VCU Board of Visitors approves 2003-2004 budget

By Pamela DiSalvo Lepley

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia Commonwealth University Board of Visitors today approved the university’s revised $550 million budget for fiscal year 2003-2004.  

The board originally approved the 2003-2004 budget plan a year ago.  The budget was updated because of changes over the year that include additional cuts in state funding, increases in tuition and fees, and growing student enrollment.

“The budget reflects the fiscal realities of the Commonwealth and the challenge of dealing with the loss of $44 million in state support since 2002,” said VCU President Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D.

The revised budget represents a four percent increase over the 2002-2003 spending plan.  Budget priorities include:

• Additional funding for need-based student financial assistance of $375,000 on top of an additional $375,000 provided in 2002-2003.

• Restoration of some class sections and adjunct faculty eliminated in budget reductions last fall.

• Providing faculty and classified staff pay increases of 2.25 percent, as approved by the General Assembly, effective in late November of this year.

The 2003-2004 revised budget is based on a projected enrollment of 26,700 for fall 2003, an increase of about 670 students above enrollment for fall 2002.

In April, the board approved tuition and fees increases for the upcoming academic year.  Tuition and fees for full-time, undergraduate Virginia students were set at $4,869, an increase of $651.  Out-of-state students rates were set at $17,213, an increase of $2,025.

In other actions, the board re-elected Dr. W. Baxter Perkinson, Jr. to a second term as rector of the VCU Board of Visitors.  He became rector in 2002 and was first appointed to the board in 1996 by then-Gov. George Allen.  Perkinson also is a member of the VCU Health System Board of Directors.

Perkinson is founder of Virginia’s largest dental practice, serves as a clinical professor of dentistry at VCU and is a noted landscape artist.  He is a 1970 graduate of the VCU School of Dentistry, and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond in 1966.