JOHN PUGH: Thank you, John. I want to first just thank the Commonwealth North organization for the study that they did. It was an excellent process, all of us having an opportunity to come and talk with the study group and actually give input. And Dwayne was great and I really appreciated taking comments. He put it on the Web. We were able to comment back and we really -- it's a good give and take. So just want to thank the organization for doing that and we appreciate the study and getting it out statewide. I think it's very helpful for the university.

As was said, I'll try to keep this short. But I do want to take the time to talk about three things. But I'm going to start with just yes, it is working. And I just want to give you some statistics because I know that Marshall will do that also. But over the last six years the University of Alaska-Southeast had a 23 percent increase in credit hours at the Juneau campus, which is the main campus. We had a 25.7 percent increase in full time equivalent and enrollment. We had a 31.3 percent increase in our first time full time freshmen. We -- the number of degrees we awarded went up significantly. We're at an all time last year. BA degrees were up 33 percent over that six year period. Masters degrees up 53 percent.

I just want you to know a little bit -- just the numbers alone, I mean it's not convincing. We're small. It wouldn't be convincing for you to look at our numbers and go wow, look at the money they're making. But on the other hand just in terms of the direction that things are going it -- it's been an incredible thing to have the infusion of some new money and has given us an opportunity with new initiatives and so on to accomplish these things.

So let me talk about basically three things. In the report you mentioned about underlying role of University of Alaska should be to improve the quality of life of Alaskans by offering educational opportunities for self improvement. And I want to talk about three of those areas.

One of the areas that the committee recommended is the three campuses should develop centers of excellence. We should differentiate ourselves and try to really work on areas that we could do better on. And the thing is that at University of Alaska-Southeast, we have a great opportunity in the area of marine biology and fisheries. In 1987 the Board of Regents made a determination to put the school fisheries, which used to be at the University of Alaska-Southeast, at Fairbanks but it remained in Juneau. And we formed a partnership with UAF to really work on the areas of marine biology, marine science and fisheries. And I want you to know that it is working with Ph.D. programs, masters programs and bachelors programs in marine biology, and we have a tremendous amount of research coming out of that Center of Excellence which is coordinated between the two universities.

We have research just from the University of Alaska- Southeast looking at sea lions, looking at sperm whales, ring seals, sea otters, snow crab research related to the growth of snow crab. Sea cucumber. I can go on in terms of things that impact the industry here in Alaska, the fishing industry and helped improve that fishing industry in terms of both basic science as well as applied science. So number one, that I think is really important in all areas of centers of excellence.

The second center of excellence is in the environmental science, environmental technology area. And we go all the way from providing a degree -- bachelors degree in environmental science which is supported strongly by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal EPA to be able to train Alaskans to get in and work in these areas. Which has been a real difficult area for Alaska, you know, in terms of having Outside people really make very important decisions in terms of our environment.

So we finally got a degree about seven years ago in this area, but we also knew that we needed technicians in the area of environmental technology. And our Sitka campus actually went and got a national grant and has become one of five centers in the environmental technology area which provide training in the area of water, waste water treatment throughout Alaska. We train all over Alaska, hundreds of individuals in terms of operators at plants to take care of the area water, waste water.

And together again, with UAF and UAA, we have research in these areas that you got to look at what are the best new technologies in the area, water, waste water, and UAA is working with us and researching that area. We also need to look at some of the chemical processes that take place and what are some of the flutes and other things that -- down line in terms of the discharge of waste water and the UAF engineering department is working with us on that research. So again, synergy in that.

Finally, I'd say teacher preparation has been a major program at UAS for years. We continue to expand that with our masters of art, a teaching program, and turn out 50 plus teachers a year in that area. And particularly strong in the area of secondary where we try to prepare people in math, science and in English. And we have degrees in those areas where we can put those as the top areas of the secondary schools through the whole state. We actually have a program where every student goes out and spends at least two weeks in a school in rural Alaska. So that's -- to me those are kind of the centers of excellence and we have spent a lot of time and effort in that.

Second point, collaboration between campus. I've already mentioned some of the collaborations but I would say there are many others. Nursing programs at UAA is now in southeast Alaska. We have 20 students and cohorts in Sitka and in Juneau who are going through the UAA nursing program and will end up with their RNs and definitely be hired by the local hospitals. Allied health, again, from UAA. We are beginning to do programs throughout southeast and allied health areas to work together to do that.

A bachelor of social work from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. We have 30 students in the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, bachelor of social work. We do the first three years and they take their course work through distance education and a faculty on our campus to finish the bachelor of social work program. And as I mentioned before, we work together in bachelors of fisheries and others.

I got one minute left. The RSPs is recognizing your community college mission which you put out strongly in there and I think it's really important. And we have done that. We have rebuilt our community college missions in southeast Alaska. In Ketchikan we've worked around the marine area in terms of the Ketchikan shipyard. Over half of the workers at the Ketchikan shipyard have been trained by the University of Alaska-Southeast-Ketchikan in welding and construction and all kinds of different things that are needed in order to repair and build the ships that they're doing there.

We also have a fisheries technician program there that works with the hatcheries and the new budding shell fish industry to actually train people to work in those industries rather than bring people up from the Lower 48, which is what we've been doing for years.

And finally, we will work with the forest industry for developing forest technicians which the federal government basically hires everybody from Outside the state that work in the Tongass in southeast Alaska. And we feel it's extremely important to get Alaskans working in this field. So that's a good example. And the health care thing is on that campus.

Sitka has taken the lead, as I mentioned, in environmental technology. They've also taken the lead because of the Mt. Edgecombe Hospital there of working on the allied health. And they continue to do that.

I'm going to stop there. But I just wanted you to know that the things that you had in your report we have really been serious about working on and have accomplished a great deal. And I could go on to others but you're going to hear a lot from the other two. Thanks.

MARSHALL LIND: Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and make some comments regarding UAF. And I also want to thank you for the report that you did last year. It has been referred to many, many times by us. We look at it, we paid attention to it, and it has been very, very helpful.

Let me just share with you a couple of quick statistics that might help put some things in perspective. At UAF 59.8 percent of our students are women. 30.8 are minority. That's the highest of the three MAUs. The lowest number are women, I might add. Twenty-two percent of our students are Alaska Native. That's the highest of the three MAUs. 9.9 percent first time freshmen. That's the highest of the three universities. And 35.3 percent are full time undergraduate students. That's the highest of the three universities.

Our average age is 28. We're right in the middle. Anchorage at 27 as the youngest group, Southeast, average age is 30. We talked about some of these things earlier in the session, particularly the relatively small number of undergraduate students, full time undergraduate students, 35 percent.

Let me share with you a couple of other figures just to let you know that things really are working extremely well with the university. And we want to keep the momentum going. In terms of UAF this past year we had our best -- this past fall, our best enrollment ever. It's the highest we have ever been. Now when I'm talking about UAF, keep in mind I'm talking about Kotzebue, Nome, Bethel, Dillingham, Interior Aleutian, our Tanana Valley campus, as well as the main campus in Fairbanks. And I include all of these with my figures. Because we tend to think in terms of one MAU encompassing all of these different locations.

I mentioned the increase of enrollment this past year in terms of the head count, the highest we have been. And we've seen the same thing take place with our full time equivalent with our number of student credit hours. Some good things are happening. We've been able to attract some excellent faculty members. We've been able to fix up our building. We've been able to add some new buildings. We've been able to add new programs to meet needs around the state and we're seeing the results.

John talked about the partnerships. In a few weeks I will be starting my 18th year as a chancellor for the University of Alaska system. It's my opinion that we are, at this point, further ahead than we've ever been in terms of the three MAUs working together. We've got some real success stories. And we'll have more in the future. John mentioned several. And I guess the one that we all point to as really working well to meet a state need is the way we've been able to work with UAA in the nursing program. And this has had a tremendous impact all over the state. You go out and visit Bethel, for example, that's one of the things you will hear, how the university is responding to the need in allied health areas.

We're talking about possibilities in engineering. One of the best and one of the most exciting that we have is just -- we're not quite there yet but it's real close, is in the area of micro electronics where the electronics people at Fairbanks are looking at possible nano technology, nano synthesis working in conjunction with Tom Case here at UAA. The kinds of things that we might be able to do and application of the micro electronics to the area of logistics. Exciting stuff. Ties with industry. Ties with business. But the universities working together capitalizing on our respected strengths. And that's really what this is all about.

We have had to rely very heavily upon some of the successes that we've seen with research on the Fairbanks campus. And the progress that's taken place over the past few years has been very significant. Within the past five years going from somewhere around $50 million in research activity to now a figure exceeding $100 million. That's a lot of activity. We know that we are uniquely positioned to continue to be very strong in research related to some of the sciences that are special to our northern latitudes. Very strong, the geophysical institute, getting strong in neuro science, bio sciences, climate change, ocean sciences. The potential is great. We've been able to become very competitive in seeking those grants and we anticipate we'll continue to be able to do it.

We've had to address some of our physical grant needs in order to support this research effort. Next month we will open a new West Ridge research building which will give us an additional 50,000 square feet. We had to borrow most of that money in order for this to happen. We did have some come with the bond issue of 2002, 2 million bucks, the rest of it we borrowed in anticipation of being able to pay it off with some of the overhead costs associated with the research activities. We are hoping to start this summer a centralized animal facility. It will a state of the art facility to house the various research animals that we have, hundreds of them, on the Fairbanks campus. This is possible as a result of the bond issue which you supported in 2002. We've also invested very heavily an infrastructure for our West Ridge campus.

Well, there are just a whole lot of things that I would like to mention but let me just wind it up here with just a couple things. I mentioned our concern for all of our campuses. And we're seeing the university being responsive to the various communities that I mentioned where we have a presence. Where we're delivering more programs, more offers. Some of it at a distance. But we're having an impact. We can see it in the numbers of people that are being served. We also are very pleased with the responsiveness within Fairbanks of our Tanana Valley campus where we are able to get from the state the old courthouse, through the bond issue we fixed it up.

The Denali Commission is going to help with some additional improvements so we can do more in the allied health area. We have a partnership with the Fairbanks North Star Borough in sharing the costs to improve the Hutchison Technical Center. So we'll be coming back on line with our programs in vocational education, in the culinary arts area, welding aviation, auto, diesel, very important programs. And we are seeing those enrollments continue to grow very rapidly. It's in response to need.

Well, in summary I'd like to say in your report you had a quote that I have used a number of times. And I think it's so important in helping to give us direction for UAF. And this is a quote that you had that came from the Kellogg Commission on the future of state and land grant university. And I'll read it. Today's university will truly be a new kind of public institution. One that is as much a first rate student university as it is a first rate research university. One that provides access to success to a much more diverse student population as easy as it reaches out to engage the larger community.

We like to think that UAF is following this model. We see progress in our research effort. We're also seeing progress in terms of our success as a student oriented university. And I'll close by encouraging you, if you have an interest, to come and see some first rate hockey tonight and tomorrow night between the Nanooks and the Sea Wolves. Thank you.