Suresh Garimella has been president of the University of Arizona for about a year and a half. And it’s been an eventful tenure so far for the 23rd president of the university. He arrived in the midst of a budget crisis — the school had a more than $100 million hole to fill.
UA was also one of nine universities invited by the Trump administration last year to sign what it called the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education; the school ultimately declined.
Garimella recently stopped by KJZZ to talk about all of that — as well as some of the other challenges higher education is facing more broadly — but the conversation started with the budget and when he looked at the UA’s books right now, how they look.
Full conversation
SURESH GARIMELLA: You know, a lot of higher education institutions are actually needing to reconsider their financial models and things like that. So I was not too worried about the deficit that we’d heard. Again, there was a deficit of $177 million is what the number was that was thrown around. And as you know, we closed that deficit within the first nine months.
And so I came in October of ’24 and July 1, ’25, we started the year with no deficit. And to me, that was a very important priority because first of all, the campus community, the morale was low. There was this drip, drip, drip of bad news. And it was important to me to close that story, balance our budget and focus on the things that the U of A has always been known for.
It’s an old university, it’s a land grant, it’s one of the top 20 public universities in the country in terms of research. We bring a billion dollars of research in. So it was important to me to focus on that. But it was also important that we balance our budget without sort of firing a bunch of staff.
So we actually, I made a point of emphasizing that we must give some raises to our staff and faculty. We also froze our tuition for our in state students. We’ve done that now for a third year in a row. So we didn’t do it in perverse ways. And even the way we balanced it, we cut 70% in my office, we cut about 22% across administrative units and about 3% in colleges.
And so the way we balanced, I think I wanted to show that we care about academics and holding that as harmless as we could. So I’m very pleased with where we got and the whole campus had to cooperate, collaborate in this process. And I think the campus is happier as a result of where we are today.
MARK BRODIE: So you mentioned research funding. I want to ask you about that because there’s been so much talk about especially money from the federal government not being there or being threatened or actually taken away. U of A, obviously, as you mentioned, a big research university. Where are you in terms of securing federal grants?
GARIMELLA: Yeah, certainly the situation with federal grants is a little uncertain right now. And there have been some grants that have been challenged and such, but the U of A is doing very well, for one thing.
What I want to emphasize is that it all depends on the kind of work you’re doing also. When we came here, my vice president for research and myself, we looked at our strengths and said, let’s grow our strengths. Let’s invest in our greatest strengths, and that will grow the research funding. And so what we picked was we’re number one in the world really in space and optical sciences. So how can we have that help the national security side of things, right?
So space and national security was one emphasis area. Every university is working on AI, but we wanted to apply AI to improving health outcomes, especially rural health outcomes. We chose mining and critical minerals. Of course, Arizona is a mining state. And it’s a critical national area of importance. So that was another.
Of course, we’ve always been really, really good at water resources and arid region agriculture. So that was another area. And fusion energy research. So these are the five that we picked because we have strengths in those areas. We picked these in October and November of ’24.
So this happened before the election. And yet we’re very pleased that the federal government now is emphasizing those areas as being important to them. And so I am quite confident that we will continue to grow our research portfolio.
The other piece of this is we also are focused on working with the private sector. For example, fusion. There is $10 billion or so of venture capital in it, and we’re trying to attract some of the companies to come set up in our tech park, etc. We need to get better at working with foundations with philanthropic giving and such.
I’m actually very optimistic about continued growth in our research and we’re supporting our faculty through any transitions with a bridge funding program and things like this so that we can tide them over across little challenging times.
BRODIE: Have you had projects that you’ve had to stop? Not necessarily in those five areas that you’ve really sort of emphasized here, but in others. There’s obviously much more research going on at the university than just those. Have you had professors who have lost their projects or projects that have gone away?
GARIMELLA: We have. And you know, that’s come and gone too, right. We had some NIH grants, for example, that were stopped and they were reinstated afterwards. So the overall on the billion dollar budget, certainly the few professors who are affected, it is very an unfortunate situation for them, but it’s not been a large proportion at all. It’s been a fairly small fraction of our funding.
And in instances like that, we are providing bridge funding. Particularly we’re focusing the bridge funding on graduate student support. If a student has been working for three years, four years on their Ph.D. and they have a year left to go, we want to support them to finish their program.
So I think between that, I mean, there’s a lot of angst, of course, but we’re working hard to diversify our portfolio of resources and funding, and I think we’ll do OK.
BRODIE: What are you hearing from international students at U of A? I mean, there’s been so much talk about if they leave the country, will they be allowed back? Might they be taken off the street and held somewhere and ultimately deported? What have you heard, and what kinds of step have you tried to take to help your students who are from other countries?
GARIMELLA: Yeah. Well, I will just say that as somebody who’s gone through all this, it was a long time back, but I came here as an international student. And as you know, the country is built on immigration. So I think we will always value the importance of immigration in this country.
Of course, we are very careful and disciplined about following all the rules that are set. Our approach, Mark, has been to support our international students to the best of our ability. And we do that quietly. We provide them all the information they need. We give them any alerts that they should be familiar with.
I don’t think it’s actually helpful to them or it doesn’t serve a purpose for us to make big, pronouncements about this. But I would say that if you asked our international students, they would probably say they felt very well supported by our international programs office and such.
The flip side of all this is that we’re beginning now that the budget issues are behind us — to some extent, we always have to be vigilant. But I was recently in Taiwan and led a group, a small group with me, and we’re greatly deepening our partnership with the country of Taiwan.
We’re also doubling down on our study abroad program. So all this to me is part of the international engagement. We want to support our international students. We want to build bridges to specific universities, companies, governments overseas. We want to work more closely with Mexico, for example. We’re working on that. So I think we’ll be in good shape.
BRODIE: Last year, the Trump administration cut funding to minority serving institutions. A release from the U.S. department of Education said that followed a determination that Hispanic serving institutions violate the Constitution. The U of A is a Hispanic serving institution. And prior to the funding announcement, the school said it would consolidate seven cultural centers into one central hub.
That decision did not sit well with some on campus. And I asked Garamella about his thought process when he’s dealing with a federal government that has a different opinion on something like diversity initiatives than some percentage of people on campus, and how he tries to find a balance that won’t draw scrutiny from the feds, but but also continues to serve students and the rest of the campus community.
GARIMELLA: Mark, it’s a good question, and obviously the balance that you mentioned is important. And so this is where our focus helps a lot, right? We have three strategic imperatives. We call them delivering on our promise. And I am so gratified that I think everyone on our campus, or most of them on our campus, would tell you what those three things are.
The first of them is student success, which is our North Star. So coming to it from the lens of student success, what is it that our students need? How do we support them the best is what we went into this question with. And we found at times that separating out these different kinds of centers was actually not necessarily serving the students who went to get support from there that well. And in some cases their performance was lower than those who are not going to those places.
And so we focused on rethinking about this, that having a sort of a community hub, if you will, that supported all students, irrespective of color, race, gender, right? We want success for all students, for every student. We want to make sure that they’re getting the right kind of support. They need the tutorial, help, etc., etc. I think the campus is seeing the value of it. There’ll always be some opposition to these things, but I would say most people on campus are seeing that we’re going in the right direction.
BRODIE: A lot of folks in the higher ed world have been saying over the last year and a half or so that they feel like they are sort of under attack from the federal government, that academic freedom is at risk. First Amendment rights are at risk. Research funding, as we talked about, are at risk. The ability to bring in students from other places are at risk.
Do you feel that way? Do you feel like higher ed is under attack from the Trump administration?
GARIMELLA: So I’m sure you know, as does the whole world, that we were one of the nine universities that were invited to consider the compact that was sent around. You know, would I want to be on that list? Not necessarily, but I’m told that we were on the list because we were making all the right kinds of changes in terms of freezing tuition for in-state students and being very thoughtful about budgets and getting them jobs and all this sort of stuff.
So ironically, what that did is it brought our campus community together. We were able to have lots of conversations. I consulted the faculty senate, with various groups, there were all kinds of opinions. But ultimately it led us to offer a very sort of enriched, with all this community input, response, which I think most people would say was the most thoughtful response, most comprehensive response to the compact of any university.
And so it gave the campus an opportunity to think through these challenges. I will say that I’ve been in higher education for 40 years now. There are certainly things universities should be focused on that perhaps some lost their way. I think being as lean as possible in administration is important. Making it as affordable as possible for our students, making it as accessible as possible. Focusing on our strengths in terms of research.
And as a land grant — and I’m a product of land grant universities — I truly think our land grant mission drives a lot of what we do. We believe in engaging across all counties, all of our tribal nations, independent of whether anyone from the outside was forcing us to do this. It was important for us to focus, be selective on what we should be spending our time and effort on. And that’s what we’re doing, and I think we’ll be better for that.
BRODIE: Well, so you mentioned the compact. And when it was known that U of A was invited to join this, there are a lot of folks on campus whose response was — and I’m going to say it in a way that one can say it on the radio — heck no. Like no way, don’t do it. And that, as you referenced, was not what the response ultimately was. What were those conversations like?
Because clearly there are a lot of folks on campus who are concerned that if the U of A signed on to this, there are all sorts of worries of like, this is the end of academic freedom, the federal government’s gonna tell us what to do. Like we’re not gonna be able to do the kind of research that we want to do and think is important. So I’m curious what those conversations were like.
GARIMELLA: Of course, this was a surprise to everyone. And so the immediate reaction often ends up being a knee jerk reaction. I understand all the perspectives we heard. We heard from legislators, we heard from alumni, we heard from students, from faculty from other universities, other presidents of other universities. And I consulted with a lot of them.
So the important thing was to not, you know, sort of have a knee jerk reaction to this thing, consider what is being conveyed. We had conversations with the federal government. They made it clear that this was something they were offering for us to consider, and they were open to feedback. And that’s something that was not well known.
And so it was important for me and for the provost and for all of us to have very honest, very open conversations with groups of faculty, alumni, students and all that. And we did. We spent a lot of time listening to them. And I’ll tell you that our final response really mirrored a lot of what we heard.
The university felt like we should point out what we’re already doing and what we think is a good thing, and that’s what we ended up doing. So I think the faculty senate meeting that I attended after sending in the response was the one time — and maybe the only time — that I got applause. Everybody gave me a standing ovation when I went in. So I think we handled it as well as possible.
You know, it’s not over. I think we need to continue to be vigilant about doing the right thing ourselves without anyone forcing us to do it. And that’s what you’ll get from me.
BRODIE: When you look at what higher education might look like in one, three, five years, what do you see?
GARIMELLA: I think the U of A will be one of the top universities in the country, and I’ll do all I can to do that. I think higher education will change. It’s always been changing, right? I think there may have been a sense of complacency at some point, but we need to be better at deploying our resources better. We need to diversify our resources. We need to make a case for our alumni to our foundations, to companies to work more closely with us. So I think you’ll see much more of that.
And you’ll see that students vote with their feet, parents vote with their feet. So we want to be as attractive an institution for our parents, our students, our companies that are looking for a workforce that we can be. And I am extremely optimistic about the future of the University of Arizona.
It has such great strengths that, OK, so we had a little bit of sort of a budget challenge and such along the way, but truly the fact that we have a great leadership team now, that the campus is ready for that leadership and is collaborating and cooperating, that our private sector partners and others are excited about where we are — I think we’re going to be standing tall and doing better after this.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
