For some perspective, Tennessee Today sat down with Bill Fox, a professor of economics and the director of the UT Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER). Fox is an internationally known expert on taxation, finance and economic development.

Dr. Fox, how bad is the economic situation in Tennessee as compared to other low points in our history?

This is the worst fiscal crisis in the modern history of Tennessee.

It’s the first time where we’ve had an actual decline in tax collections. We’ve had numerous recessions, but never one that was severe enough to cause us to have a decline in the amount of dollars collected. At this point we’re at -7 percent, so it’s not even just a little bit down. So that’s the best evidence of how serious this is. The unemployment rate has already exceeded what we experienced in the last recession, and we’re still early in this recession. So from an economic perspective, we’re in a very serious environment.

How does this affect UT Knoxville and the UT system?

The university is sensitive to tax revenue collections in Tennessee, but we’re also sensitive to national conditions that impact universities as compared with other state agencies. That’s because universities are seen as being able to replace some of that lost funding with tuition increases, while other agencies simply cannot replace revenue as we can. So higher education experiences relatively larger cuts.

State leaders have to look at what’s important, and what’s essential, even in a downturn. Higher education is highly valued in Tennessee, but when you absolutely don’t have enough money and have to make cuts, then in choosing among K-12, health care for low-income residents, prisons and higher ed… then among the tough choices, higher education tends not to fare well in the short term.

But this reevaluation isn’t just happening in Tennessee, is it?

Universities around the nation are going through the same thing. There have already been furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs at universities.

And there are political limits to raising tuition in Tennessee. I think there’s a recognition among politicians that it’s a difficult economic environment for everyone, and they’re expecting universities to share in some of the cutbacks and not simply pass it forward to students by increasing tuition to make up for lost revenues from the state.

So what’s the outlook for this year?

The CBER released its annual Economic Report to the Governor, and the forecast is for Tennessee’s economy to continue deteriorating throughout 2009. I think it’s important to keep in mind that tax revenues don’t immediately respond as soon as the economy bottoms out, particularly keeping in mind the tax structure we have in Tennessee. Historically, Tennessee has made up for these times of slow revenue growth with sales tax rate increases. I don’t believe that’s going to happen here, so revenue recovery will be very slow, and as a result, 2010 and 2011 will also be rough for Tennessee.

Fox has held appointments as a visiting scholar for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii, and as Distinguished Fulbright Chair for American Studies at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. Fox also has served as a consultant on finance, taxation and economic development in a number of states and developing countries. He is a member of the American Economics Association and a past president of the National Tax Association.

That’s not to say there isn’t a competitive mood from time to time, especially at the big bingo game.

Another reason I like Fall Festival so much is that it relies on the help of many volunteers from across the campus. You can expect administrators from many Knoxville-area departments to attend, give out prizes, and make new friends. This is one way administrators can express their appreciation for the hard work of employees throughout the year.

The event also serves as a reminder that UT is one of the largest employers in the region, with 7,000 regular employees.

Carol Raxter, main organizer, and the entire Fall Festival team work for several months to pull together an event of this size. Facilities Services employees and TRECS staff always do a great job of preparing the site and breaking down equipment after the festival.

Employees are UT’s greatest asset. Fall Festival underscores the truth of that statement. Friday will be a great opportunity for new employees to meet longtime staff and faculty, and begin to understand just how deep UT pride goes.

As a member of the faculty and staff, you play a key role in ensuring the safety of our campus. In working closely with students, colleagues and visitors, you’ll often be the first to notice a condition or circumstance that could affect safety.

While police on university and college campuses receive the same training as our city and county counterparts, the people we serve and the unique territory we cover make our jobs different, but in my opinion even more rewarding.

Our sworn and civilian employees have the opportunity to interact with students and impact their lives in a positive way. While we must enforce state laws and campus regulations, we take just as seriously our role in helping students have a good experience at UT. We strive to make interactions with students and all the people we serve as positive as possible.

We depend on you to let us know about unsafe conditions or other potential threats. We also work closely with the Dean of Students office and others to identify members of our campus community who may need counseling or mental health assistance.

This month UT had the honor of being a kickoff site for National Safety Campus Awareness Month. We take safety very seriously, and we are glad to be recognized on the national level for taking proactive measures, such as the UT ALERT notification system and the 16th Street Corridor project.

Education and outreach are key factors in promoting a safe campus environment, and staff and faculty play a large role in utilizing and promoting the many resources available. Our Community Relations Unit has increased in staffing and outreach efforts to provide more education and crime prevention programming. We are involved in freshman and new employee orientation, personal safety and workplace violence programming, Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) training and drug/alcohol abuse programs.

We appreciate the opportunity to work closely with all members of the campus community. We are here to serve everyone. I urge faculty and staff to not be afraid to call us at 974-3114 whenever you need assistance or want to share information with us.

As freshmen arrived on campus this semester, they (hopefully) came prepared to discuss this year’s Life of the Mind book selection, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book is Beah’s eye-opening account of getting caught up in–and then escaping–the civil war that has engulfed his homeland of Sierre Leone.

Beah will visit UT Knoxville on Oct. 17 with Alusine Kamara, former director of a child soldier rehabilitation center in Sierra Leone, where Beah was sent. A discussion and book signing will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Cox Auditorium. Beah and Kamara are both on the board of advisers of UT Knoxville’s Center for the Study of Youth & Political Violence. Next month’s event will be their second appearance together on the campus.

We’ve also put together a film series that looks at the war experiences of children from many times and places. For a complete schedule, pick up a Ready for the World passport or keep an eye on the campus calendar.

A few other special events I’d like to mention:

This Saturday, the Knoxville campus will hold the world premiere of "APPALACHIA: A History of Mountains and People," a four-part documentary series narrated by Sissy Spacek and featuring several current and former UT faculty members. Although the world premiere is already booked, you can see this spectacular film at a second showing from 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday at the University Center.

The film is free. To sign up, go to http://appalachia.utk.edu/. Complimentary parking will be available in the UC Parking Garage.

And if you haven’t yet visited the Ready for the World Café, you’re in for a treat. The café is open Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the University Center Hermitage Room. The international buffet is run by students in the advanced food production and service management class. The cost is $10 to eat in the dining room, and $8.50 to get a box of food to carry out.

As the semester progresses, I encourage you to take advantage of all that RFTW has to offer. Keep an eye on www.utk.edu/readyfortheworld for upcoming events and programs.

If taken to heart by the entire campus community, these steps would save UT Knoxville an estimated $1.2 million annually.

I believe passionately in the Switch Your Thinking initiative—it makes sense in the heart and the pocketbook.

First of all, it is the right thing to do. We are, despite all of our differences, stewards of the Earth. Secondly, in the larger context of global warming, it is the practical path for all nations and their citizens. It is no exaggeration to say we are in a planetary crisis.

In addition, I would argue that all of us who want to see UT prosper must do this. Given the economic realities in Tennessee, we must tighten our belts. The taxpayers expect no less.

Our biggest advantage is that we have already started to get ahead of the environmental curve—to, in a phrase, "Make Orange Green."

We can find many examples of how we’re already on the right path: student environmental fees, an active recycling program, a light bulb exchange, practices that avoid waste altogether, national green cleaning awards, and the Environmental Stewardship Fund supported by faculty and staff and other donors. You can read more about these remarkable efforts at http://environment.utk.edu/.

"Switch Your Thinking" is the opportunity for each of us to take very specific and active steps to do our part.

But our efforts cannot stop there. There is much more we can—and must—do. A new commuter program is already here: UT employees can get use of a van and, by riding to work together, drastically reduce commuting costs. The KAT bus system offers great rates. And by signing up online with the SmartTrips program, employees (and students) can find carpools.

I urge you to wholeheartedly embrace Switch Your Thinking. It is the next big step towards dramatically reducing UT’s energy bills, and it places the flagship university squarely where it ought to be on this issue—out in front.

This year’s freshman class arrived with an average GPA of 3.76 and a 26.6 average ACT score. Both scores are the highest ever for an entering class.

As UT Knoxville becomes more a school of choice for our state’s—and nation’s—best and brightest students, we must increase our efforts to maintain a diverse student body and increase accessibility for all qualified students.

To that end, this year we dedicated an additional $1 million to expand the Pledge and Promise Scholarship programs. We also launched UT LEAD, a program that assists students through academic counseling, first-year seminars, leadership development programs and other learning opportunities.

Fifty-five students—most of them Promise Scholarship recipients—just attended the first LEAD Summer Institute. They lived on campus and got a taste of college life and a chance to develop a support network of friends before the semester started.

The Pledge Scholarship, approved by the UT Board of Trustees in the summer of 2005, provides for the cost of attendance, including tuition and fees and room and board, for low-income Tennessee residents.

This fall, the income eligibility guideline was adjusted so more students could benefit from Pledge, which now covers books, too.

The Promise Scholarship has succeeded in recruiting students from high schools that have traditionally been underrepresented at UT Knoxville. Last year, applications from Promise high school students were up 46 percent over the previous year. Applications from Promise are up another 10 percent this year.

We have also increased the number of seats set aside for students whose admission was deferred until spring; and we are allowing those students and Tennessee Board of Regents Community College graduates who transfer to UT to remain eligible for both the Pledge and Promise scholarships.

We look forward to a great year, and we will continue to search for innovative ways to ensure student access and success.

As chairman of the Chancellor Search Committee, I was pleased to announce last week that we have invited five highly qualified finalists to campus.

During the finalists’ visits, you will have a chance to meet each candidate, ask them questions and provide the search committee with your feedback.

Here are the finalists:

• Jimmy G. Cheek, senior vice president for agriculture, University of Florida
• Jennie Hunter-Cevera, president, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
• Howard Johnson, former provost/vice president and now a math professor, University of North Texas
• Ellen Wartella, vice chancellor/provost, University of California, Riverside
• David Young, senior vice president, Arizona State University

The search committee’s mission is to recommend to UT President John Petersen a list of proven leaders who will aggressively promote continued development of UT Knoxville’s academic programs, research productivity and national reputation of excellence, built upon a commitment to access and diversity.

With the help of a professional search firm, we considered 37 candidates. We narrowed the list to 12 candidates and interviewed them in early August. After those interviews, we selected these five very capable leaders to bring to campus.

Now we need your feedback.

Starting on Sept. 8, each finalist will visit campus for two days. To provide ample opportunity for faculty, staff, students and the Knoxville community to get to know the candidates, each finalist will participate in two public forums, each an hour long. The forums will be Web cast live and archived on the Chancellor search Web site, http://chancellor.utk.edu/search/.

During these forums, the candidates will make brief statements and then field questions from the audience. Audience members, those viewing the Web cast and all members of the campus community will be invited to submit feedback about the candidates.

Also during these visits, the finalists will meet with Petersen, Executive Vice President David Millhorn, Interim UT Knoxville Chancellor Jan Simek, the vice chancellors and senior staff, academic deans, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, Student Government Association representatives and a group of students from the honors programs, representatives of the chancellor’s diversity commissions, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory directors.

You can learn more about the candidates at http://chancellor.utk.edu/search/. I encourage you to attend the forums and share your thoughts about each candidate.

Please take advantage of this opportunity to help select the leadership that will guide UT Knoxville into the future.

Forum Schedule

David Young:

• 3 p.m., Sept. 8, Hodges Library Auditorium
• 2:30 p.m., Sept. 9, UC Auditorium

Jennie Hunter-Cevera:

• 4 p.m., Sept. 9, UC Auditorium
• 3:15 p.m. Sept. 10, UC Auditorium

Ellen Wartella:

• 2 p.m., Sept. 15, UC Auditorium
• 3:15 p.m., Sept. 16, Black Cultural Center multi-purpose room

Howard Johnson:

• 2 p.m., Sept. 18, UC Auditorium
• 3:30 p.m., Sept. 19, Hodges Library Auditorium

Jimmy Cheek:

• 3:45 p.m., Sept. 24, Hodges Library Auditorium
• 3:30 p.m., Sept. 25, UC Auditorium

"Once again, we are in a very strong position academically. Our freshman class of about 4,200 students is the best in the university’s history. The average ACT score for the group is 26.5 and the average high school GPA for incoming freshmen is 3.74.

"The Ready for the World initiative, now in its fourth year, is preparing our students, faculty and staff for a global society. This year’s theme — Children and War — is particularly timely.

"We can point with pride to the Chancellor’s Honors Programs, the first group of Haslam Scholars this year, and the successes of the Tennessee Pledge and Promise scholarships. We’ve just graduated our first class of HOPE scholarship recipients. UT matched Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Duke in this year’s prestigious Goldwater scholarship competition for sophomores and juniors majoring in math, science and engineering. And, a new undergraduate education fee will provide more merit and need-based scholarships to study abroad.

"These impressive academic achievements help us recruit outstanding faculty and are no doubt an advantage to the Chancellor Search Committee, which continues its work under the leadership of Hap McSween.

"Several long-term construction and remodeling projects coming online this year — including the new Baker Center, the business building and two dorms — will improve the campus.

"UT continues to demonstrate environmental leadership. In September, we will unveil a major initiative here on campus aimed at doing the right thing environmentally as well as saving UT money.

"As many people know, UT Knoxville has been affected by the state budget crunch, which has led, among other things, to administrative cuts. Our goal is to protect the educational experience of large numbers of students and preserve the quality of the institution.

"As we start this new academic year, I want to express my sincere appreciation to our faculty and staff. Your dedication is moving UT forward in its core functions of education, research and service to Tennessee."

The Council on Interculturalism and Diversity has six goals for the university.

• Create and sustain a welcoming, supportive and inclusive campus climate.
• Attract and retain greater numbers of individuals from under-represented populations into faculty, staff and administrative positions.
• Attract, retain and graduate increasing numbers of students from historically under-represented populations as well as international students.
• Develop and strengthen partnerships with diverse communities in Tennessee as well as globally.
• Ensure that undergraduate curricular requirements include significant intercultural perspectives.
• Prepare graduate students to become teachers, researchers and professionals in a diverse world.

Progress toward these goals helps our students, workforce and university become more knowledgeable about and competitive within a quickly changing world.

I find it encouraging that to date, more than 80 academic and non-academic departments on campus have developed plans aimed at achieving these six diversity goals.

Gradually, diversity is becoming a routine consideration in how we do business at UT. For instance, the Provost has made planning for diversity and inclusion part of the Strategic Planning Process. Also over the past year sexual orientation and gender identity were added as areas of attention in the UT Non–Discrimination Statement.

During recent campus budget hearings, all departments discussed diversity and inclusion. Last week’s Chancellor’s Honors Banquet recognized several employees and students who contributed to diversity, interculturalism, and multiculturalism.

Have we achieved all of our goals? Certainly not. The truth is, this is a process with no real end point. We can always do better. But we are making progress — and this is important to the university’s future as the diversity of our student body and workforce increases. A major mission of higher education is to create an environment that encourages dialogue and debate. We are doing that now.

The Commission for Women, Commission for Blacks, LGBT Commission, Exempt Staff Council, Employee Relations Board, Faculty Senate and SGA — all of which are on the Council on Interculturalism and Diversity — are making a difference.

We still have a long way to go. But I believe that we are creating a framework on the Knoxville campus for accepting and, someday, embracing the diversity of the human experience. My hope is that this will help us confront the fears and prejudices we each carry deep inside.

Scientists, engineers and dignitaries traveled to East Tennessee recently to celebrate the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) award of $65 million, the largest grant ever to UT, to build a new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The new machine, named Kraken, which is the anchor facility for the National Institute for Computational Sciences, places UT among a handful of elite academic institutions in the nation with such a capability.

Within a year, UT will field the nation’s most powerful academic supercomputer, capable of nearly 1,000 trillion computations per second. The system will be part of the NSF-supported TeraGrid, a national network of supercomputers that is the world’s largest and most comprehensive cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. TeraGrid currently supports more than 1,000 projects and more than 4,000 researchers across the United States. This new supercomputer will attract top scientists and engineers to the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley. With the massive power of Kraken, together with world-leading experimental capabilities at UT and ORNL, we are in a position to advance the frontiers of science.

In fact, we are already at the top of our game in several areas. With the Department of Energy’s National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL, we now have two world-leading supercomputing facilities. Combined with nationally recognized programs at UT and ORNL and a commitment to world-class academic and economic partnerships, these new facilities position us for continued leadership.

Why does this matter to Tennesseans? With supercomputing, we expect to be able to tailor drugs to an individual’s genetic makeup. We also have the potential to alter individual cells, which could lead to breakthroughs in the treatment Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s.

The NSF award to UT and the new computing center are important steps in creating a bright future for our region. Never before have we been able accurately to anticipate, analyze and plan for complex events that have not yet occurred – from the operation of a fusion reactor running at 100 million degrees centigrade, to the changing climate of the 22nd century. Combined with the more traditional approaches of theory and experiment, scientific computation is a profound tool for insight and solution.

We are fortunate to have a strong tradition of scientific discovery in Tennessee and the partnership of UT and ORNL is poised to usher in the next scientific revolution. By any measure, our record is outstanding, and the strength and creativity of our science base has proved to be a key national asset.

Thomas Zacharia is vice-president for science and technology at UT and associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences at ORNL.