Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Steve Scott

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. This is the Crimson and Gold Connection on 89.9 KRPS. This week are monthly chat with Pittsburgh State President Dr. Steve Scott. We recorded this interview on Friday, January 10th. First of all, I wanted to wish you a happy new year and I hope you're enjoying your winter break. I know the students may be away from campus, it's quiet here, but your work continues. Well Fred, thanks for having me again this morning and happy new year to you and happy new year to all your listeners from Pittsburgh State University. We certainly would wish the best for everyone and a productive and successful 2020. Hard to even imagine, it's 2020. But anyway, we've had, I think people know, I struggle a little bit over the breaks. I love to have the students on campus, I love the energy and excitement. The town's just a little quieter and campus is real quiet. And so when you live in the heart of campus, it's a pretty quiet situation. So we are, Kathy and I are really anxious for the students to get back in town, back in the dorms and bring the campus back to life.

But nonetheless, there's a lot of work that's been going on over the last couple of weeks and certainly people catching up, cleaning out their inboxes. And I even found myself working on some things that aren't doing until April. So getting a little bit ahead, but I can assure you by Monday morning, by 11 I'll be behind. That's just the way it works, but love the work, love the time of year and excited about a new semester. We're a few days also away from the new start of the legislative session up in Topeka, in May of last year, the lawmakers increased higher ed funding in Kansas by $28.4 million. That was system wide. What do you have your sights on, set on this legislative session? Well, right now, I think you'd say that we are cautiously optimistic. The state revenue picture continues to improve. Even with the latest projections that were done in early November, the state is already exceeding those projections by a considerable amount. So that's very, very encouraging that the revenue is there. And in past years, I know some legislators would say to us, we like what you do. We appreciate what you do.

We just don't have any money because of the tax bill in 2012. Really decimated, I would say, the revenue stream. That's really been corrected. So now there is money. Our concern at this point is the attention we'll turn to in an election year, tax cuts, and give money back. And certainly I'm a citizen, I pay taxes, just like everybody else, I like that idea as well. But I like to have good social services, good high patrol, good roads, certainly investing in K-12. And of course, I think that the future of our economy is based on a vibrant higher education system. So we would like to see dollars return to higher education that were cut in past years. I talked to the governor recently and one-on-one meeting and really made the pitch for addressing the wage and salary challenges that we've had. State workers over the Brownback administration did not receive very good salary increases if any at all in some years. Also our employees saw more and more responsibility to pay for their health care, their insurance

premiums, the co-pays, everything went up. So we had people really lose ground with such modest pay increases and increases on the premium side. Here's lost ground. And I talked to the governor about you can't have a great institution without having great people. And that takes dollars to invest in them, to recruit them, and also to retain them so we can retain the very, very best from the region and really nationally. So that's where we're putting our interest right now is the restoration, salary increase. I will continue to advocate for our system and for Pittsburgh State University in particular with our insurance commissioner and health care commission to try to give us a break on the health insurance premium side. That's really a challenge for our individual employees. So I think we're optimistic at this point, but you never know. This next week is a big week, the governor will release her budget. And I'll be up at the state of the state address, we'll have a reception for some legislators.

And then of course today at noon, this Friday on the 10th, we will be meeting with legislators as it was kind of a kickoff, the chamber sponsors. So a lot of work to do, but really appreciate the chamber. They will adopt and support and advocate for our interest at Pittsburgh State. They also do that on Highway 69. So there's just a great alignment of the chamber, the city, the university, and what we're advocating for in Topeka. And that makes our voice much more powerful. Also I want to bring up that Pittsburgh State is hosting a series of town halls here on campus regarding the legislative and the budget updates. And in the past, she held, I think it was one at the Overnment Student Center. There was always a great turnout for the one in the fall. I was there. The place was packed. And now there are five. One is being held on January 27th. Right. What we've done is, and I think I'm really proud of the record that we have in place over the last number of years of working to communicate in a very direct way, a very transparent way, what's going on with both the budget and what's going on in Topeka with the legislative

session. And we also talk to people about how they can help us, how our employees and their faculty and staff can help us be successful. So I think we've got a good record. Well, Dr. Smith came in as our new provost, and one of the things he thought about right off was, his observation was, we're not getting many questions in those forums. So could we create forums that are smaller? And then people might feel more comfortable stepping up and asking a question. So it accomplishes that. It also provides just more access to them. It puts us in probably in front of more people, I would guess, as we do the five, we'll be in front of more people altogether, and that's what we want. We've had some criticism in the past of our messaging that it's negative. And I think, you know, my view of the world is, if we have negative information to share about the budget or the challenges, we need to share it. We need to be very open about it, but we need to also talk about what is the whole poor of the opportunities. We've tried to do that. I think people have thought maybe the balance hasn't been there. But nonetheless, I still feel like informed employees, faculty and staff are much better

off than being kept in the dark. And so I'm excited about that. We'll have Dr. Smith sharing some information on enrollment. He'll kick all of them off, which I think is an important role for the provost to do. He'll have Doug Ball, our CFO. He'll share the financial information that we have, kind of where we are, and where the bright spots, where the continuing concerns. And then Sean Nakarato will do a legislative, not really an update, kind of a handicap in terms of going into the session, what he's seeing, and what he's concerned about, where he sees the opportunities are. And then I'm kind of the anchor leg, and I'll just kind of pull things together and make a few comments and talk about some of the, again, some of the bright spots. And then we'll see what kind of questions there are. We're going to try to limit our work to about 45 minutes and a lot of 15 minutes for a Q&A from our staff. President of Pittsburgh State University, Dr. Steve Scott, speaking about town halls taking place on campus, the next session is January 27th at 1.30 p.m. Inside the governor's room of the Overman Student Center.

I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro, and you've been listening to the Crimson Ant Gold Connection, a production of 89.9 KRPS. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.