the model for bacteria’s ability to move actively and independently, but Gladys Alexandre, an associate professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology at UT Knoxville, decided to look at the more complex soil bacterium, Azospirillum brasilense.

“As bacteria’s ability to make decisions goes, E. coli is kind of dumb, which makes it easy for researchers to study sensing and information processing — essentially, decision making — in this bacterium,” says Alexandre.

It helps to understand the way that bacteria “think”. Their cells contain a number of receptors, and each one affects a certain behavior or trait in the bacteria, for example where to move, how to function, even whether to become virulent. The advent of genetic sequencing means we know more about how many receptors bacteria have, and the more receptors, the more ways a bacterium has to sense its surroundings.

E. coli has only five receptors that direct its decision-making process about movement, while Azospirillum brasilense has 48, making it comparatively much “smarter” in its ability to detect changes in its environments and as a result, to make complex decisions regarding where to move.

What scientists have not known and have been unable to study until now is how the individual receptors, by sensing their environment, directly affect the bacteria’s behavior and ability to adapt to their environment. Alexandre’s study is one of the first to isolate and study a receptor in this way.

She and her colleagues focused on a receptor they suspected was related to the way bacteria convert nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into a form — ammonium — that can be used by all organisms. This ability is called nitrogen fixation and while it is uniquely found in bacteria, it is critically important to all living organisms, as it is the only way nitrogen can eventually be incorporated into building blocks of cells.

The process is carried out by an enzyme which is damaged in the presence of high concentrations of oxygen, which presents a dilemma for the bacterium, as the energy needed for the process is usually acquired in the presence of oxygen.

When Alexandre and her team created mutant versions of the bacteria without the receptor, the mutant bacteria were unable to detect where the right position in oxygen concentration was, affecting the nitrogen fixation reaction. In other words, the mutant bacteria were somewhat “blind” and could not detect the right position, showing them their hunch was correct about the receptor’s purpose. But their curiosity expanded: if they were able to uncover the receptor’s purpose, would they be able to figure out exactly how it functioned?

For that, they enlisted the help of UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory distinguished scientist Igor Jouline, an expert in carrying out complex computations of biological systems, such as the one governing the receptor at the heart of Alexandre’s research. Working with Alexandre’s data, Jouline was able to generate a model of the receptor’s structure and compare it to other structures on a nearly atom-by-atom basis.

This enabled them to predict which one of the more than 100 amino acids in the sensory part of the receptor is responsible for sensing the precise oxygen concentration that this bacterium needs for nitrogen fixation. It’s a process that, using normal genetic techniques, would have taken a substantial commitment of hours and resources, but was made simpler and less labor-intensive by using computing.

Alexandre hopes that other scientists and researchers can use a similar technique to look at receptor sites on other bacteria of interest. She noted that the ability to work with Jouline and with the resources available through UT Knoxville’s partnership with ORNL was key to her discovery.

“Partnering with Igor provided us great insight,” said Alexandre. “We would not have been able to fully understand how this receptor works without him.”

Alexandre says there’s good long-term potential for the knowledge gained in the study.

“We see now that bacteria are, in their way, big thinkers, and by knowing how they ‘feel’ about the environment around them, we can look at new and different ways to work with them.”

The paper, titled “A PAS-domain containing chemoreceptor couples dynamic changes in metabolism and chemotaxis,” will be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)