tl19800111-000 "January 11, 1980 SBHE to consider Knorr's proposal Smith addresses graduates ?resident Hoke L. Smith addressed the January graduates at the ceremony held January 3 at the Towson Center. Smith was formally installed as President of the Univer-titY at the ceremony. Smith was named president May 11, 19'79, and took over the duties Ally 1, 1979. TL photo by Eric Collins by George Athas and Quincey Johnson Dr. Sheldon H. Knorr, commissioner of the State Board for Higher Education, has submitted a proposal to the board that would cut next year's freshman enroll-ment up to 15 percent and combine three area universities under one operating authority. Knorr's plan is an attempt to solve the problem of the projected enrollment declines in the 1980's and improve the quality of education in Maryland. An enrollment cut would have enormous academic and monetary effects on the schools. Knorr told the board that the cuts in freshman enrollment would force the state's universities to be more selective, thus raising admission standards and elevating the quality of education. The proposal would call for the univer-sities to look for better students rather than looking for an abiutdance of students. President Hoke Smith believes that a 15-percent cut in freshman enrollments is an oversimplified solution to the expected decline. Smith said the enrollment cut would lessen the need for remedial programs at the University. Smith also said that while an enrollment cut would bring better students to the University, it would not necessarily foster quality education because quality educa-tion cannot be determined by grade point averages. Knorr also told the board that students failing to meet higher admission standards would be able to attend the area communi-ty colleges. continued on page 8 Energy crisis hits most campuses � (CPS)�This isn't the best of times for PnYsical plant managers. Those managers are led by one Paul rinne, who leads the weightily-named Universities of Physical Plant Managers of and Colleges, and who is, fit-ital, g13/ enough, less optimistic: , 'There is a tremendous burden on ncational] facilities right now,"" .he ""With declining enrollment, dechn-ulg endowment, EPA standards, OSHA 81eAdards, handicapped standards, and Lalaintenance, the institutions are going to ""ave a tough time,"" he said. Worse yet, Knapp was responding to a gliestion about energy, which is the ttll,anagers' most troublesome problem of e moment. Managers were already Sraaning under unanticipated energy cost increases even before the Iranian oil cutoff n'eatened to f drive energy prices even aeher. administrators, for example, 4181,..1ehed campus energy costs hit $11 0�:41011 in 1978-1979, a 500 percent increase neE 1969. Though they budgeted another ase this year and appropriated $7.4 lion to make campus buildings more -efficient, they had to begin rdtsgiving break with an announce-that university energy costs for 15,140 were running a full $4 million over 'Net anyway. ale's problems aren't unique. The niversity of Connecticut's energy costs d,ave increased by $3.3 million per year, eite conservation measures that have eirepa it an estimated $4.3 million. The tolaversity of California-Berkeley is trying eel* with an estimated 40 percent in-pie'ra e hi energy costs. The University of 131;',11da planned for a 30 percent increase, eel. has gotten an increase closer to 40 per-of mid-November, it was close to 77,000 over its energy budget. ot. If we don't get special appropriations ida`navert unused faculty salaries,"" Flor-tre, xecutive Vice President John Nat- ,warned Florida Alligator, ""then we have to close down the university."" Nattress quickly qualifies the remark, saying it was ""an off-the-top-of-the-head threat,"" but it is typical of the kind of frustration college energy managers are feeling these days. Federal efforts to force them into con-servation programs have brought only mixed results. On July 16, President Carter ordered that the thermostats in all public buildings be kept at 78 degrees in the summer, and at 65 degrees after Octo-ber 1. If everyone complied, he said, the U.S. would cut its oil consumption by 250,000 barrels per day. ""We have had very few people who are unable to comply [with the standards],"" Knapp reports. On the other hand, ""it is doubtful that [turning down thermostats] will save energy."" There's no doubt the thermostat pro-gram has awakened some resentment among administrators over yet another area of governmental ""interference"" in university affairs. ""Hell no, we're not in strict compliance,"" says University of Okla-homa Physical Plant Manager Chris Mason. Mason said the university has a ""real good"" conservation program, but that it isn't like Washington's. The reason is that the university uses natural gas, not ell. ""We could shut the university down and not save a drop [of oil],"" he explains. He expects ""federal regulators will be on my back anyway."" Complying with the regulations, more-over, could cost schools a lot of money. University of Georgia Plant Director Ken Jordan told the Red & Black student paper that because campus buildings are of varying ages and have thermostats of varying applicability, he had to aim at keeping the campus at an average 78 dur-ing the summer. ""There may not be a building that has an absolute setting at 78,"" he said. The university bought a small computer system to help regulate temperatures ""on an exPerinnental basis"" this fall, but a complete, campus-wide system would cost a ""couple of million dollars."" To purchase its centralized, computer-controlled temperature system, the University of Houston spent $1.6 million. But, perhaps typically, in university energy matters, bugs in the system have kept it from being operational. Regulating thermostats by hand, how-ever, can be very hard on big campuses. Jay Sproul of the University of Colorado complains, ""There are so many buildings and so few people that just as soon as we finish setting the thermostats for a par-ticular season, it's time to change them again."" He says there are literally ""thousands"" of thermostats on his cam-pus. He estimates that a centralized control system could average $100,000 per build-ing. Yet physical plant managers have few ways of estimating how much either feder-ally- or campus-initiated conservation pro-grams will save them, though Knapp promises central control systems can pay for themselves in ""two or three years."" Southern Illinois University at Edwards-ville, for one, experimented with energy conservation in August when it shortened summer session weeks from five to four days. Now the university is considering trying it again later in the school year. Assistant Provost Dr. Earl Beard, how-ever, notes, ""There really is no precise way to prove savings."" Administrators readily offer estimates of energy savings nevertheless. The University of New Mexico claims its con-servation program is saving $900,000 a year. Oregon State says it saved $400,000 in 1978-79. The University of Alabama said its summer 1979 energy bill was $130,000 below the summer 1978 bill. Asked how the savings were made, Alabama Finance Vice President Robert Wright offhandedly explained, ""They're turning out the lights, cutting down on the use of air conditioners, and mostly doing what they can do themselves,"" Despite hand-wringing and financial risks, such informal measures seem more typical of university energy programs than formal campus-wide control efforts. Northwest Missouri State University, for example, put all its security personnel in Cushman scooters, while Iowa State sold the physical plant department's trucks in favor of six mopeds. Iowa State and Iowa, however, are encouraging their depart-ments to use gasohol�potentially a major industry in that farm state�instead of gas in all school vehicles. At the University of Arizona, an ad-ministration computer was programmed to help match students with carpoolers, but the program has been disappointing. Lake Erie College and Garfield Senior Col-lege in Painesville, Ohio, hove been more successful with a program that gives an $18 tuition discount on three-credit courses to students who carpool to and from classes. Such measures, however, haven't dis-couraged administrators from seeking longer-range solutions. The University of Illinois, which expects to spend $1 million more on energy in 1980 than in 1979, has already allocated $500,000 for the first phase of converting a university power plant from oil to natural gas. The government, which is trying to en-courage plants to convert from oil to coal, has started a -high sulphur coal demon-stration"" plant at Georgetown University. The pollution from the plant, according to Richard Stephens of the Department of Energy, will be under Washington, D.C., effluence standards. The University of Kansas also con-sidered building a new power plant, one that would burn waste and wood. Plans were tabled when Kansas discovered the plant would cost $10-20 million to build. Less ambitiously, Harvard spent $750,000 in August to purchase a Gulf Oil gas station near campus."
