MSU has aggressive plan for next five years

They’re thinking big at Montana State University.

MSU is close to finishing a plan outlining what the university should be like five years from now.

And in the eyes of one of those who knows it best, the plan doesn’t play things safe.

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/01/24/news/msubzbigs.txt

"It is ambitious," Jim Rimpau, university planning director, said Thursday.

The proposal was drafted by MSU’s 22-member budget committee to give the university a clear set of goals.

"People have been somewhat aggressive," Rimpau said. "They’ve set the bar very high on many of these things."

The plan calls for expanding MSU’s research by more than 50 percent to $130 million a year. Adding nearly 1,000 more students. Launching a $100 million fund-raising campaign. Hiring 30 more tenure-track professors. And building a reputation for a great education, with every undergraduate having the chance to do research or other creative work.

The public will have a chance to say what it thinks of the plan at an open forum Monday at 2 p.m. in Ballroom B of the Strand Union Building. (The full text is on MSU’s Web site, http://www.montana.edu/upba/vision.html).

Some people tell Rimpau the plan is so ambitious, it may take 10 years to accomplish.

"One of the most common questions is ‘How are you going to do all that?’" Rimpau said. "The answer is, that’s the next phase."

Task forces will be created to carry out the goals, such as increasing enrollment among graduate students, international and Native American students.

Two comments have come up most often from groups on campus and in the Bozeman community.

Employees want to know what it means when the plan calls for making salaries more competitive. It’s vague, Rimpau said, because the Board of Regents is looking into the issue and MSU doesn’t want to get ahead of the board.

And while the plan is specific about improving sabbaticals and other professional opportunities for professors, it doesn’t say anything about professional and classified employees.

Nor does it set goals that students might like to see, such as slowing tuition hikes, making it easier for students to get into popular classes and majors, or increasing grads’ success in finding great careers.

The plan calls for increasing research space by 50 percent to 300,000 square feet, but wouldn’t add more classrooms. Rimpau said classrooms are used less than 65 percent of the time, so there’s enough space to handle hundreds more students.

The plan also calls for spending nearly $3 million on the building maintenance backlog, coming up with a way to protect computer records in a disaster, getting more students to graduate, offering College of Technology classes in Bozeman, licensing more MSU patents to businesses and boosting Montana’s economy.

The plan says nothing about athletics or beating the University of Montana Grizzlies at football.

"Some things," Rimpau said, "we just assume."