UW Tacoma tightens its belt

Due to budget constraints, Terrain will go on sabbatical for now, but we’ll find other ways to stay in touch

When we began to collect ideas for this issue of Terrain, we wanted to share with you some of the ways in which our faculty’s writing has a significant impact on our students, our community and beyond. And we’ve done that in this issue. The scholarship and creative activity that goes on within a university is vital to the high-quality educational experience a university provides. Recently, however, the big story at UW Tacoma has turned out to be the economy and impending budget reductions (please see “The recession hits home”).

So, I would also like to tell you about one of the measures we’re putting in place to address our budget constraints. We are employing a number of strategies; one, in particular, concerns this magazine.

Terrain has been an important part of the way we communicate the incredible accomplishments of our institution: our faculty, staff, students and alumni. Terrain has won multiple awards for its design and content, and we have been consistently proud of both the publication and the staff who have worked with a great degree of creativity and diligence to produce it over the years.

During these difficult economic times, however, it is important that we focus our resources in those areas that impact the most critical aspects of our mission, namely those that directly impact the education of our students, the responsibilities of our faculty and staff and our priorities within the broader community.

It is for this reason that we have spent many hours analyzing our available resources and subsequently making some difficult choices about the way we steward the support we get from state government, citizens and donors. With that in mind, reluctantly, we have decided to temporarily suspend the print publication of Terrain and replace it with an online magazine beginning in the fall.

We will continue to explore cost-effective ways to provide you with news and stories of our growing campus and the successes of our students and faculty, including newsletters, email and online formats. If you would like to be sure that you receive our e-mail newletters, please send your name and e-mail address to: uwtnews@u.washington.edu.

We are confident that this new approach to our communications will allow us to keep you informed of exciting developments at our institution and in our ongoing community partnerships, but in a way that is fiscally responsive to the economic challenges we face.

In this, our “farewell for now” issue, I hope you enjoy learning about several of our talented faculty authors. It will show you how much we value your continued interest in and support of UW Tacoma, and how seriously we have dedicated ourselves to providing access to high-quality education and contributing to the economic development of the South Puget Sound.