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Testimony on House Bill 2560 before the House Education Committee,
Michael Reardon, Provost, February 23, 2005

I am Michael Reardon, provost of Portland State University. I am here to oppose HB 2560, but I want to begin my testimony by stating unequivocally that PSU has enjoyed a long and very positive relationship with Rep. Mitch Greenlick. Therefore, it is difficult to disagree so publicly with such a great friend of the University. Rep. Greenlick has been a member of the PSU faculty and is credited with being the leader on the development of the joint PSU-OHSU-OSU Master in Public Health Program. That program, which builds on the strengths of three unique institutions, is ranked 2nd in the nation. The rankings reflect the vision that Rep. Greenlick had for the program, the highly productive faculty and staff who work in that area, and the talented students who come to our universities for this degree.

Rep. Greenlick has always been an advocate of Portland State University – not to mention an avid fan of our top-ranked Viking Basketball team! He even gets partial credit for his leadership role in forming the part-time faculty union on our campus. Today he is actively involved in our campus as a member of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Board and the Judaic Studies Advisory Board. His commitment to our campus is strong, and it has been consistently strong for many years.

Portland State University regrettably finds itself in the position of opposing Rep. Greenlick’s bill – not because we don’t support the concepts of improving the quality and recognition of the State’s largest university, and not because we don’t support collaboration with OHSU. The legislation proposes major structural changes in the governance of Portland State University. There has not been adequate discussion on our campus or involving our colleagues at OHSU to provide Representative Greenlick or others with an analysis of how the University would transition to a public corporation, how much that transition would cost, and what systems would be needed at PSU in order to be separate from the Oregon University System.

HB 2560 is a bill that would do several things:

1. Make PSU a public corporation;
2. Remove PSU from the Oregon University System, yet maintain an affiliation for purposes of program approval;
3. Establish a new Portland Metropolitan Universities Board of Directors; and
4. Plan for a merger of PSU with OHSU.

While we have not had the time to conduct a thorough analysis of the impact these changes would have on PSU, we are certain that there would be costs associated with the public corporation change, the creation of a new board, and the planning associated with the merger. Additionally, we are unable to provide you with the costs or the timeline PSU would need to become a public corporation, however OHSU reports that it took them 5 years of planning to implement the change, and we suspect that our timeline for making the transition would be similar.

Though we oppose the concept of a merger with OHSU at this time, we wholeheartedly endorse Representative Greenlick’s goals of improving the quality and national rankings of Portland State University; and we also support the goals of developing programmatic and research collaborations with OHSU. In order to be successful in these efforts, we believe the State would need to make a major funding commitment to both PSU and to OHSU. It is hard for us to imagine ways in which we could spend the next year preparing (since the bill goes into effect in 2006) to become a public corporation, while at the same time successfully managing what (when mandatory costs are calculated) could be a nearly 6 percent cut in our education and general funding from the State, and continuing to meet the demands of our increasing student body. Our promise to the OUS Board, to the Governor, and to the Legislature is that we would not complain about the challenges we face as a result of reduced state funding, but in exchange we have respectfully asked that no unfunded mandates be directed to us.

Portland State University is ready to work with the Legislature and others on building programs of national ranking that lead to a top-ranked comprehensive university in Portland. While the state funding has been limited, it is important to recognize those areas where we have made targeted investments and the impact these have had on establishing PSU’s regional and national reputation.

1. U.S. News and World Report continues to give an “outstanding academic program” ranking to our undergraduate education program called University Studies, specifically in the areas of Internships/Co-Ops, Senior Capstone, First-Year Experiences, Learning Communities and Service Learning. Other schools that share this distinction include Duke, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of North Carolina.
2. Portland State University’s graduate programs in Urban Studies and Planning and Social Work are nationally ranked.
3. PSU’s distance-delivered Master’s in Business Administration program, was ranked in the top 25 of all e-MBA programs in the nation in its first year. It joined schools such as Arizona State, the University of Florida, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in this ranking.
4. PSU is building a world-class Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory and a university transportation center. The faculty in transportation planning and engineering have doubled their research since 1999 and average more than $1 million in external funding every year.
5. PSU has been designated by the U.S. National Security Agency as a Center of Academic Excellence, due primarily to the faculty work in computer security – an issue of tremendous importance today.

These rankings and evaluations demonstrate that when PSU is given targeted resources to invest in program areas the result is a national reputation and increased recognition.

I want to now address some of the exciting partnerships that exist between PSU and OHSU, and these examples highlight the work both institutions are doing (under tight fiscal constraints) to build excellence. These have occurred naturally and without the need for a formal legislative mandate or merger. Our goal is to further enhance these partnerships and build more, where the interests of both institutions can be met. These initiatives are successful because they have emerged from faculty collaborations – not because they have been mandated.

PSU and OHSU have many partnerships in research areas of mutual strength. These include work on intelligent robotics; ways to design and implement computer support systems to help programmers write better programs; managing and processing large amounts of data; computer security; biometrics and signal isolation for functional neurosurgery; mental health; geriatric issues; alcoholism; nanoscience; bioscience; and more.

PSU and OHSU have several programmatic connections. I have already mentioned one of our most successful program partnerships – the Master in Public Health Program. Faculty from PSU’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science work closely with the faculty from OHSU’s OGI School of Engineering. We also have linked library resources and are partners in the Portland Research and Education Network, which provides Internet2 capacity to the region.

PSU and OHSU faculty have appointments at both institutions. This has been a long standing tradition between the institutions and include faculty in the sciences, social sciences, and professional schools. The new chair of the Chemistry Department at PSU, Dr. Kevin Reynolds, works in the areas of biological synthesis of chemical compounds, particularly those used in pharmacology. PSU was able to attract Dr. Reynolds because of the research partnerships available through an association with OHSU.

These are just some very general examples of our work together. Another important collaboration is between our undergraduate pre-health professions programs and OHSU. Portland State has consistently had a very large number of students who are admitted to OHSU’s medical, dental, and nursing programs every year.

Again, PSU and OHSU have, in effect, built a very strong partnership – and we did it without formal legislation or structural mandates. The beneficiaries of this relationship are our faculty, students, and community. More certainly needs to be done and encouraged, and we would welcome the Legislature’s financial support for our programs, our students, and our faculty. The fundamental weakness of Representative Greenlick’s bill is an assumption that removing PSU from OUS, establishing a new board, and merging the two institutions is guaranteed to work. OSHU has already discussed problems associated with other mergers of this type, the UCSF-Stanford merger, for example. As well as the challenges they have faced with the merger of OGI. The only part of HB 2560 that isn’t mandated within the next two years is the merger of the two institutions. Under this bill, PSU would leave OUS and report to a new board. If, for some reason, the merger didn’t happen and no new funds were available to PSU, we would be in a very challenging place and find it difficult to meet the needs of our growing student population. Furthermore we would be in direct conflict with OHSU for resources allocated to the Portland Metropolitan Universities Board.

Finally, the legislation is silent on the funding needed to fulfill Rep. Greenlick’s goals and objectives. There are comparisons made between Portland and Seattle all the time. The comparisons between PSU and the University of Washington must begin by looking at resources and state funding. Washington is a bigger state – in terms of population and resources. The University of Washington is bigger than PSU in terms of programs, students served, and state funding. Building the University of Washington in Portland will take more than merging us with OHSU. It will require substantial amounts of funding.

In closing, while I’m not an expert on divorce, I can say that once PSU is divorced from OUS we may find this solution to have been expensive, difficult, and everlasting. These changes in governance, in order to be successful, must involve faculty and staff in the decision-making process, and be extremely well-planned and have funding to support the transition.