University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Celebration, Reflection and Action:
Our challenge at 50 years

UWM Fall 2006 Plenary Address
September 20, 2006
Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago

Next Monday, September 25, 2006, UWM will observe Founders Day — the 50th anniversary of the day that UWM, as a new university, first opened its doors to students. Of course, there’s nothing magical about 50 years, as opposed to 49 or 51, but by long custom, certain year markers are celebrated as especially notable anniversaries. And I think this can be a very satisfying custom, in institutional as well as personal life, not only as a time to celebrate but also as a time to pause and reflect on where we have been, where we are now, and where — together — we aspire to go.

Fifty years is not a long time in institutional terms. UWM is still a young university, and it has yet to fully realize its twin missions: to provide the highest quality educational access and opportunity for citizens in the demographic and economic center of Wisconsin, and to be a premiere research university that spurs innovation and economic growth.

A measure of our relative youth is that we still have many living touchstones with our institutional beginnings. We have emeriti faculty who taught classes on September 24, 1956 and who are still engaged with UWM. Many of our current faculty and staff have been colleagues of UWM’s founding generation. And we have thousands of alumni who took classes from those founding faculty and are still active in this community and university.

While 50 years is not a long time in an institution’s life, it certainly is long enough for us to celebrate our successes, learn from our history, and imagine our collective future. Beginning next week, we will take time during this academic year to do just that.

However, while we celebrate, reflect, and imagine, we must also do another thing: We must act. Bold action was required to establish UWM in 1956 and it has been a hallmark of our history — from acquiring the Milwaukee Downer College, to establishing the first doctoral program (Mathematical Sciences), to building the Sandburg Residence Halls, to advancing to Division I athletics, to assembling a faculty with a world-class reputation.

I have been at UWM for just over two years — only about 4% of its history. But two years is long enough for me to assess where we are, to articulate what we need to do, and to join with you in taking the actions needed to move this institution to the next level of accomplishment.

In 2004-2005, my first year as chancellor, my objective was to learn as much as possible about UWM, Milwaukee, the state, and the overall financial and political landscape. There was a lot to learn. I learned about UWM’s heritage and its historical mission to provide quality educational access and opportunity to a diverse population and to be a premier research and graduate education institution. I learned about the exceptional quality and achievements of our faculty and staff. I learned about shared governance — that faculty, students, staff, and administration must work together to effect change. I learned that UWM has never been funded adequately to fulfill its mission. I learned that the level of state support has been steadily decreasing and that rapidly increasing student tuition has become the primary source of UWM’s operating budget.

In 2005-2006, my primary objectives were to get the word out about our urgent need to grow UWM’s research enterprise while preserving our access and diversity mission, and to formulate and implement a plan for doing so. I think we’ve been largely successful in both these areas.

We have, as one might expect, encountered some speed bumps on the road, but more than ever, the media, the UW Board of Regents, and community leaders in the greater Milwaukee area understand and support our mission and our investment plans. We have successfully gotten the word out about UWM’s importance to Milwaukee and the state.

Part of getting the word out is projecting an appealing and consistent public image. To that end, in 2005-2006, UWM (with no state tax dollars) engaged the firm of Lipman Hearne to develop a new marketing and branding campaign. One of our anniversary year actions will be to roll out this new campaign.

Our tagline for the past five years has been, “Learn More,” which emphasized UWM’s potential. To recognize our transition to a higher profile university and highlight our accomplishments, the new marketing tagline will be, “Something Great in Mind.” Our ads will feature faculty, staff and students who are doing great things.

This phrase captures well the spirit of the two major initiatives we launched last year and will continue to advance in 2006-2007:

• First, a three-part, $300-million investment plan to significantly advance UWM’s mission – and especially its research profile – over the next six to eight years. The three $100-million components are the Comprehensive Campaign, the Research Growth Initiative and renewed state investment.
• Second, the “Access to Success” student recruitment and retention plan. Let me briefly report to you the current status of these major initiatives and the actions we need to take this year to further advance them.

Comprehensive Campaign

Nine months ago we announced the public phase of our first comprehensive campaign. At this point, we have raised more than $73 million toward our $100 million goal. It is worth noting that we set a goal of raising $25 million for student scholarships and we have raised $24 million towards that goal.

This last fiscal year UWM raised approximately $31 million – the largest in its history – thanks in large measure to the $10 million dollar gift to name the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business. Some of the other very significant gifts include a $1.5 million scholarship fund established by Dennis and Sandy Kuester for African-American business students from the City of Milwaukee; a $1 million planned gift from Dean Stan Stojkovic; $750,000 from Northwestern Mutual Foundation for scholarships and faculty hiring in actuarial science; and scholarship gifts to the UWM Honors College totaling $250,000 from George and Julie Mosher and the Robert W. Baird Company. Support for the Honors College will result in additional financial aid to high-achieving students in addition to providing funding for study abroad experiences and visiting professors.

While much of our financial support is coming from the wider Milwaukee community, public and private partners, and our graduates, it is important to note that the campus community is expressing its support in strong financial terms as well. The UWM Gives to UWM campaign had a record-breaking year in 2006. More than 900 active and retired UWM employees contributed $523,000, exceeding the campaign goal of $450,000. This represents a 24 percent increase over last year’s fundraising effort. Our thanks to the campaign chairs—Ewa Barczyk, Sandy Botham, Randy Lambrecht, and Mariam Zahedi—as well as the many other volunteers.

We will continue to devote considerable efforts this year to achieve the Comprehensive Campaign goal of $100 million in private gifts. We will be making a concerted effort to increase the base of alumni giving. The only way that we can sustain our fundraising initiatives over the long-run is to broaden the donor base by getting greater participation from our graduates.

Research Growth Initiative

The Research Growth Initiative has provided much-needed seed funding to support our efforts to build a self-sustaining research infrastructure that will produce a discretionary indirect cost return stream to be reinvested in research. More than $6 million was awarded to support 44 proposals in the first year of RGI. The winning proposals were made on the basis of independent external reviews and were rated by the reviewers as being in the top 10% of proposals nationally.

Drawing on our experience in 2005-2006, we are now moving into the second round of the RGI process:

• Approximately the same amount of funds ($6 million) will be made available for RGI 2.
• The proposal deadline this year has been moved ahead to October 15, 2006.
• Much of the proposal process is now online (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Grad_Sch/rgi/).
• The course release percentage was been reduced from 50% to 12.5% to make this component available to a wide array of disciplines.
• We are engaging in discussion and planning to better engage our research centers in the RGI to assure their long-term funding viability.

To complement our internal investment in growing funded research through the RGI, the UWM Foundation this year has created a subsidiary corporation called the UWM Research Foundation.

Led by Brian Thompson, it will establish private partnerships to support UWM research and collaborative ventures that will spur economic development and the creation of new companies. To date, the Research Foundation has received pledges of $1 million apiece from Harley-Davidson Motor Corporation and from WE Energies Corporation. We also have received investment assistance from the prestigious law firm of Michael Best and Friedrich. This new enterprise will be an area of substantial activity for UWM and our partners in the coming years.

State Investment

The final component of the $300 million investment in UWM is renewed state investment. This includes a $30 million allocation from the state of Wisconsin to our base budget over six years with an additional $70 million investment in new research facilities. We have put the initial $10 million base budget request for 2007-2009 to the UW System. The Wisconsin Board of Regents, the UW System leadership, and major community organizations in Milwaukee have supported this request The $10 million budget request will support cluster faculty hiring in sciences and engineering, graduate student stipend support, undergraduate research , and RGI seed funds.

This is not a subsidy. It is an essential investment if the state is to compete effectively in today’s competitive knowledge-based economy. UWM has strong research programs in the arts, fine arts, humanities, social sciences, and the professional schools. But we do not have sufficient budget, facilities, or personnel to substantially grow extramurally funded research in the sciences and engineering. The Regents have supported our call for an investment in UWM to hire faculty, academic staff, and support graduate students in the sciences and engineering and to enhance our extramural funding and academic profile. If our six year investment plan gets the support it deserves, UWM will add 60 new faculty and staff FTE over that time period. One of our major activities this year will be to work with State government and with our public and private advocates to support UWM’s proposals for new research investment over the next three biennia, beginning with 2007-2008.

Last January, I called for the initiation of a strategic planning process for UWM. I have decided to delay this effort for one semester because the resource picture is so unsettled. By next spring, we will know whether UWM will receive the first installment of its much-needed reinvestment or not. It makes a real difference for UWM if we are engaging in a strategic planning exercise when counting on State reinvestment or without it.

When I speak about the need to augment both access and research, I don’t propose these as dichotomous goals. They are compatible and interconnected. Student access at UWM means not just access to our front door, but access to a research based graduate and undergraduate education. This is what UWM must be about.

Access to Success

But we must dramatically improve our student retention and graduation rates for this goal to become a reality. The other major initiative that we launched last year, Access to Success, is designed to do just that—improve retention of our students, particularly from the first to the second year of study.

Early analysis of the freshman class of 2005-2006 shows that freshmen who participate in Access to Success activities have greater success than those who do not. For example, of the 4,300 new freshmen in fall 2005, 69% completed the spring semester in good academic standing. Of that cohort, 80% of the freshmen who engaged in tutoring and 91% who took supplemental instruction were in good academic standing at the end of the year.

It is timely to mention these statistics now because those of you who have freshmen in your classes this fall will be receiving Early Warning System communications about those students within the next week. This is a key activity to identify freshmen students who would especially benefit from advising and academic intervention at this early point in their UWM experience.

Another activity available to all of us is our campus mentoring program. Currently, 1,600 students have been paired with a faculty or staff mentor, but another 1,400 students who have requested a mentor have yet to be provided with one. I ask you to support our students by volunteering to serve as a mentor.

Improved student retention begins, of course, with more effective student recruitment and our ability to provide commensurate housing and academic facilities. Part of our recruitment effort this year has been the establishment of two satellite recruitment offices:

• One with the Private Industry Council on Milwaukee’s north side, and
• One on the south side with the United Community Center.

We are also taking steps to make our campus more welcoming to a diverse population by consolidating the multicultural advising units to a single location in Bolton Hall.

Senior Survey

At the other end of college student life from the freshmen experience is the experience of our graduating seniors. And here we have some very encouraging news provided by the spring, 2006 UWM Senior Survey. In 2001, 79% of seniors would choose to attend UWM if they had to do it all over again. For our Spring 2006 graduating seniors, 86% said they would again choose our university. That is a steady increase in just five years and the satisfaction indicator is consistent for minority and majority ethnic populations.

There was one other item from the Senior Survey that I find especially encouraging as we seek additional support from our alumni. They were asked whether they have a sense of commitment to and involvement with UWM.

In Spring 2001, just 37% of alumni said definitely or probably.

In Spring 2006, that total jumped up to 70%--quite an improvement.

Total enrollments increased by 1.5% this fall over last. Final headcount enrollment is projected to be 28,342, up from the Fall 2005 total of 28,046. While new freshmen registered is 5.9% lower this fall than last (4242 to 3,991), it’s notable that freshman applications of 11,541 were well ahead of last fall, showing that there is continuing high demand for admission. Studies have shown a definite correlation between adequate university-run housing and student retention rates. Even with the opening of the Kenilworth Square housing project last month, UWM still is 13th of the UW System’s 13 four-year campuses for percentage of students who can be housed on campus. It is unacceptable that we can provide university housing to only 10% of our students.

We must continue to find creative means to address this student housing shortage, and we are making progress. Kenilworth Square, with its 374 beds for upperclassmen, graduate students and faculty, opened this fall. This is a state facility that was constructed in partnership with a private developer, which allowed this aging facility to be put to its highest and best use for our students, faculty and community.

Looking again to public-private partnerships to rapidly achieve our facility needs, the UWM Foundation last year created a subsidiary corporation, the UWM Real Estate Foundation, to secure and develop property. This summer, we broke ground on the Riverwest residence hall under an agreement with the UWM Real Estate Foundation. This facility on North Avenue just west of the Milwaukee River will provide an additional 488 beds for freshmen beginning in fall 2007. This new $26 million student housing facility, which will be a boon to our continued growth and to student retention, was forged with no state money.

As I stated in the plenary address last winter, “UWM will require facilities that are commensurate with 21st century, rather than mid-20th Century, innovation. We need a new engineering building and an applied science research location and facility for business incubation.” These needs, along with the need for more new on-campus student residence space, remain at the top of our agenda. I think that the spectacular success of the Kenilworth and Riverwest student residences are testimony to the power of public-private partnerships, and they provide a model for our future growth.

While we continue to explore new UWM “footprints” beyond the Kenwood campus that will allow us to accommodate growth, we continue to improve the facilities and aesthetics of our home campus. Many of you may have noticed the new plantings, benches and signage that have made our campus’ green spaces much more beautiful and inviting.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to explore the Pavilion addition to the Klotsche Center or to park in one of its 615 new parking spaces, I hope you’ll have the chance to do so soon.

And I note with special pleasure the addition of lights to Engelmann Field, where last week our men’s soccer team defeated Marquette University in the inaugural night game before more than 3,000 fans, a school record for soccer attendance.

Transformation

Let me conclude by observing that UWM has continued to transform itself over its entire history, and that we are now again at a major transformative crossroad. Our goals are clear and the strategies that we’ve developed and that I’ve reviewed for you today are sound. Now we need to put the building blocks in place. To do so, we need to:

• Be consistent and persistent in our actions to align our resources with our mission.
• Forge sound and imaginative public-private partnerships.
• Invest the resources that we have in a strategic and efficient way.
• Cultivate the financial support of those who are simultaneously our benefactors and our beneficiaries: our alumni; state and regional governments; and our community, educational, and business associates.

I ask that our students – in addition to applying themselves to their studies – put forth the best examples of citizenship by voting in the coming mid-term election, participating in service activities and being good neighbors to those with whom we share this community.

For faculty and staff, I ask that you advance scholarship in your respective academics fields and be inspired and inspiring teachers.

And to our alumni, I ask that you serve as advocates for your alma mater and find ways to financially support university initiatives.

This year, we recognize UWM’s 50th anniversary. We will celebrate, reflect, and envision the future. But as I said in my plenary last winter, we and our public and private partners must act boldly now if UWM’s mission and the economic potential of Milwaukee and the state are to be fully realized.

Universities create and transform themselves over 50 or 100 years or more; institutional time is a marathon. Individuals operate on a much shorter timeline; they only run legs of that long race.

We are UWM’s current torch bearers, and now is the time for us to run.