Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students:

I hope that your summer is going well. This is the first of what will be a series of budget updates this summer. My goal is to keep our campus and community informed of the progress we are making on the budget initiatives that were announced in April 2016. As I stressed then, it is imperative we maintain our focus on student success, research excellence and community engagement, while we manage the cuts that have been imposed and seek to balance our budget.

First, I am pleased to report the UW System has granted UWM additional one-time funding for student success initiatives. For 2016-17, we will receive an additional $3.3 million for student financial aid. The funds will be awarded strategically to encourage enrollment of new students, promote retention of returning students and to provide emergency grants to qualified students who need minimal assistance to continue at UWM. In addition, UW System will provide UWM with $3.77 million during 2016-19 to enhance student advising. The Chancellor’s Enrollment Management Action Team (CEMAT) will lead this effort, which will include hiring additional advisors, expanding supplemental instruction and implementing technology to assist students in scheduling and degree progress. All of these additional advising actions are high impact practices aimed to increase student enrollment, retention and graduation.

CEMAT will also soon be launching their Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) plan, a multi-year initiative intended to improve enrollment and retention rates, which is expected to increase revenues. UWM is committing $1.175 million annually for the SEM plan which will produce benefits for every school and college in increased enrollments. There will be more details to report on SEM when the plan is officially launched in August, and we plan thereafter for CEMAT to provide at least monthly updates on their progress.

Next, our budget work on initiatives announced in the spring continues. The Academic Planning and Budget Committee approved the Strategic Position Control (SPC) Process. Provost Johannes Britz and Vice Chancellor Robin Van Harpen are meeting during the summer with all schools, colleges, units, and governance leads to discuss the process. The meetings in schools and colleges include the Dean, Associate Deans, Department Chairs and Executive Committee members to ensure that the SPC process is being shared with a wide array of groups. One main difference from when we first started discussing SPC is the role of the review committee. After discussions, including with governance groups, we determined that decisions of which positions to recruit should remain with Deans and Division Heads. This will be more efficient and will allow for those with the most knowledge of an area to make decisions regarding that area. To ensure progress in every school, college and unit, targets will be established. The SPC review committee will provide overall strategic guidance on SPC, including review of how each school, college and unit is meeting its SPC target.

The limited appointment review is underway. At this time, we believe we will be able to address the planned reduction in limited staff through vacancies that have occurred and future vacancies. Where student, research, and engagement priorities exist, we will recruit for those areas.

The Integrated Support Services Project (ISSP) continues to make excellent progress and recently transitioned from the assessment of the “as is” state to the design phase. Huron Consulting has been engaged to help our campus teams develop recommendations for the future state of our human resources, information technology, finance, and procurement structures by the end of the summer.

The three health schools and colleges continue to make progress in their discussions, which have included the ideas of consolidating support services and curriculum pathways.

The Provost is leading discussions on how the Faculty Workload Policy will be implemented within each school and college’s workload policies, including annual performance reviews.

A work group to examine the reduction of course duplication has received its charge and is meeting to advance this initiative.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, and are able to take advantage of the beautiful weather to relax and recharge. We will continue to provide updates on budget developments throughout the summer.

Best regards,

Mark A. Mone
Chancellor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee