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| Moving Forward: Assessing Progress Toward UWM’s Student Success and Economic Development Goals Podcast(you must have iTunes installed on your computer) Listen online(Click on the "Administration & Governance" button and then "Office of the Chancellor" to locate "Chancellor's Plenary Fall 2007") Good afternoon. I’m pleased to be here with you for the start of UWM’s 52nd fall term. Having completed 51 years as an institution and beginning our 52nd doesn’t conjure up quite the hoopla that we had last year in celebrating our 50th anniversary. But each new academic year is worth celebrating: We always have new students, faculty, and staff; a sense of restored energy and worthy tasks to undertake; and, some years, we even have a new State budget to work with. Well … I hope sooner than later, that too will come. This fall also is the start of my fourth year as the Chancellor of UW–Milwaukee. When I came to Milwaukee in 2004, the UW System Board of Regents and the President of the UW System charged me to work with you – the faculty, staff, and students – and UWM’s external constituents and stakeholders – regional businesses, governments, schools, and civic groups – to vigorously advance UWM’s historic dual mission: to provide Wisconsin students access to a high-quality university education, and to expand UWM’s graduate education and dramatically increase its funded research as a catalyst to economic development. Advancing UWM’s Mission In the past three years, our campus community has articulated and initiated several major actions to advance UWM’s mission:
This afternoon, I’d like to review how we are progressing on our overarching goals, and give you my evaluation of how we’re moving forward and what still needs to be done. And I invite each of you to give serious thought to our progress and to share your thoughts with me, with governance bodies, or with the several groups that will be engaged in assessment and planning this year. Individually and collectively, we are accountable to our investors – the taxpayers of the State, the givers of gifts and grants, and the students who seek and pay tuition for a high-quality education – to regularly assess our progress toward our stated goals and to give a public accounting of that assessment:
The Campaign for UWM I’ll begin my evaluation of our initiatives on a high note with the $100 million Comprehensive Campaign. As you know, we launched this campaign publicly in January 2006 with the goal of raising $100 million by 2009. I am very happy to report that the campaign, so ably led by Co-Chairs Gale Klappa, Dennis Kuester, Keith Nosbusch, Jim Ziemer and Ed Zore and Honorary Chair Sheldon Lubar, has raised to date $97 million. Our community partners continue to demonstrate their support for UWM by their pledges and gifts, which support student scholarships, endowed professorships, research facilities, equipment and staff, instructional innovation, and capital projects. Just last week, Milwaukee businessman and philanthropist Joseph Zilber generously pledged $10 million toward the creation of a UWM School of Public Health in downtown Milwaukee. With this and other gifts that I anticipate this fall, I am confident that the Comprehensive Campaign will exceed its $100 million goal before the end of 2007. It is important to pause and appreciate just how far we have come. In the five years preceding the beginning of this campaign, UWM raised an average of just over $10 million annually. In our first comprehensive campaign in decades, we have raised an average of just over $24 million annually. Further, the total assets of the UWM Foundation are at an all-time high of over $119 million, with $68 million dedicated to the endowment. At the outset of the campaign, we identified a number of substantive goals for our fund-raising efforts. Our primary objectives included funding for student scholarships, for faculty and departmental support, and for research. These clearly resonated with many generous donors in our community. Of the $97 million raised to date, 29 percent of the total has been raised for scholarship support, 44 percent for faculty and departmental support, and 13 percent for research support. Other campus needs have also received substantial support throughout the campaign. It is important to understand that these totals include many significant planned gifts, from which this institution will benefit in the future and for many years to come. While we can take collective pride in almost meeting our ambitious goal one-and-a-half years ahead of the scheduled end of the campaign, we can also acknowledge that not all of our campaign objectives will be met by December. These will remain compelling priorities for this University, and we must all pledge to redouble our efforts to meet them going forward. Our campaign is an unprecedented accomplishment by the University and its supporters. Even in those instances where we have surpassed our campaign goals, we cannot rest on our laurels. The Need for More Scholarships One need of which I am acutely aware is more scholarship funds. Significant additional support for undergraduate and graduate students is essential if this University is to succeed in its aspirations for student diversity, and for research excellence and expanded graduate education, especially at the doctoral level. Private gifts from you, the faculty and staff, and from our community partners, will continue to be the primary source of these scholarship funds. The need for scholarships at UWM is great. Recent research showed the debt load for UWM students was 10 percent greater than for all other UW System undergraduates. Even with a minimum-wage increase in Wisconsin last year, it remains very difficult for a young person to make enough money during the summer to finance all their education expenses. We have cursory evidence to suggest that some traditional undergraduate students coming to UWM are having a difficult time balancing their educational responsibilities with employment and financial burdens. The level of stress among these students is high. Even before their record-breaking contribution to UWM, Sheldon and Marianne Lubar had supported dozens of UWM Business School students through the Lubar Scholarships program. And many people in Milwaukee who simply could not previously consider college as an option now have that opportunity through the Life Impact Program funded by the Jane Bradley Pettit Foundation. There are several other examples of the transformational power of scholarships at UWM, but we have much more work that needs to be done in this area. Extramural Research Growth At the time the Comprehensive Campaign began in January 2006, we also launched an initiative for the University to invest in itself by increasing UWM’s extramurally funded research from $25 million to $100 million over the next decade. We developed the Research Growth Initiative as a means to reallocate existing funds to directly support our most promising proposals for external grants. I am pleased to report that externally funded research expenditures in fiscal year 2006-2007 exceeded $30 million, a 15 percent increase over FY 2005-2006. We celebrate this, and I appreciate the hard work and dedication of the faculty and staff, but I also would caution that one year does not a trend make. Preliminary analysis suggests, however, that approximately $4 million in research funding growth may be attributable to RGI investments. This is excellent news. We continue to face major challenges in obtaining sufficient space, 21st century facilities and equipment, support for graduate assistants, and infrastructure support to continue developing our funded research – especially in the natural sciences and engineering. To attain this laudable goal, we need to garner the necessary resources to support research by having state-of-the-art facilities, the latest equipment, a critical mass of faculty in strategic areas, and support for graduate students and postdoctoral staff. In another major step to advance UWM’s research and economic development profile, in 2006 the UWM Foundation created the UWM Research Foundation to advance and coordinate UWM’s sponsored research. In July 2007, the UW System Board of Regents designated the UWM Research Foundation as UWM’s Intellectual Property Management Organization. The full significance of this development will probably not be felt for 10 or even 20 years. But what it fundamentally means is that UWM will have a full-service research promotion and commercialization operation that will serve our faculty and our research partners. The benefits will also now accrue exclusively to our institution. The UWM Research Foundation is already helping UWM to protect its valuable intellectual property – through numerous patent applications. It is building capabilities to leverage that intellectual property through spin-off companies and license agreements, adding to the license agreement completed earlier this year. In addition, the UWM Research Foundation is helping connect UWM with corporate partners, and it is rolling out the catalyst grant program which will build capabilities and strengthen our ties with industry partners. Investing $300 Million in UWM Since my arrival, I have continuously spoken about the need for at least a $300 million investment in UWM if this institution is to successfully compete with the premier urban research universities in the country. The University and its community of supporters already are making great strides in providing two-thirds of this reinvestment. The third $100 million part of our investment plan calls for new funding from the State of Wisconsin. The initial reinvestment by the State is the $10 million request contained in the 2007-2009 biennial budget proposal, which is still being debated in the State Legislature. Let me say once more: The Milwaukee community is doing its part; the UWM community is doing its part; now the State must also do its part to e The UW System Board of Regents, Governor Doyle, and the State Legislature all have endorsed the UW System Growth Agenda, which includes UWM’s $10 million budget request to support:
The UW System’s budget proposal also calls for a faculty and academic staff compensation package of 4.5 percent in each year of the biennium. As do our sister institutions in the UW System, we have a severe salary compression problem; a 3.1 percent annual compensation increase is needed just to maintain the current salary gap with our peer universities. The current budget represents the first stage of a much needed reinvest in UWM and in Milwaukee itself. We are confident that we have done our part, and will continue to do our part, to support this city, region, and state. UWM’s need for new funding – as well as the $13 million in “cost-to-continue” funds (which are eliminated in one version of the proposed State budget) – is highlighted by our continued dramatic enrollment growth:
It is a tribute to our faculty and teaching staff that we have been able to enroll qualified applicants in our classes and to continue providing our students with the personalized attention that is more typical of much smaller institutions. Enrollment Growth at UWM It’s quite interesting that much of our enrollment growth over the past five years is coming from other areas of Wisconsin (Dane County and the Fox Valley in particular), other states, and other countries ( a 22 percent increase in international students). UWM is increasingly a “first choice” destination campus. But enrollment growth is an unalloyed good only with the sufficient human, space and budgetary resources to preserve the quality of our product. Our standard must be, “only growth with quality.” This University is committed to maintaining the quality of life in the neighborhoods, and respecting and preserving what is here. That is why master planning, which I will discuss shortly, is so important to the future of UWM. And we are near, and by some measures well past, the point where UWM can continue to grow not only its research mission but also its student body – its access mission – with its current faculty and staff, space, financial resources, student support, and infrastructure. As I’ve stressed in other Plenary speeches, our East Side campus is severely compressed. We are making good progress with adding new student residence hall space:
Focusing on Campus Safety As the number of students on Milwaukee’s East Side has increased, the university also has increased concerns about their physical safety. In keeping with the Governor’s Task Force on Campus Safety, which was announced on this campus last May, UWM has launched a yearlong effort, S.A.F.E (Safety Awareness for Everyone), to create a culture of safety awareness among faculty, staff, students, and parents. I would especially like to encourage everyone to go to the Campus Safety Web site to sign up for the Alert Emergency Notification System. Our staff made an extraordinary effort to get this text-messaging system in place by the start of the academic year, and I hope it gets widely used. We must give great credit to the many people who have implemented the S.A.F.E. program and the Enrollment Management and Access to Success initiatives, led our transition to a holistic admissions process, increased the diversity of our student body, and improved undergraduate retention. Facilitating Student Success One new study, by economists at the College of William & Mary, compares universities’ graduation rates in the context of the academic qualifications of their students, and the instructional and support inputs made by the universities. In this context, UW–Milwaukee and 34 other institutions nationwide received a number one ranking as the most efficient producer of graduates! We know the elements that are necessary for student success. To the extent that students can be integrated into the life of the University, in all its facets, they will succeed. Student residence hall facilities are an important part of this integration process. We also know that student learning translates into retention, graduation, and student success. Student learning is an important component of our access initiatives. Faculty members play a key leadership role and have a major responsibility in achieving student learning goals. UWM faculty provide high-caliber teaching and strive to cultivate meaningful interactions with their students. It is important that we gather evidence and document the achievement of learning goals – not only to improve learning but also to satisfy the various constituencies that expect accountability for student learning. The UWM Assessment Council will be playing a leading role in promoting a learning-centered culture on campus and in preparing for the follow-up report to the NCA that is due this spring. The ethnic diversity of our freshman class this fall is over 14 percent, still short of our goal of at least 20 percent. We have been successful in increasing the overall number of freshman students of color (641 compared to 618 last fall), but we have still fallen short of our goals. It is noteworthy that this last year, UWM received more applications (up 17 percent) and admitted substantially more African-American students than before (up 36 percent), but the enrollment of these students (or our “yield”) actually decreased (down 3.1 percent). We know there is stiff competition among universities for highly qualified students of color, and we must be able to offer more scholarships and funded on-campus housing if we are to bring many more students of color to UWM. There is still much more to be done in this area, and we have added staff to the Office of the Provost to help us reach our goals by rethinking how we attract and recruit our students. Support – or Lack of – for UWM We should be fully aware that not everyone who will influence or make decisions about UWM’s growth will be our allies. The Wisconsin State Journal just last week editorialized against a School of Public Health here in Milwaukee. Their editors wrote: “Wisconsin is better off moving forward with one first-class Madison-based school of public health that serves the State, including Milwaukee. Plans to construct a second school in Milwaukee should be dropped.” Those of you who, like me, have not been at UWM for many years would do well to read The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee: An Urban University, by our first Chancellor, J. Martin Klotsche, to see that opposition by some interests in the State has deep roots in our history. Recalling events from preceding decades, Chancellor Klotsche in 1972 wrote, “So far as Milwaukee was concerned, the University, almost to the end, clung to the position that its two-year program there was adequate and that anything beyond that should be handled in Madison.” Later in the book, Chancellor Klotsche considered the status of doctoral programs in Milwaukee and stated: “There are now 11 approved Ph.D. programs with the understanding that no more than an average of one a year will be added until a total of 20-25 has been reached.” In 2007, 35 years later, UWM has added 13 Ph.D. programs for a total of 24 – still less than the number our first Chancellor envisioned UWM would have by the mid-1980s! Political debate and imbroglio are part of the reality we face, and we must just accept that reality and press forward. Look how far we have come in 50 years. And we will continue to move forward steadfastly because the need is there and our will is strong. Aligning Resources with Mission As I noted in my January 2006 Plenary speech, a major challenge as we move forward “is to align our resources with our mission.” We must realistically align our academic goals with our budget, with our human resources, and with our physical and technical infrastructure. Toward this end, the University will engage in two overarching planning processes this fiscal year. The first of these, the Academic Planning Process (led by Provost Rita Cheng with comprehensive participation from the UWM community) is already well under way. It focuses on UWM’s future program array, student profile, and locations. The Academic Plan will form the groundwork for the UWM Master Plan, which will focus on the space and infrastructure needed to deliver the program array and student needs. The State Building Commission has appropriated $2 million to hire consultants to research and complete the Master Plan, and I expect they will begin their work this winter. This process will inform our efforts to establish satellite campuses both downtown and in Wauwatosa on the County Grounds. The land acquisition portions of our future, however, might occur during and not after the master planning process. Outside constituencies are signaling their interest in moving forward on the sale of land for these higher-education purposes, and we intend to work with them to the best of our ability. Broader, Deeper Advice Concurrent with these two formal, public planning processes, I am endorsing an idea that arose from the UWM Leadership Retreat in late August. That idea is to broaden and deepen the base of advice the Chancellor receives. Let me say that I am never at a loss for advice – but most often the professional advice I receive is from individuals or groups with a particular focus. What I could additionally benefit from is thinking and advice from representative campus leaders on questions that I pose to them. A sample question would be, “How can the University achieve ‘transparency’ of our budget at all levels (from Chancellor to individual faculty and staff) so we can discuss and plan together with reliable, common sets of information?” Without much better budget transparency, we run the risk of a university culture like the one described in the satirical novel Moo, by Jane Smiley. Smiley wrote: “It was well known to all members of the campus population that other, unnamed groups reaped unimagined monetary advantages in comparison to the monetary disadvantages of one’s own group, and that if funds were distributed fairly, according to real merit, for once, some people would have another thing coming.” We can do better than that! To this end, I have endorsed the idea of expanding my Senior Management Team by adding Deans, the Director of UWM Libraries, the Chief Information Officer, and the Academic Staff Committee and University Committee Chairs to address pressing University issues. This group will be advisory only, staffed and with data-gathering authority. We cannot approach the challenges we face by using the same methods as in the past. If the results we seek are not being obtained, we need to approach crucial issues from new and different perspectives. Advancing UWM’s Mission I’d like to return to initial questions I posed:
My view is that this University certainly is on the right track – we are reinvigorating UWM’s historic mission of student access and success, and research growth. We do have a coherent strategy for growth – of the student population, graduate education, new facilities and space, and diversified financial support. Our rate of progress has been variable – from great success with the Comprehensive Campaign to slow progress with State reinvestment, some diversity goals, and creating new doctoral programs. The necessary adjustments and corrections will be thoroughly addressed through the Academic Plan and the Master Plan. Our Aspirations as Educators In closing, I’d like to step back from our immediate plans and progress, and take a broader view of our most fundamental aspirations as educators, which underlies all of our plans. As an economist, I often use the language of economics – investments, returns, outcomes, assessment, accountability – and the quantifiable metrics of the discipline to talk about our University and our aspirations for it. And while that is appropriate, because UWM must thrive in a world permeated by economic concerns, we must always keep in sight the responsibility of educators that underlies all our immediate, measurable activities: to engage in open and thoughtful inquiry to encourage discovery. This fundamental responsibility was eloquently stated by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents in 1894: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.” We meet this responsibility class by class, semester by semester, research project by research project, over many years. We create new knowledge and send forth generations of people who engage in unfettered inquiry – who sift and winnow – all aspects of the universe to discover new truths. Our success in this effort, as it is for all true education, is not always readily quantifiable in the short term. Rather, it often is measured more subtly over decades by the vigor of our regional economy, the civility of our public life, the lifelong personal satisfaction of our graduates, and the delight and hope that comes from discovery. I am most pleased to join all of you again this year in this, the ongoing work of our University.
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