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FLAGSTAFF — Extra retention money for key professors is again at the top of the University of Arizona's state budget request.

By far the largest single item in the proposal to be sent to the Legislature is the $13.6 million for faculty retention funds, the most immediate and critical need facing the UA, said President Robert Shelton.

"This is a modest investment that will bring huge returns," Shelton said. "The faculty we've lost in the last few years from not being competitive have taken with them to other states tens of millions of dollars in research grants."

Close behind the faculty salary issue are requests for nearly $10 million each for research in solar- and alternative-energy technologies and improved diagnosis and therapeutics for cancer treatments.

The Arizona Board of Regents Thursday approved the UA's state budget request of $659 million, $73 million more than last year, which will be forwarded to the Governor's Office and the Legislature by Oct. 1.

However, the action came the same day that the prospect of no pay raise next year — or at best a small one — hit home for state employees, including more than 9,900 in Southern Arizona and another 10,000-plus at the UA.

The state's Department of Administration reported Thursday in Phoenix that it is holding off any pay-raise proposals because of a $600 million shortfall expected in the current state budget due to lower-than-expected tax collections.

Even so, the UA — Southern Arizona's second-largest employer — will ask state lawmakers for funding aimed at making faculty salaries competitive.

For perspective, Shelton says it would take an estimated $49.7 million to bring all UA employees' salaries up to the 50th percentile among UA's peer universities nationally by 2009.

The UA has made positive strides in retaining professors who are offered jobs with other universities, in large part due to two years of raises for state employees, even though a similar request last year for $10 million went unfunded, said UA lobbyist Greg Fahey. But there remains a 7.5 percent turnover rate for professors on the main campus and a 10.5 percent turnover for professors in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health.

Last year, the UA retained 44 tenured or tenure-track professors who were offered positions at other universities, while losing 39 others.

"If this university is going to be successful in the years ahead, the emphasis must be on people and finding ways to help them be successful," Shelton said.

In 2006, UA faculty members' salaries ranked at the 25th percentile as compared with their peers at large research universities, up from the 18th percentile in 2004. Average faculty salaries at the UA are lower than at 19 of 28 peer institutions.

If approved, the $13.6 million would mostly benefit professors in Fine Arts, Law, Humanities and Science, four colleges with particularly low salaries, said UA spokesman Johnny Cruz.

The budget request for Arizona's entire university system is slightly less than $1.8 billion, which would be a $203 million, or 18.1 percent, increase over this year's appropriation.

All three state universities set enrollment records this year, reaching a total of 122,963 students in the system.

"The key here is the quest for academic excellence and the accessibility for all students across the state," Shelton said.