Robb Murray

MANKATO — He was really just here to have a look around. But after two hours with students, faculty and administrators, Tom Rukavina got the grand tour of some of Minnesota State University’s proudest programs.

Rep. Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, chair of the House Higher Education Committee, made a three-day swing through southern Minnesota this week and visited 10 campuses, including MSU and both campuses of South Central College.

The MSU portion of his institutions visit started off with a big round-table meeting with coffee and doughnuts for everyone, and ended with the Iron Range representative and his posse being shuffled from one high-tech lab to the next. He heard from students about tuition and textbooks, from faculty about salaries and from everyone about technology.

It began, like all things in higher education, with a meeting.

MSU President Richard Davenport presided over a meeting with faculty, vice presidents, students, various high-ranking members of the MSU and MnSCU administrations and a handful of lawmakers.

Concern raised: Faculty salaries are too low.

Rukavina’s comment: “It’s atrocious that our faculty salaries are at about the 40th percentile, while at the same time our MnSCU two-year college salaries are in the 80th.”

Concern raised: The last bonding bill that passed should have been bigger.

Rukavina’s comment: “We in the Democratic Farmer Labor Party have done a terrible job in holding our own on this tax issue.”

Concern raised: While last year’s tuition increase of 4 percent was relatively small, it’s nearly doubled in the last 10 years.

Rukavina’s comment: “It’s embarrassing the way we’ve let things spin out of control.”

From there, Rukavina and a contingent of MSU administrators and faculty went for a walk. First stop, Fred Slocum’s political science class.

Rukavina looked around the room and asked students to voice their concerns about higher education.

For a while there was silence. Eventually, students spoke up.

Concern raised: What will you do about the high price of textbooks?

Rukavina’s comment: “We set aside $500,000 for a pilot program (to find ways to make textbooks more affordable) ... We don’t know what the program’s gonna do but hopefully it’ll do some good.”

There were a few other scattered comments, but overall the class was pretty quiet, which prompted this comment from Rukavina: “I was hoping you’d raise a little more hell here and question authority like we used to do.”

From there Rukavina headed over to the Trafton Science Center where faculty members and a representative from the Minnesota Center for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence showed him their labs.

Millions of dollars in high-tech equipment fills the lab space in Trafton, the largest academic building in the MnSCU system. Trafton is also the building in the middle of the most expensive transformation — more than $50 million to plan, add to and renovate it.

Eventually, in the middle of his tour, he had to be pulled away while viewing a vehicle in the automotive engineering lab. He was due at South Central College where he was scheduled to tour the graphic arts lab, the new liberal arts and sciences offices, and to have lunch prepared by SCC’s culinary arts students.

Such is the morning of a committee chair.