photo by: Peter Hancock

University of Kansas Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little outlines KU's budget request for the 2017-2018 school year during a meeting of the Kansas Board of Regents in Wichita, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016.

Wichita ? After taking deep budget cuts for the current academic year, the University of Kansas and most other state universities are seeking only modest enhancements for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Universities offered their initial requests during a Board of Regents budget workshop in Wichita on Tuesday.

“My most basic wish would be not to be cut,” KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said. “One of the most difficult things is to plan what you’re doing when you don’t know what your resources are.”

KU included only two items in its list of proposed budget enhancements for next year: $1.3 million for enhanced education services that target at-risk, nontraditional students to help them succeed in their freshman year; and $5 million over two years to expand the KU Medical Center’s residency program in Wichita.

Gray-Little said KU hopes to launch a program that has already been dubbed the “Jayhawk Success Academy,” which would mainly target incoming students with a combination of factors that may put them at risk of failing or dropping out.

Those include first-generation college students who may come from lower-income families and have less-than-stellar scores on college admission tests, and military veterans who have been away from an academic environment for some years and may need extra help making the transition back to school.

“Those categories of students have a lower success rate,” she said. “We want to focus on those students.”

The program would begin the summer of their freshman year with special courses and would continue through the first two semesters, offering those students mentors and additional advising to help them get off to a good start in college.

The second request, expanding the medical residency program, is aimed at addressing a shortage of general practice physicians in much of rural Kansas, Gray-Little said.

“This is consistent with the ongoing goal to increase the number of physicians,” Gray-Little said.

Currently, she said, a new health education building is under construction at the medical school in Kansas City, Kan. Increasing the size of the residency program in Wichita would enable KU to add 42 students to the first class there, and within four years could expand the size of the Wichita campus to 480 students.

“If we were able to make that increase, our total first-year class of medical students would be close to 250,” she said. “That’s a very large medical school. It would be the next step in trying to address the physician shortage.”

Most of the other universities submitted modest requests as well.

Fort Hays State University, for example, is seeking a little more than $1.5 million for programs aimed at increasing retention and graduation rates, especially among Hispanic students, and $680,000 to expand its online instruction program.

Wichita State University is seeking $2 million to help it establish a Department of Chemical Engineering.

And Emporia State University is asking for $500,000 to expand its nursing school, plus $715,700 to enhance academic programs related to science, technology, engineering and math.

But Kansas State University and Pittsburg State University offered more ambitious plans.

Pittsburg State submitted requests totaling $36.2 million, including $17.2 million for building expansion and renovations to its business school; $15 million to expand its Kansas Technology Center; and $4 million to expand its nursing program.

K-State offered the most expensive package of enhancements. Among them is $150 million in bonding authority, plus $10 million in additional state funding, for the first phase of a large-scale, $574 million plan to upgrade its College of Agriculture.

K-State is also seeking $3.1 million in additional, ongoing funding for its geosciences program, most of which would be used for debt service on a proposed new $30 million building for its Department of Geology.

Tuesday’s budget workshop is just the first step in building a budget for the next fiscal year. Next month, the board is expected to finalize a request for the entire Regents system and submit it to Gov. Sam Brownback’s office for consideration.

Brownback’s office will then review the requests, along with requests from all other state agencies and programs, and decide which, if any, will be included in his budget proposal to the 2017 Legislature.