Chancellor Mark Mone celebrated UWM’s recent successes, including the opening of the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, while telling the campus community Thursday that “tumultuous times require significant responses.”

“I won’t sugarcoat this,” Mone said at the fall plenary in the Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts. “Beyond the budget cuts, there are threats to our core tenets of shared governance and faculty tenure. That’s why it’s so important to remind ourselves of how much UWM matters and why are here.”

Mone pledged to preserve faculty tenure and shared governance and vowed that UWM will remain faithful to the Wisconsin Idea, the principle that Wisconsin’s universities and colleges should improve people’s lives beyond the classroom.

“As a public research university, we are the stewards of human knowledge, preparing the next generation of students and citizens, and we should be evaluated in the context of why we exist,” he said.

He cited a number of recent accomplishments:

• The opening of the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, home to physics, chemistry and public health faculty members and a number of research laboratories and classrooms. “This is where some of our most pressing needs in STEM research will be addressed,” said Mone, who invited the campus to the Oct. 2 dedication that precedes his inauguration as UWM’s ninth chancellor.
• A $10 million gift from Sheldon and Marianne Lubar for the new Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship. With additional funding from the UW System, UWM will construct a new building at Kenwood and Maryland avenues to house the entrepreneurship center and a UWM welcome center.
• The Vision 20/20 Comprehensive Campaign, which has raised $83 million while still in the “quiet phase” of fundraising.
• UWM’s formal partnerships with 125 greater Milwaukee organizations, including Milwaukee Public Schools, Milwaukee Succeeds, Johnson Controls, Rockwell Automation, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Growing Power.
• A letter of commendation from the Racine Health Department, which noted that seven UWM students are involved in water quality research for its laboratory.

Calling the time since his last plenary address “no doubt a challenging year,” Mone went on to detail how UWM would deal with reductions in state funding and a structural deficit.

The Budget Planning Task Force has proposed $15.7 million in cuts over the next two fiscal years and is in the process of allocating another $14.5 million in cuts for fiscal year 2017, he said.

Mone also detailed UWM’s ongoing structural deficit, which is projected to be up to $30 million in fiscal year 2016. The structural deficit resulted not just from recent reductions in state allocations, but also from declining enrollments, tuition freezes and underfunding of UWM relative to other UW System schools, including UW-Madison, he said.

Mone also announced a new campus-wide initiative to establish comprehensive, long-term budget and strategic planning. Robert Greenstreet, dean of the School of Urban Architecture and Planning, and John Reisel, chair of the University Committee, will lead the Chancellor’s Campus Organization and Effectiveness Team.

“The charge of this group will be to develop recommendations and a plan that will improve the organizational efficiency of campus, propose meaningful efficiencies and make recommendations for the consolidation of organizational units,” Mone said. “This is our best bet for comprehensively addressing what we need to do.”

He asked this group to recommend a process for engaging the campus in this planning by early October, and to provide recommendations by Feb. 1 that he will evaluate and share.

Mone urged faculty, staff and students to discuss the importance of UWM with state legislators well before work begins on the next two-year state budget.