Altogether, our commitment to enhancing higher education's infrastructure grew to record levels during these last two years.

A new business school at Illinois State.

A new fine arts center at Eastern Illinois.

A new engineering building at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

A new residence hall at the University of Illinois at Springfield, to implement the new Capital Scholars program that will make UIS a four-year institution.

A new convocation center and a new library at Chicago State University.

We created the new University Center of Lake County - the fastest growing area of the State.

We earmarked $30 million for a new biomedical research building on Northwestern University's Chicago campus.

And, at the University of Illinois, we dedicated $30 million to expand the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and $75 million for a post genomics institute that will make our state a leader in advanced science for agriculture and human health.

These investments, and more, are truly investments in our future.

But we need to do more.

This year, to expand our commitment to the basic infrastructure of higher education, I propose that we embark on a significant new construction program dedicated solely to helping each of the state's 47 community colleges.

I will provide more details during the budget address.

We can dedicate substantial resources to the construction of new, permanent classroom and laboratory buildings at community colleges.