(Radio Iowa) – The three presidents of the state universities discussed some of their state funding requests during Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting. Iowa State University president Wendy Winterstein says they are seeking a four-and-a-half million dollar increase in general support. “These funds….will help Iowa State to remain competitive, to ensure the success of our students and allow us to continue to drive economic impact across the state,” she says. Winterstein says the funding will allow them to address several areas. “Competitive student financial aid, Student Educational Support Services, competitive compensation for our employees, expanding innovation and entrepreneurship,” she says. ” And I have to stop for a minute and just mention that we did win entrepreneurial university of the year for the Americas that was a great award to be recognized. To support online programs, and to address financial challenges that we experienced from inflation that was so high last year.”

I-S-U is also requesting an additional ten million dollars from the Legislature to continue their STEM programs. University of Northern Iowa President Mark Nook says everyone needs to look at what the funding is doing. “It’s easy to talk about dollars to universities, and think of that in a very impersonal way that these are dollars to a university to a large organization, and lose the faces in this. Those dollars help heat our buildings, they keep the lights on, they help us hire faculty that are really committed and staff that are committed to these students to making sure they get the education they need to be able to drive the workforce needs of our state, ” Nook says. He says if you want to see the impact of our of the dollars that the state spends on the universities — look at your neighbors.

“We’re producing the accountants, we’re producing the teachers. We’re producing the superintendents, the engineers, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists of the state,” Nook says. “Without the investment in the regent institutions, that doesn’t happen in this state, the state doesn’t grow, we don’t have the next generation of leaders.” University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson talked about their request for more rural health funding. She says they are requesting 10 million dollars to start. “We’d like to have a five year commitment from the state so that we can establish what we are calling right now a rural health care partnership with the state,” Wilson says. “The goal really is to grow the healthcare workforce, to expand delivery of health care across the state, and to bump up the ability to do screenings and telehealth.” She says there are some key issues they want to address.

“The biggest chunk of the ten million is in the mental health area. And it makes sense. Forty-two-percent of adults in Iowa have reported symptoms of anxiety and depression in the recent surveys, 42 percent,” she says. “And suicide is the number one cause of death in Iowa for adults aged 25 to 39. ”

If that request is approved, the U-I would have a total recurring appropriation of 50 million dollars in five years.