Members of the University’s Senate Assembly received a visit from President Mary Sue Coleman at their first meeting of the year yesterday.

In her speech, Coleman highlighted positive developments at the University during the last year and touched on the University’s financial status.

Coleman said research expenditures achieved more than $1 billion in research grants this year. The package included $421 million from the National Institutes of Health — with more than $160 million in stimulus funding research awards from NIH alone.

“That really gives me just tremendous confidence that people are ready, they’re waiting and when they get their proposals out they are really good proposals,” Coleman said.

Coleman also said that the 100 new faculty members hired as a part of her 100 New Faculty Initiative launched in 2007 are “absolutely outstanding.”

While many universities across the country are enforcing hiring freezes due to the economy, the University of Michigan has continued to hire new faculty members.

Coleman said the new faculty members have proven to be “very, very high quality scholars.”

She added that the University is constantly fighting the perception that because the state of Michigan is “just a basket case,” the University is also suffering.

“What I want to counter to people is that we are managing our resources well, that we are hiring faculty, that we have not closed the doors,” Coleman said. “And so the fact that we are still out there in the marketplace is another good signal that we are competing, and competing effectively.”

Despite the economic downturn, Coleman said she was also impressed with the way the University has handled its budget while other institutions across the country “are trying to deal with this era of constraining resources.”

However, Coleman stressed that the University faces many challenges concerning the budget moving forward.

“I don’t want to tell you that everything is just rosy, and we don’t have anything to worry about because that’s not true,” she said to the assembly.

She cited the fact that both the endowment and private giving were down more than 20 percent last year. State support has also declined 10 percent over the last seven years, and the University has reduced spending from its general fund by more than $135 million within that same time period.

Over the next three years, Coleman said the University will most likely have to identify an additional $100 million in savings.

She said this combination of factors has led the University to be more “prudent” and “strategic” in handling the budget in order to guarantee a sense of stability for the future.

“To make it better for our successors, we want to keep the institution strong because we are about the infinite horizon,” she said.