Provost delivers 'State of the Campus' address

IU Provost Karen Hanson delivered her second "State of the Campus" speech Tuesday, in front of members of the Bloomington Faculty Council at the Indiana Memorial Union.

Hanson stuck with the current administration's talking points – research, admissions and the hiring of top-level faculty – and put forward the idea of making 10th street a "research corridor" that would centralize research space.
      
"The idea is that if we co-locate a number of the centers that come under our Vice Provost for Research," she said, "we can have some shared staff, some prospects for interesting discussion, because people won't have to walk a mile to see a colleague that's working on a problem adjacent to theirs."
      
Hanson also addressed some of the financial problems facing the University. In a question-and-answer session after the speech, one faculty member said that IU's budgeting is dependent on a large freshman class, and suggested reworking budgets to lower the number of undergraduates and increase the graduate and professional student population.

She also spoke on student loans, an issue that is affecting students and the University alike.

"The value of our endowment has fallen. We do know that the student loan situation is very difficult, and the savings that people put into various vehicles to help fund their children's educations are hurting," Hanson said. "We do try our best to help students through their degrees, but if they're losing their resources at the same time we're losing our resources we may hit some very rough patches."