Keeping enrollment strong, relying on research grants and private gifts and running an efficient operation is how the University of Mississippi is able to generate its revenue and maintain a constant phase of campus renewal, said Chancellor Robert Khayat in a Tuesday interview at The Vicksburg Post.

The changes have come while state allocations have declined as a proportion of the university’s overall budget.

This year, state colleges and universities are again knocking on lawmakers’ doors and seeking a nearly $230 million increase in public funding, an amount the chancellor said he sensed was unlikely.

“I keep the ‘Serenity Prayer,’ on my desk, you know,” he said. The prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, asks for understanding of things that cannot be changed. “Mississippi has yet to realize that fully investing in education is key to everything else,” he added.

Even without the requested allocation of public dollars being approved in full, he said, the university will move forward with building maintenance, a new law center and residential colleges, among other projects. Much of the funding will come from tuition, which has been increased almost annually for several years, and private funding, which has increased sharply.

In athletics, which is completely self-funding through gifts and ticket sales, except for tuition waivers for athletes, a new basketball practice facility and another expansion of the baseball complex are on tap.

Ole Miss is asking, as part of the total increase, for the largest share of $90 million more in projects to be funded by bonds. The request is for $19.3 million, which would fund a renovation of Scruggs Music Hall, Applied Sciences, an HVAC system for Lewis Hall, renovations to Garland-Heddleston-Mayes Hall and a preliminary plan for Peabody Hall.

Khayat, 69, who has surpassed the average five-year tenure of chancellors at Ole Miss as he moves into his 13th year with no apparent plan to retire, said the university will continue to ask for state funding, which he says remains under par in this state compared to neighboring states.

“Ask for what the real need is,” he said of his approach to legislators. “Don’t go in there crying wolf.”

Under Khayat, an Ole Miss capital campaign has raised $529.9 million in private support, the largest raised by any state institution. In comparison, former Chancellor Gerald Turner in the 1980s set a goal of $25 million and raised $41 million.

The university, which also operates the state’s only public law school in Oxford and the state’s only medical school, in Jackson, has seen an increase in students and an increase in annual research funding from $17 million to $100 million. The university has scored a major coup in that it will host on Sept. 26 this year’s first presidential debate and the first in Mississippi. Khayat termed that an eight-year project.

“We’ve chosen not to be mediocre,” he said. “If you put the bar low, you’re going to hit it every time.”

The Gulf Coast native said overcoming what he calls Mississippi’s “institutional inferiority complex” was the challenge he defined for himself when he accepted the post. He said he wanted to prove Ole Miss could rank among great American public universities by securing a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a prestigious academic honor society, at Ole Miss, establishing the Sally McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College, Croft Institute for International Studies, Lott Leadership Institute, Galtney Center for Academic Computing, Ford Center for the Performing Arts and the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.

“We’ve been enhancing our self-perception, as well as how we’re perceived by others,” he said.

Khayat’s contract with the school runs out in 2010, which is also when the new law school building is scheduled to open. Saying he “feels great,” Khayat gave no indication that he plans to slow his momentum. And he will continue to raise awareness about the importance public universities have on the state.

“Some things are not going to change. The people of Mississippi need to understand that the well-being of our state depends on education. The states that are prosperous have strong universities,” he said.