Florida State OKs ‘most ambitious’ state budget request ever. Here’s what it includes

As Florida State University still basks in the glow of a successful legislative session, its Board of Trustees recently approved a $219 million state budget request — one with a STEM focus — for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

While the request includes five main initiatives with $96 million in new money, one of them is an ask for $56 million for the modernization of Tallahassee’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory that is headquartered at FSU.

The board met last week to discuss the budget request for next year, which comes about a month and a half after the university received nearly $83 million in new funds from the state’s $116.5 billion budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year.

FSU trustees also recently approved the university’s largest operating budget in history, which is $3 billion for 2024-2025.

Meantime, Florida A&M University’s trustees have not taken action on a budget request for next year but are expected to do so at one of their upcoming board meetings, according to a FAMU spokesperson.

In the works: Translational Aging Research Hub

This year, FSU requested over $130 million in the legislative session, which makes its approved request for next year nearly $80 million more.

“It's certainly our most ambitious request ever, but I'd rather say ‘whoa’ than ‘giddy up,’ ” FSU Board of Trustees Chair Peter Collins said during Monday’s meeting.

Besides the state budget money being requested for the National MagLab — which is billed as the largest and highest-powered magnet lab in the world — FSU’s wish list for next year’s session shows millions of dollars being requested for a new Translational Aging Research Hub as well as FSU Health and research operations.

The budget also includes recurring funding requests for the joint FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and for growth of FSU’s national prominence, where $65 million is being requested compared to $50 million that was requested for this current fiscal year.

“This will be a lot of work, and we appreciate any chance that any of you as trustees will get to talk to our representatives to support our vision,” FSU President Richard McCullough told the board Monday. “Our time is now.”

MagLab money for a ‘new era’

When it comes to the MagLab, the facility is Florida’s only national laboratory. It is also home to 17 world-record magnet systems and it hosts nearly 2,000 users every year who conduct ground-breaking research.

Headquartered at FSU since 1994, the MagLab is primarily funded by the state and the National Science Foundation , which gave the laboratory a five-year fund of $195.5 million in 2022 .

With the MagLab being over 30 years old, FSU’s requested funding for its modernization would act as a reinvestment to “launch the lab into its new era and maintain our competitive edge,” according to a report of the university’s legislative budget request.

This year, the state budget included $25 million of Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) funds that went toward the MagLab.

“I think we've done a really good job over the last two or three years of educating a lot of the senior leadership in the legislature, but there's still a lot of legislators that really don't understand the impact of Florida having a national lab, the prestige it brings and the researchers it brings to Florida and to Florida State,” Collins said. “We're definitely going to have to do some more educating, but I feel really good about this request.”

A little over $5 million dollars of recurring funds is being requested for the 2025-26 fiscal year while $51 million would come from non-recurring funds for modernization tasks — including facility upgrades to maintain world-record magnet systems and the construction of a new Magnet Fabrication building to expand capacity for new magnet creation.

The requested MagLab funding would also go toward creating new public and collaboration spaces to host conferences and engage with stakeholders, developing enhanced office and research spaces and constructing a dedicated outreach and education space.

FSU’s $35.5 million request for a Translational Aging Research Hub is in efforts of positioning Florida to be the national leader in healthy aging research, care delivery and digital health solutions.

Investments include creating a center for excellence focused on healthy aging and digital health, creating a statewide informatics and data science infrastructure to support interdisciplinary public health research, and creating training programs and information networks for caregivers and health services providers around healthy aging, according to a report of the legislative budget request.

While $7 million of the request would be recurring funds, $28.5 million would come from non-recurring funds.

Here’s a list of the remaining top items from FSU’s wish list in the legislative budget request for the 2025-26 fiscal year:

• Bolstering FSU Health and research operations: $50 million ($33.5 million in recurring funds, $16.5 million in non-recurring funds to start up new faculty research labs, develop a shared public health research data hub and make laboratory upgrades).
• Growing FSU’s national prominence: $65 million (all in recurring funds to hire prominent research faculty, build on nation-leading student success, improve student success for transfers, reducing the student-to-faculty ratio, recruit and retain top talent and invest in new research faculty).
• Fueling research and student success in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering: $13.14 million (all in recurring funds to attract and retain top faculty, hire motivated and skilled staff and provide adequate student financial support).

Contact Tarah Jean at tjean@tallahassee.com or follow her on X: @tarahjean_ .

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida State OKs ‘most ambitious’ state budget request ever. Here’s what it includes