Collaborating to Move UWM to the Next Level
Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago
UW-Milwaukee Plenary Speech
September 23, 2004
Good Afternoon.
Let me begin by thanking you all for joining us this afternoon for my first plenary address to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee community. I want to acknowledge how well my wife, Azara, my daughter Alexis and I have been received by the University community and the broader Milwaukee community. We have been made to feel very welcome and I appreciate the support that we have gotten at this very early stage. I thank you so much.
I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge former interim Chancellor Bob Greenstreet and Provost John Wanat in their effort to ensure a smooth administrative transition. I believe the institution is in a very good position to move to the next level, and I appreciate their hard work as well as the efforts of all of the faculty and staff that have done so much to ensure that we don’t lose our momentum.
As I see it, the challenge facing this institution, at this point in its historic trajectory, is to fundamentally enhance our academic profile. We do that in an environment that is less than optimal from a budgetary perspective, but I believe we have real strengths with which to accomplish our goals.
The key will lie in our ability to expand and diversify our sources of funding to the campus, primarily through the expansion of extramural support for our research and donated or philanthropic funds.
I firmly believe in our mission and mandate:
- We are a public research university.
- We are one of only two public institutions in the state to be designated a doctoral-granting research university.
- We are the second largest university in Wisconsin.
- We have a duty to the citizens of this state to fulfill our responsibilities. Not only does UWM disseminate knowledge through teaching, but UWM also creates knowledge and transfers our discoveries to the public and private sectors so that society can benefit from our endeavors.
This is our mission.
Our basic strength lies in the quality of our faculty and staff and the shared belief among all that this is an institution that plays a transformative role in the life of its students and in the community in which it resides.
While we have a good physical plant and facilities, and a solid technology infrastructure that continues to adapt to a rapidly changing environment, it is the intellect, creativity, and imagination of those who work here that will propel this institution to the ranks of premier research universities in the country.
In conversations that I’ve had with current students as well as alumni, it is clear that they express considerable support for UWM. They really feel that the university is, and continues to be, very important in their lives.
This same sentiment is shared by the wider community. I believe that UWM is viewed as a crucial catalyst for the economic well-being of the City of Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin.
While the community in which we reside has high expectations for the involvement of this institution in the transformative role that it can play, I also feel that we serve an important contributing role to the overall economic development and quality of life in southeastern Wisconsin.
In today’s knowledge-driven economy, the commercialization of our discoveries can lead to the growth and attraction of new industries that will enhance the tax base of the region and provide jobs for its residents.
I have seen this happen in other parts of the country.
It can happen here, too.
Let me begin by talking a bit about some of the initiatives that we will be developing in the course of this academic year.
First, we will create an infrastructure that is conducive to attract more financial support for research. For an institution of our size and quality, we should have a larger portfolio of research dollars to support our enterprise.
In support of this initiative, we will be launching, immediately, a search for a Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. This cabinet level position will replace the current position of Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School.
I believe that this newly modified position is an important one as it will represent a key voice for research at the highest university level. The person in this position will be responsible in large measure for augmenting and expanding our extramural support for research and ensuring that any administrative barriers to research on this campus are eliminated.
In conjunction with our expansion of our programs of research, we need to increase our doctoral offerings.
For a campus of our size and quality, we should have significantly more doctoral programs.
We will be in discussions immediately with university governance as well as the UW System about these programmatic initiatives. We will promote only those doctoral initiatives of the highest quality and where we have a critical mass of strong academic personnel to support them. We expect these new programs will be judged by the peer review process within the disciplines they represent.
I envision that we will develop approximately two new graduate degree programs—specifically, two new PhD programs—for each of the next six years. When you consider that the three PhD programs that we started in the last three years brought our total to 20, this renewed effort means that by the year 2010, we will bring our doctoral offerings to 32—a number that is much more in keeping with public research universities of our size.
I commend those who have developed, promoted, and ultimately gained recognition for their doctoral programs and know that in some cases this has been an unfortunately long and drawn out process.
Expanding our research portfolio will provide a number of positive benefits to the campus and to the Milwaukee community:
- It will allow us to better support our graduate students and to increase the percentage of graduate students on our campus—a trend that we might be seeing the beginning of this year.
- It will allow for greater research opportunities for our undergraduates;
- It will provide a larger indirect cost return stream that can be used to support the campus’s infrastructure and further build on our success;
- Expanding our research portfolio also will build our research enterprise to the point where we can move from research to discovery to commercialization—the sciences and engineering will need to contribute significantly to this effort, and our business school will need to train the managers and business personnel to support this;
- It will allow us to demonstrate to the wider community, both in Milwaukee and in southeastern Wisconsin, that UWM can and must be a catalyst for local and statewide economic development;
- And, ultimately, expanding our research portfolio will result in an enhanced academic profile and a higher quality educational experience for our students.
In addition to this focus on funded research and prospects for commercialization, we need to move forward our expertise in information science and the development of new technologies.
As our success grows in this area, we must begin to assist in the training of a new cadre of business managers and entrepreneurs who will carry this work beyond the walls of this institution. Informatics and information systems, entrepreneurship, business development, and the management of enterprises in the context of today’s knowledge-driven economy will all be important components in this effort.
This is obviously an ambitious and, yes, expensive undertaking.
But if I felt that we did not have the talent and expertise and willpower to engage in this long-term process, I would not be proposing it today.
And everything that I have seen and learned about this campus in the last two months indicates that we are ready.
While we will all be tending to the development of the basic infrastructure that will enable us to meet our mission in the days and months to come, we know that our ambitious agenda cannot be reached without fully engaging institutions and communities that we serve and interact with.
Strategic partnerships and collaborations will serve as a key mechanism in the attainment of our goals. We will form new alliances and strengthen existing partnerships with the public, non-profit, and private sectors. We will further engage the communities we serve and our neighbors.
Internally, we need to encourage much more inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research. We must collaborate among ourselves and demonstrate the potential that lies in partnerships if we are to move UWM to the next level.
Departmental, and college and school lines must be blurred. While we do not shy away from supporting the single principal investigator model, we must further develop the model of the thematic and issue-based multi-disciplinary research program if we are to compete effectively with institutions at the national and global level.
Not only are research programs moving vigorously in this direction, but funding agencies and foundations are explicitly directing their support to these organized research enterprises. While we should not minimize the impact of our 25 million dollars in research grants, we can do more.
We must also collaborate with our sister institutions and industry partners across the region and around the world. Big science is expensive and no single institution can succeed in a vacuum.
By working together, we make Southeastern Wisconsin a hub of high-tech activity and create an environment where the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the application of knowledge to support the needs of society can flourish and complement one another.
We have a responsibility to provide the intellectual capital that can be leveraged by the private sector for economic prosperity for our community and so the public sector can address the overarching needs of society.
In addition to the basic and applied sciences, another area where we have significant potential to expand our research portfolio in a collaborative way is the field of health care and training the health care labor force. In this respect I think we have a major role to play within the region with our significant and emerging strengths in nursing, social welfare, gerontology, public health, mental health, environmental health, health policy, biotechnology, bioengineering, occupational and physical therapy, and other health sciences.
I believe our roles in these areas will expand so that increasingly, UWM will make a major difference.
It is good that we have strengths in these areas because there are considerable needs that have to be met. Health disparities are a major problem in Milwaukee. Health care costs continue to skyrocket and now constrain almost any non-profit and private enterprise from succeeding.
We have great opportunities for significant collaborations here as well. We will be working, as we have been, with the Medical College of Wisconsin as well as the major health care providers in the area such as
- Columbia Saint Mary’s,
- Aurora Health Care,
- Covenant Healthcare, and
- Froedtert Hospital.
We will work with firms like Cerner Corporation, an international information systems company in the health care field, to create unique partnerships.
We will continue to work toward patenting and licensing through the WiSys Research Foundation, as we have seen done by 16 of our researchers in a wide variety of exciting programs. At last count, 35 of 41 patents filed by WySys were for UWM inventions. UWM’s innovative ideas from research activities are being guided toward patent protection and the business community.
Another area where we have strength and where we have already demonstrated our capacity to make major contributions is in our support for the pre-K through 12 educational system and the transition to higher education. This initiative, though a broad one, really speaks to the structure and system of both public and private education in the City of Milwaukee and beyond. Our specialists in this area must continue to play a pivotal role in this effort, not only serving as a model institution for teacher training, but also in terms of the entire school infrastructure: administrators, counselors, and other professionals.
We know that sound pedagogy must be grounded on a solid content basis that builds on our strengths in the humanities, mathematics, the fine arts, and the social sciences. In some respects, the emphasis on supporting local pre-K through 12 initiatives—in terms of our research profile—is one that has been launched and has been developing over the years, and I would count on the leadership within the various schools and colleges at UWM that have been part of this initiative to continue their good work and to augment it.
The success of this approach is evident in our 20 million dollar National Science Foundation grant in support of mathematics teacher education and in the Carnegie Corporation’s five million dollar award to UWM based in part on the interdisciplinary cooperation of faculty and staff specializing in education, mathematics and the fine arts.
All of the initiatives I have been focusing on—the basic sciences and engineering, health, and education—demonstrate UWM’s significant expertise on addressing societal problems and issues.
And we must not forget that throughout this process we must be a voice of reason when it comes to the public policy implications of everything we do and everything that occurs around us. We must provide the expertise necessary to look critically at what we do, how it impacts the larger society, and to be unafraid to take up issues no matter how large or controversial.
I’m pleased to announce that just this morning, I received word from the Argosy Foundation of their tangible support for UWM in this area. Argosy shares UWM’s concern for improving the quality of public decision making in Milwaukee, and therefore has pledged to UWM for this work, one million dollars.
Regardless of whether the debate concerns workforce competitiveness strategies, welcoming contentious guest speakers to campus, building a daring museum extension, or taking down an old freeway our capability in addressing social and community issues must be tapped to provide leadership in this area so that UWM can be further recognized for its strengths in the public-policy arena.
Throughout the year you will see a theme around my discussion of augmenting research and that theme will be one of collaboration. If we are truly to attain that next level, we need to do it in a spirit of partnership.
This collaborative approach to our research must not only exist within the campus; not only across schools and colleges and across departments and in new, exciting and interdisciplinary collaborations, but I think these relationships in research need to extend beyond the sphere of the campus. The broad initiatives I have mentioned all have major collaborative prospects.
As I’ve already said, the initiatives I have brought up are expensive undertakings in a very difficult budgetary environment. Again, in keeping with our necessity to diversify and expand those sources of revenue, we will have firm plans in place for the fundraising campaign for UWM by the end of this academic year.
UWM has made an excellent start on the quiet phase of the campaign with a record-breaking year of private fundraising support in the amount of 17 million dollars. This is the best year in the last five. We are on our way.
We are still developing our infrastructure in this area.
We are continuing to cultivate prospects and donors.
We are continuing to work very closely with alumni—who clearly will play a significant role in this campaign—so that as a community we will all be prepared to expand into what is new territory for this institution.
I certainly think we need to be very cognizant that a fundraising campaign is only effective if the resources it provides sustain and support the core mission of the University. As such, our last year and the ongoing initiatives in securing fellowships and scholarships for students are very, very important. With the leadership of two UWM Foundation Board members, we have raised four million dollars since July 2003 and expect to surpass five million dollars by years end.
We need to continue to promote endowed professorships and other support for our research and teaching mission. I think that the community is poised to assist UWM in this effort and I have no doubt that we will succeed. In this regard, we know that this community supports its fine arts, and we have real strengths in these areas. The excellence we bring to these programs will drive the interest from the fund-raising community.
And we can say the same thing about our athletics programs. In fact, over the last four years, gifts to Athletics averaged $161,000.
This year, gifts to Athletics totaled nearly $600,000, much of it going to support our student-athletes. This is a testament to Athletics’ commitment to enhancing the opportunities of academic, athletic and personal success of every student-athlete. As long as we put all our energies in developing programs of the highest quality and promoting the student-athlete, we will find that extramural support will follow.
The reality of the fund-raising world is that donors do not give funds to institutions simply because the institutions need them.
To potential donors, need is not as important as high quality programs and successful outcomes. Our alumni will support this institution financially if they feel that their experience has been a positive one.
The same can be said for other donors. If they feel that the University is playing a positive role in the larger community, they will support it.
While we move these research initiatives forward, we must be focused and very clear about our overarching mission of access.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is an institution of opportunity.
We are an institution that provides a comprehensive, sound liberal arts education to a diverse student body, particularly to first-generation undergraduate students.
We must ensure that we do not lose our focus on this core value as we move forward.
I also believe, and the evidence seems to bear out, that the campus needs to slow its overall enrollment growth. In many respects, we are at full capacity and the prospects for continued State funding to support enrollment growth are very uncertain.
The underlying economic model that has driven enrollment growth in the last few years no longer provides the resources that we need to continue to expand at previous rates.
We will be reviewing our enrollment model and have already begun working in this area alongside our governance partners and academic leadership.
Our enrollments have been increasing three to five percent annually for the last several years.
We are now attracting over 10,000 freshmen applications annually, a doubling of interest in UWM over the last decade.
Many students are making UWM their first-choice institution.
Our new freshmen class again exceeded 3,700—matching last year’s record enrollment.
We continue to attract and enroll more transfer students than any other UW System campus.
The number of students of color continues to increase.
Given all of this, I envision that we will slow the growth of the freshman class and attempt to alter the composition of our student body. But because of increased retention, we are not likely to see a major reduction in the overall size of our student body in the near term.
For UWM to be successful, the composition of our student body must reflect a greater percentage of graduate students on the campus and ultimately a greater percentage of campus resident students as well.
Our mission clearly reaches out to a student population that is different from many of our peer public research universities.
Our student population includes many first-generation college students.
Our student population is older and working.
This is a special responsibility and we will not let that mission fall by the wayside.
Nonetheless, we will be faced with real challenges.
As we slow and stabilize the growth of the student population, change the composition of students (with more on-campus residents and graduate students) and enroll a more selective freshman class over time, we will face financial hardship unless we significantly improve our retention rates.
We need to look very closely at augmenting our transfer articulation agreements and the acknowledged strengths we have in our relationships with technical colleges like MATC and two-year colleges through the College Connection program.
We need to provide academic support so that the students we enroll will have access to all of the facilities and all of the tools they need to be successful in their studies.
I will be calling upon campus governance and administrative leadership to begin an immediate review of how we are organized in supporting academic services to students across the campus.
We must guarantee, before students enroll at UWM, that they have the necessary educational skills to succeed.
We must guarantee, after students enroll, that they have access to all the tools they need to succeed.
If we cannot make these guarantees, we should not enroll them.
Every student who steps on our campus should believe that they can succeed here and we must raise our expectations about how successful students can be at UWM.
We must also continue to diversify the student body of this campus, for it is in this diversity that we distinguish ourselves as a campus.
We must continue to be an institution of access for first-generation students, but we will do that only at the highest level of educational quality.
I believe that students, no matter what their socio-economic background, deserve the highest quality of education. We must ensure that UWM will be the institution that will provide this unique experience.
Let me continue on the theme of access and opportunity because I believe that it is the hallmark of what this institution represents.
If we are to really work on improving our retention and graduation and ensuring that all students have a fulfilling experience here at UWM, we need to continue to promote a number of important initiatives:
- We must expand the opportunities for an on-campus residential life experience for all students, including those students whose families live in Milwaukee; currently, only about 10% of our students reside in university housing; Indeed, we have already started down this path through the Kenilworth Redevelopment project and a feasibility study nearing completion regarding the Columbia St. Mary’s opportunity;
- We must explore the creation of living-learning communities; In fact, the Kenilworth project may be our first opportunity at creating a living-learning community centered around the Peck School of the Arts;
- We must provide a seamless transition from advising to mentoring;
- We must promote our transition to college programs and make sure that the first-year experience is a positive one;
- We must develop early warning systems to ensure the timely referral of academic and other support to students in need;
- We must demonstrate a real concern for the future of our students and assist them as they go through their processes of discovery and transformation; and
- We must ensure a campus climate that is inviting and welcoming. In this latter regard, I have asked the Director of the Office of Equity and Diversity Services to report directly to me on matters of campus climate and on our progress to further diversify our student body, faculty, and staff. Working together we will further progress toward unity in diversity.
So, right about now I suspect many of you are thinking this is quite an agenda. And, I’m sure many of you are thinking:
Can we really take UWM to the next level in the current economic climate?
Can we really increase our academic and research profile of this great institution?
I am absolutely convinced that we can.
As I have said, we must collaborate internally across disciplines and externally with other institutions of higher education, and the public and private sectors. This collaboration will allow us to increase the amount of funded research on campus and develop more doctoral programs.
The beneficiaries will be
- Our students, who will receive an education from a nationally ranked University;
- Our faculty, who have the resources to carry out cutting-edge research;
- And all of Wisconsin, which will benefit from our participation in the knowledge-driven economy of today’s world.
We can accomplish all of this without forgetting our special commitment as a public research university to access and opportunity.
And we can focus on moving from research to discovery to commercialization, while, I believe, not forsaking the traditional liberal arts model that values the pursuit of knowledge and truth as we address the social issues of our day.
From my perspective, this is a very exciting time to be at UWM. I hope that this vision resonates with each and every one of you, for this is truly a collective enterprise.
Every part of this institution must feel that they have a stake in enhancing our academic profile and standing.
We are at a turning point at UWM. I look forward to working with you on these crucial issues and working for you in the coming months and years.
Thank you