Dear Colleagues,

As we wrap up an extraordinary year, it’s a great opportunity to thank you for your exceptional work. You taught classes in multiple formats, worked tirelessly to meet unusual student needs, handled hardships on the home front, and performed at high levels to keep our academic, research and engagements moving forward. With you, we are strong, resilient and able to meet challenges and transform lives. Without you, there is little we can do. You matter because our campus is the single most important entity in Wisconsin as an engine for economic and workforce development, for individual and family employment and social mobility, and access to life changing developmental experiences.

For you to continue your care and support for students and colleagues, we need to communicate and strengthen our support of you. Your talent, hard work and care have made UWM what it is today, and for that I, my leadership team, and over 202,000 alumni are forever grateful. Few organizations today have adequate resources to enable all employees to feel completely supported and successful, and it’s no secret that public higher education, particularly in Wisconsin, has its own set of challenges. Within those constraints, we strive to create and support employment that is positive, enriching and rewarding. In that context, here are ways that UWM supports you.

Work/Life Balance

As part of your total benefits package, UWM offers generous leave that is far greater than what is offered by most other employers. I encourage you to use this healthy benefit to support and enrich your life. Please take a moment to review your UWM benefits package visiting the new Human Resources site.

Health & Wellness

Your efforts drive UWM’s success, and your well-being is important to us. To help you excel personally and professionally, UWM offers various benefits and resources to support you:

• Generous health benefits so you can receive care for body and mind, including telehealth and mental health resources.
• Campus Cares wellness resources.
• Wellness Wednesday newsletter. Sign up here.
• Fitness classes for staff and faculty starting in 2023.
• Our Employee Assistance Program provides a wide range of information, resources and benefits to help you, and not just in emergencies. Resources include ways to enrich your life with family, friends and colleagues, counseling services, nutrition and wellness advice and coaching, financial coaching, work/life balance guides, legal assistance, and more. Please visit Kepro here to learn more about the many offerings.

Talent / Professional Development 

Your professional success is important to us. When you are equipped to achieve your best, then UWM is positioned to achieve its best. The following opportunities will support your professional growth. While some of these items may be familiar to you, I hope that there are some resources that are new and untried, and I encourage you to pursue and engage in these topics:

• All UWM staff and faculty have free, 24/7 access to LinkedIn Learning presentations.
• The Campus Cares team has updated the Trauma-Informed Care toolkit for faculty and supervisors. The Dean of Students office has also developed a Trauma-Informed Care workshop provided upon request.
• In collaboration with Human Resources, the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion launched the new UWM Mosaic Leadership Academy and aims to foster the professional growth and mentorship of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) staff and faculty who seek to grow in their occupational field.
• In partnership with other departments at UWM, HR offers a number of professional development sessions for supervisors and for all employees, including six topics coming up in the Winter and Spring. Supervisors are required to complete all  the supervisor modules within two years of becoming a supervisor and are encouraged to refresh themselves periodically on all of the topics offered.

Beyond these topics, we have more resources being developed and are working to compile a comprehensive collection of existing and new programs and support areas that will be shared early in 2023. We want to ensure that no matter what your employment position is at UWM, you have support and resources for personal and career growth, mental health and wellbeing, professional support, and other topics of interest. We welcome your thoughts and ask that you share your ideas and suggestions on new programs and areas of support of greatest interest.

It is clear to me from being at UWM for many years and working with other campuses and all types of organizations that there are rarely enough support and development resources. There are simply too many diverse needs and interests, and organizations have many responsibilities to their students, customers, patients, etc.

So, it comes down to each of us to make our department, team, or group the place that we want it to be: What resources do we avail ourselves of, what do we offer as ways that our workplace can be the social entity and climate that we want? And an ideal climate is one in which all supervisors enable and empower colleagues to discuss and engage ways that they can be safe, enjoyable, positive, and rewarded for their work.

I look forward to building on our past successes and continuing to make UWM the place that you can find satisfaction and fulfillment.

Best regards and warmest holiday wishes

Mark A. Mone, PhD
Chancellor