This week with the Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids ...

The Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids will take part in a wonderful joint all-Metro Rotary Club Meeting on Thursday, November 19, 2009.

At Ron Corbett's victory celebration on Tuesday night at the IBEW Hall on Wiley Blvd., I had the chance to talk to Doug Laird, our Club's President-Elect about the upcoming event. It will be a wonderful speaker in Doug Olberman, who suffers from polio.

The meeting will be at Kirkwood Community College Continuing
Education Center on November 19 at 11:30 A M. Admittance will be only
with a ticket and we don't believe there will be an opportunity to purchase at
the door.

The speaker will be Doug Olberman, an attorney from Cedar Falls, who
will speak in support of PolioPlus. Doug was struck with Polio when he was
8 years old and slept in an iron lung for over 50 years while graduating from
college and law school and enjoying a successful law practice for 29
years.

Tickets are $20. Please let Larry Christy (363-6301)(crrotary@mchsi.com) know as soon as
possible if you want a ticket. He will bill your Rotary account. $20
tickets can also be purchased on the Cedar Rapids West web site (www.crwestrotary.org).

Ripples From the Rapids, written by Editor Larry Christy, the following was mentioned about our program for Monday, November 2, 2009 for the Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids.

DR. BEN ALLEN, PRESIDENT, THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN
IOWA

Benjamin J. Allen was named the ninth president of the
University of Northern Iowa in April 2006. His educational background
includes a B.S. in Business Economics from Indiana University and an M.A. and
Ph.D. in Economics from The University of Illinois. Before joining the
University of Northern Iowa, he was Vice President for Academic Affairs and
Provost at ISU.

The University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls was founded in
1876. It has an instructional faculty of over 850 and more than 120
undergraduate majors. Its student body is composed 92% Iowans. The
University’s 2009 fall enrollment was 13 thousand including 11.1 thousand
undergraduate students and 1.9 thousand graduate
students.

Dr. Allen is still excited about being President of
the University of Northern Iowa despite the current difficult financial
challenges like the current across-the-board 10-percent budget cut for fiscal
2010 the Regent Universities are all facing. The new budget reduction equates to
an approximately $8.8 million additional cut for UNI. Declining funding
presents a bigger problem for UNI as the University relies more heavily on state
funding than the UI or ISU. This cut along with recent decreases in state
appropriations represents a reduction in state funds for UNI of $23 million, or
25 percent, since November 2008.

Dr. Allen set a priority to move UNI from a “very good”
undergraduate educational experience to a “great” undergraduate educational
experience by strengthening its already strong liberal arts programs and
selecting a handful of other programs like accounting for additional investment
and strengthening. He wants UNI to be the leading academic institution in
the state in addressing Pre-K through 12 issues and producing the best possible
teachers (approximately 25% of Iowa’s current teachers graduated from
UNI). Doing this has required increased collaborations, better connection
to the Pre-K-12 effort and the need to grow enrollment both from Iowa and out of
state.

More state funding, not less, is needed. Dr. Allen says the
funding cuts will require substantial, structural changes to the university and
sizable slashing of programs and initiatives will be necessary. Everything
is on the table; salary reductions, temporary layoffs/furloughs, a tuition
surcharge, postponing non-essential maintenance and repairs, potential program
eliminations and selling of non-essential assets will be considered.

He hopes to seize on opportunities to collaborate
wherever possible with the UI and ISU and he wants to retain the guiding
principles of the university and keep them intact throughout this process.
Reductions will be made as strategically as possible.

Our next Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids meeting will feature the following program.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Noon
THE CROWNE PLAZA HOTEL
DAVE VAUDT,

AUDITOR of STATE OF IOWA

Robin Tucker