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Education | UW kicks off year of 150th-anniversary events on Astini News

Originally published September 13, 2011 at 6:50 PM | Page modified September 13, 2011 at 7:39 PM

In 1861, 28 years before Washington became a state, the smattering of people who lived here decided that the territory needed a university. On 10 acres of donated land in downtown Seattle, the school that would later become the University of Washington was created.

On Tuesday, the UW launched a school-year-long celebration of its founding 150 years ago. The kickoff took place at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle, the approximate location of the UW's first building.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn — all three alumni — were on hand to pay homage to their years at the UW and to talk about the importance of higher education to the region's economy.

UW officials hope to use the anniversary to showcase the school's importance, both as an academic powerhouse and an economic engine. And the celebration will also help the UW in its never-ending efforts to get private donors to contribute, said the UW's new president, Michael Young.

Private funding has become especially crucial for the school because its state funding has been cut by 50 percent over the past three years. The state's revenue forecast for the quarter will be out Thursday and could lead to another round of cuts.

Gregoire said the state "will not let tough economic times close the doors to higher education" nor let the economy "diminish the quality of education we provide."

The celebration, along with an appearance at a CityClub forum later in the day, was also an opportunity for Young, in a roomful of movers and shakers, to air his thoughts about the UW's importance. Young, formerly president of the University of Utah, started the job in July.

"Every time I turn around, I find out something really remarkable about this university," Young said. Among those things:

• About 30 percent of the 5,800 students who will start at the UW this fall are first-generation college students. "This will change not only their lives, but the lives of their families for generations to come," Young said.

• The UW received $1.5 billion in research funding last year — among public universities, it's one of the largest recipients of research funding in the country. Young said he does not expect those dollars to diminish significantly in the years to come.

• The UW ranks 16th among 500 universities around the world for its academic and research performance, both Young and Gregoire noted. That ranking was released over the summer by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. (U.S. News & World Report's ranking of national universities, which came out Tuesday, ranked the UW lower — it is 42nd on the list of the country's top schools.)

• When the UW was founded, the population of Seattle was only about 250 people, some of them still living in the wagons they'd used to get here from back east. Young said the first president, Asa Shinn Mercer, was also the school's sole instructor and its construction manager.

During the CityClub forum hosted by KING-TV anchor Jean Enersen later Tuesday, Young said that UW budget cuts "put the cost increasingly on the backs of students. It's a tax increase, and a regressive one." The UW raised tuition by 20 percent this year to make up for the budget shortfall.

The UW's biggest concern is that raising tuition will keep some students from going to the UW, Young said, although so far, the school believes that isn't happening. The UW put more money into its scholarship fund this year, and will pick up tuition for about one-fourth of its students through the Husky Promise scholarship program for students whose family income is below a certain threshold.

Young said his other concern about budget cuts is that the UW's top faculty members could leave the university for better-paying jobs. "It doesn't take that long to destroy a great university — it takes a very, very long time to build one," he said.

Young predicted it will be harder for students to gain admittance to the UW in the future — not because of an increase in out-of-state enrollment, but because the UW has become "a highly selective school." This year's applicant pool was 25,000 students for 5,800 slots, he said.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com

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