Chancellor Santiago: Biographical Profile
Carlos E. Santiago is the seventh Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In this position, he is the chief administrative officer of the university with oversight of its half-billion-dollar annual budget, and a partner with a great number of constituents on and off campus.
Cooperation and collaboration to strengthen UW-Milwaukee’s research portfolio, academic excellence and diversity have been the highest priorities of Chancellor Santiago since his arrival on July 1, 2004. Primary results of his initial years at UWM include:
- Completing the record-setting Campaign for UWM, the most ambitious fund-raising effort in university history, at 25% in excess of its goal more than a year early. Already, campaign resources are being invested in new scholarship programs.
- Developing Access to Success, the campus blueprint to enhance access to higher education while promoting greater success for all students. Progress is also being reported for growing and diversifying the student body. Since Fall 2004, total enrollment has grown nearly 8% to an all-time high of 29,358 (Fall 2007).
- Securing a historic reinvestment in UWM by the State of Wisconsin: $10 million in new funding through the 2007-2009 state budget. Already these resources have been targeted for hiring new faculty clusters in areas key to the university’s and Southeastern Wisconsin’s future: advanced automation, biomedical engineering, health care and freshwater science.
- Initiating a master planning process to create a template for regional growth away from the university’s extremely compressed primary campus.
- Creating the UWM Research Foundation to support research and innovation at UWM by providing funding for scholarships and grants, and by engaging in corporate partnering activities. Along similar lines, the Research Growth Initiative is substantially expanding UWM’s research enterprise through investing its research dollars in selected proposals of exceptional quality. Early results suggest that UWM is in the right direction, with fiscal year 2007 funded research reaching an all-time high of $33.8 million—a 31% increase from the previous year.
- Increasing and strengthening doctoral programs—the lifeblood of a growing research institution. With 20 doctoral programs in place upon his arrival, Chancellor Santiago has encouraged further expansions. The latest total is 25 programs with more under development.
- Building new university residence facilities is a key to students’ academic success and neighborhood stability. RiverView Residence Hall is the first undergraduate housing facility built by the university in decades and offers a glimpse of future student-living options for UWM students.
Chancellor Santiago also holds the academic rank of Professor of Economics at UWM. As a labor economist, he has regional expertise in the Caribbean and Central America, with special emphasis on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Latino population. His research interests include labor market issues, problems of structural adjustment and debt, and labor migration to the United States. He has received grants and fellowships from a variety of organizations including the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Association, National Science Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation.
He formerly held the position of Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University at Albany, State University of New York and functioned as the Chief Operating Officer of the campus. He served on SUNY-Albany’s faculty and, before that, the faculty of Wayne State University in Detroit.
Chancellor Santiago has a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University (1982) and M.A. degrees in economics from Cornell University (1979) and the University of Puerto Rico (1975).
He is also a founding co-editor (with Edna Acosta-Belén) of the Latino Research Review and is a former member of the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus International Relations Advisory Group. Chancellor Santiago is Past President of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, has been very active in the Latin American Studies Association and has been on the editorial board of the Latin American Research Review. He has served on the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/Social Science Research Council Committee for Public Policy Research on Contemporary Hispanic Issues and as a member of the Board of Consulting Economists for Hispanic Business magazine. In 1996 he was named one of the top 100 most influential Hispanic leaders by Hispanic Business magazine.
He is the author or co-author of five books, the latest being Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait (with Edna Acosta-Belén, 2006), which was recognized as a Choice selection by the American Library Association.
Dr. Santiago has published more than 30 articles and book reviews in such journals as the International Migration Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Development Studies, World Development, Hispanic American Historical Review, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Economic Development, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Journal for Higher Education Strategists, and the International Journal of Forecasting.
For additional details about Chancellor Santiago, please see his curriculum vitae.