The pledge to help build Hanson Hall isn't the first donation Herb Hanson has made to the school. In 1999, a $1.25 million gift went to honor one of his late professors.
March 29, 2006
Neal St. Anthony
Star Tribune
Herb Hanson was a just-discharged, 22-year-old Army paratrooper and a fledgling undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota business school when he knocked on Prof. Arthur Upgren's door one day 60 years ago.
Hanson was struggling with Econ 101 lectures.
"I had listened carefully and didn't understand a thing he had said," recalled Hanson, a Browns Valley, Minn., native who had just returned from U.S.-occupied Japan. "I was on the G.I. Bill and working part time for room and board. I didn't have any money. I told him that I needed to learn something practical and get a job after I graduated."
Upgren thanked the candid Hanson and told him not to quit. Upgren remembered to use more plain-talk English in his lectures. Hanson went to school year-round, worked two part-time jobs and graduated with a degree in economics in three years. Upgren was Hanson's mentor and wrote glowing letters about him to prospective employers.
"Upgren was kind and charming and turned out to be a great classroom teacher," recalled Hanson, 82, a retired investment manager from San Francisco. "He wrote letters to three big banks in San Francisco. I took a job at one of those banks for $225 a month. It was a start. I owe Upgren and the university."
Hanson and his wife, Barbara, have pledged $10 million to the planned $39.9 million expansion of the university's undergraduate business school. The school currently rejects most applicants because of its limited capacity. Of those turned away, 40 percent leave Minnesota to study elsewhere.
In ceremonies today to be attended by several hundred alumni, faculty and students, U of M President Robert Bruininks will unveil architectural plans for what will be Hanson Hall.
Jim Campbell, the retired business executive who is interim dean of the school, plans to raise an additional $5 million or so to go toward the new building and improvements to the existing business building on the west bank of the Minneapolis campus. Alumni and others will be tapped for $15 million more in scholarship funds for needy students.
The four-story Hanson Hall would connect to the existing Carlson School building by skyway. The undergraduate school, ranked 12th nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, will be able to handle a 50 percent increase in enrollment, to 2,500 students.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Minnesota House of Representatives have earmarked $26.6 million in their respective capital-spending budgets for the next two years toward the project. The Minnesota Senate, in its bonding bill passed this month, included only $13 million for the new building, or half the amount requested by the university.
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Rochester, Minn.'s goal of landing a University of Minnesota campus is still on course.
March 28, 2006
http://wcco.com/local/local_story_087172424.html
The Senate Education Committee put its stamp of approval on the concept Tuesday.
The bill commits 16.3 million in state money over the next three years toward establishing a university campus in one of Minnesota's fastest growing cities.
It would specialize in research, technology and business degrees. The authorizing legislation requires planners to avoid duplicating educational offerings at nearby schools and other University of Minnesota campuses.
The bill grew out of a higher education task force that recommended a stronger higher education presence in downtown Rochester, near the world-renowned Mayo Clinic.
March 28, 2006
Associated Press
Not one, but two Gopher football stadium bills advanced Tuesday in the state Senate. The Senate Higher Education Budget Division endorsed a University of Minnesota stadium finance plan as well as another plan the school isn't a fan of.
The university-backed proposal asks the state to come up with 50 percent of the $249 million cost for the 50,000-seat, on-campus stadium. In exchange, the state would acquire 2,840 acres of university-owned land in Rosemount.
The second proposal, sponsored by Sen. Larry Pogemiller, would prevent the university from tapping student fees or selling naming rights to a corporation to pay off its half.
Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, said he doesn't want the public asset to be used for corporate advertising. But, he added, "this is not a deal breaker."
University president Robert Bruininks said Monday that the prohibition would hamper fundraising for the stadium. TCF Bank has pledged $35 million but wants naming rights in return.
The university brought in its biggest names to press the committee to approve its bill.
"This is not a want for us. This is a need that we need very badly," Gopher football coach Glen Mason said.
Both bills now move to the Senate Finance Committee. A House panel will debate the university's plan Wednesday.
http://www.startribune.com/587/story/336462.html
House should emulate Senate's higher education emphasis.
March 28, 2006
Star Tribune
All the partisan spinning at the Legislature had some Republican observers so dizzy last week that they decried the Senate's timely approval of a strong bonding bill as a diversionary tactic.
Fortunately, most GOP senators were seeing straight. Two-thirds of them joined the DFL majority last Thursday in a no-nonsense vote to borrow nearly $1 billion for public works projects. That vote sent a tacit message to the GOP-controlled House: Get moving on the real work of this session.
The House seems ready to comply. House Speaker Steve Sviggum said Friday that a bonding bill will be on the House floor before the Easter/Passover recess. That's well before the constitutionally required May 22 adjournment. Keep to that schedule, and Minnesotans might see something they have not seen in years: a timely and orderly finish to a productive lawmaking session.
The Senate bill delivers another important message to the House and Gov. Tim Pawlenty: Don't shortchange higher education. Buildings requested by the state's colleges and universities account for most of the difference between the $845 million in general obligation bonds Pawlenty proposes to issue and the $990 million total approved by the Senate.
The Senate bill authorizes 75 percent of the amount requested by the state's two higher ed systems, the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Pawlenty proposed to fund 62 percent of the university's request and a meager 45 percent of the amount sought by the MnSCU system.
Many MnSCU campuses are dominated by the buildings in which baby boomers studied in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the students they served, those buildings are showing their age. They need the repairs, remodeling and replacement that the Senate bill would fund.
Unlike the governor, the Senate honored the priorities chosen by the governing boards of the two higher education systems, rather than picking and choosing among them. The Senate's confidence in the systems' judgment is well placed. Leaders of both systems come up with their project list through detailed, elaborate review processes that are driven by merit, not favoritism or politics. The same cannot often be said about decision-making at the Capitol.
The Senate said yes to the project that may be more important to Minnesota's future than any other on this year's lists -- a $60 million medical biosciences building at the University of Minnesota, of which the state's share would be $40 million. That was the most grievous omission from Pawlenty's list. The proposed facility is integral to the university's proposal to hire 50 new biomedical science researchers a year for the next 10 years -- the number needed to secure Minnesota's place as one of the world's bioscience industry leaders.
The biosciences building the university seeks is one of at least five such buildings needed in the next decade to house the research that feeds the biomedical industry. The Senate is taking that need seriously. The House and the governor should too.
But spending plan's $1 billion price tag is higher than Pawlenty's request
March 24, 2006
Bill Salisbury
Pioneer Press
The Minnesota Senate on Thursday voted to launch a $1 billion state construction program this spring.
That money would pay for the first of five medical biosciences buildings the University of Minnesota wants to construct over the next 10 years, and it would add scores of new classrooms, laboratories and libraries at public colleges across the state.
The bonding bill also would fund dozens of park and trail improvements, forest and wildlife area enhancements and flood-control projects. It would expand some prisons and a state hospital lockup for sexual predators.
It gives a green light to the Northstar commuter rail line from Minneapolis to Big Lake and to continued planning for a light-rail line in the Central Corridor between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis.
But some of those projects may be trimmed back in the next few weeks.
The Senate bill, which seeks to borrow $990 million to finance capital improvements, is $145 million richer than Gov. Tim Pawlenty's request for building projects, and the Republican-controlled House is almost certain to demand a lower price tag.
House Capital Investment Committee Chairman Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea, predicted the final bonding bill would be "somewhere in the $925 million of $950 million range." He said the House would pass its version before Easter.
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It's time the Legislature gave the university the lead in this.
March 6, 2006
Star Tribune
To the politicians who have been giving lip service to building a cutting-edge biosciences industry in Minnesota, Robert Bruininks sent an important message Thursday: It's time to put up or shut up.
Of course, the president of the University of Minnesota used phrases more befitting his annual State of the University address. But we hope their meaning was received as if it had been shouted at the statehouse. Minnesota cannot just talk about being a leader in synthesizing of molecular biology, medicine and agriculture to eradicate disease, prolong life and secure prosperity. It must act, and soon, to make it so. Bruininks is pointing the way.
He proposes that the Legislature create a separate, fast-track process for approving construction of at least five new biosciences laboratories at the University of Minnesota. The Minnesota Biomedical Sciences Research Facilities Authority would be authorized, initially, to issue 30-year bonds of up to $330 million, to be financed 90 percent with state dollars, 10 percent with university resources. It would have its own small governing board and would function apart from the Legislature's bonding process.
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University wants to streamline funding for biomedical research buildings before state falls farther behind competitors.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mary Jane Smetanka
March 2, 2006
In an attempt to speed up state funding in the highly competitive medical research field, the University of Minnesota is proposing a new process for funding five buildings that school officials say are critical to both the university and the state's future
In a proposal unveiled today, officials want the state to authorize $330 million in debt to create a bond fund for a new Minnesota Biomedical Sciences Research Facilities Authority. Over a decade, that group would approve state bonds for research facilities, removing approval of individual projects from the Legislature.
University officials say Minnesota is losing ground in biomedical research because the politics of bonding drags out funding and delays completion of critically needed new laboratories. The two newest research buildings on the Twin Cities campus, the Molecular and Cellular Biology Building and the McGuire Translational Research Facility, took four bonding cycles, or eight years, to get full funding.
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