Even with massive budget cuts, the UI is looking to grow by the hundreds.

With the Iowa Promise initiative, UI officials plan to add 100 new tenured faculty positions and increase enrollment by 100 students each year over a five-year period, said UI Provost Wallace Loh.

Formed before recent budget cuts were announced, the Iowa Promise may now take longer to complete than the five years officials had originally planned.

Although some question the university’s ability to add new positions and students during the budget crisis, Loh emphasized the importance of considering growth rather than only downsizing.

“I think the worst thing you can do is to think cut, cut, cut,” he said. “You also have to think build, build, build for the future … so we don’t wake up and say, ‘Wow the university has been decimated.’ ”

UI Director of Admissions Michael Barron said the university will not lower admissions standards in order to add more students, instead focusing on more aggressive recruiting methods.

“[One hundred new students] is not going to affect quality in the sense that we won’t be more generous with our admission offers,” he said. “It certainly wouldn’t make sense to achieve a goal by lowering one’s standards.”

The added enrollment could bring in roughly $1 million in tuition revenue, Loh said.

While the university will take in the extra money from tuition, it must also take into account how much is spent on a student over the four years he or she attends the university.

But, Loh said, the additional students would be spread out over the hundreds of class sections and is a low enough number to avoid adding much cost to the university.

Revenue garnered from the added tuition would “go right back to the students” by funding other areas of the Iowa Promise, such as adding more first-year seminars and establishing living-learning communities aimed at increasing retention, Loh said.

The goal to add 100 tenured faculty positions comes in the form of “cluster hirings” by the initiative’s Task Force on Research and Creative Excellence, said Michael Cohen, the task force’s chairman. After identifying five to 10 global issues such as water sustainability, the task force will work with departments to hire 10 new positions for each area of focus.

The new positions, funded by money set aside for the initiative, will fill spots left open in departments after losing 100 faculty in the past seven to eight years, as well as the other spots that may be left open after potential layoffs due to budget cuts, Loh said.

Although some question adding positions during discussions of layoffs, Loh said it may have a positive effect.

“In a sense, hiring these positions also helps alleviate some of the pressures caused by positions that have been eliminated,” he said.

Members of the task force said the goal of building expertise in specific areas is to increase the quality of education while also enhancing the UI’s reputation in the U.S. and internationally.

“If you think about a professional football team, you have to be strong in every position,” Cohen said. “You also really need to be superb in some.”