Research universities are in the business of creating the future. That’s where our students will use their education, and that’s where our research will prove its value.

Certain moments bring this home. In December 2000, Emma Brunskill, who had graduated from the UW the previous June, was named a Rhodes Scholar—our first in 20 years. So to celebrate, we gave her a party. We also invited other high-achieving UW students, including Emma’s younger sister, Amelia.

The talent in that room was inspiring. We could only imagine what those young people might be accomplishing 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. But we were also proud that UW innovations in education had helped them realize their great promise. Emma Brunskill entered the UW at the age of 15, as part of our pioneering Early Entrance Program for young students. While she was here, she worked on six different research projects in the departments of computer science, physics, geophysics, and chemistry—the kinds of opportunities that have been a centerpiece of our work to transform undergraduate education. Emma’s future, and the contributions she will undoubtedly make, will carry the imprint of her years at the University of Washington.

Students who can see and seize the possibilities of the future, new knowledge that makes those possibilities real, a society enhanced by both—these are the products of a strong and innovative university. Can we find the resources to remain that kind of university? That was a question, increasingly urgent, that we grappled with throughout the past year.

At the state level, the answer was discouraging. The long legislative session, frustrating for all involved, produced a biennial UW budget with major gaps between our resources and our needs. At a time of rising demand for higher education, the budget funds only a few more students. Despite some improvement in salaries, it leaves our faculty and staff about 15 percent behind their peers at comparable public institutions. (And of course the salary gap between the UW and private universities, with which we also compete for faculty, can be several times that 15 percent.) The budget makes no provision for the escalating costs of energy or library materials. It leaves us with core funding almost $2,000 per student behind the average of our peers—an aggregate gap of $70 million a year. It passes over our pressing need for more research space and for renewal of aging and inadequate facilities. It leaves us with a shortfall in our operating budget that will have to be made up from our reserves. And, as I write, the worsening economic situation makes it likely that even this budget will be cut during the 2002 legislative session.

Clearly, we have to seek alternatives. Tuition will continue to rise (as will financial aid). Our record-setting success in winning federal and corporate research grants will have to reach new heights. We are exploring new possibilities for income from technology transfer and self-sustaining educational programs. And we believe that private philanthropy can play a much larger role here than it has in the past.

These are not steps to “privatize” the University of Washington. We hold fast to our public mission: expanding opportunity for Washington citizens and providing knowledge and expertise to advance the state’s health, economy, and quality of life. But as public funding for higher education declines—a trend in almost every state in the nation—that public mission must depend increasingly on private resources.

The stakes are high. We draw inspiration from students like Emma Brunskill (and others you will read about in this report), from the myriad of University programs that are melding research, education, and service in exciting new ways—and from a long history of UW innovation.

More than 30 years ago, a young scientist came to the UW as a faculty member in our fledgling department of genetics. He was drawn by the chance to work with the department’s founding chairman, Herschel Roman, sometimes called “the father of yeast genetics.” Over the next decades, Leland Hartwell’s patient and brilliant research on yeast led to new understanding of how cells divide and how this process goes wrong in cancer. In 1997 he became director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Just this October, Lee Hartwell, along with two British scientists whose work built on his, won the 2001 Nobel Prize for medicine.

In uncertain times, the power of knowledge to shape the future remains clear. That’s where the University of Washington will stake its claim to public and private support.

Richard L. McCormick