With changes in the Governor’s office, and support from UW-System, MORFS will now be authorized to receive funds from UW-Milwaukee faculty through voluntary payroll deductions.
However, we need some time to determine how this organization can best served UW-Milwaukee faculty interests. That will be determined to a large degree by how much funding support the faculty are willing to give this new organization. At UW-Madison, about 50% of their much larger faculty (~1000) contribute to PROFS, generating an annual budget of about $90,000. At UW-Milwaukee, given our small total number of faculty, a realistic level of contribution would most likely be in the range of $15,000 to $25,000 per year.
Therefore, the University Committee proposes that we move forward, but allow a year to gauge the annual level of financial support likely from the faculty and develop a comprehensive implementation plan for MORFS activities appropriate to that budgetary level. No funding expenditures from collected funds will be authorized for MORFS until after an implementation plan is presented to and approved by the Faculty Senate. The target date for presentation of this plan for approval is May 2020.