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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Citing increases in the budget, new additions to the faculty and an ever-consistent crop of talented students, UF President Bernie Machen presented an optimistic outlook in his State of the University speech Thursday afternoon.

Addressing the UF Faculty Senate in its first meeting of the semester, Machen gave a positive message, placing a heavy emphasis on launching the university onto the global stage.

"We will need to move away from the notion of UF as a university based in Gainesville, Florida, the United States [and] the Western Hemisphere," Machen said. "We will need to complete a transition we have already set in motion, from UF as a global presence to UF as a global beacon."

To back his claim that the university is a flourishing institution, Machen pointed to figures that showed a 6 percent increase in UF's state funding this year.

In addition, Machen boasted of the $678 million that UF has received in faculty research awards this year, an 18 percent boost from the previous year.

Although $77 million of the finances come from federal stimulus money, Machen argued that even without that money, the university would still have received more faculty research award money than the $574 million in faculty research awards received in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Having spent parts of his summer traveling in Asia, Machen also made note of how countries like China are pumping a stream of resources into their schools to rival those in the United States.

"In other words, the game is changing on us again," he said. " And though it won't happen immediately, if we don't adapt to these new circumstances, we risk falling behind."

Although he acknowledged a push from neighboring universities within the state, Machen did not specifically address the issue of UF being leap-frogged by the University of Miami in the latest national rankings of colleges by U.S. News & World Report.

In a brief interview following his address, Machen dismissed the report, saying that students shouldn't pay much attention to the numbers, considering the restraints of resources for public universities.

Instead, Machen said both students and faculty should be excited about the upcoming year.

"This is a great time to be at UF," Machen said. "I'm serious. I think this is going to be a great year."

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