The committee offers its comprehensive goal: UWM is at its core a community of faculty, staff and students engaged in learning, discovery, and creative expression. For the sake of generations of our students to come, for our immediate neighbors in metropolitan Milwaukee, for the state of Wisconsin, and for our world as it ventures into the twenty-first century, we, the faculty, aspire to excellence and eminence as teachers-scholars. Our goal is to join the ranks of the best universities in the United States by the year 2010.

1. Discovery and creative expression by faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students.

Principles:
(1) To elevate UWM’s standing to the upper half of Research II universities as determined by the Carnegie Corporation.
(2) To strengthen the expectation and value of campus scholarship and creative expression.

Strategies:
(1) Make scholarship, which fuels the development of all aspects of campus life, the first priority throughout the administrative structure.

(a) Facilitate faculty acquisition of extramural funding and performance of scholarly activities.
(b) Sustain and increase the number of doctoral programs and degrees and the number of faculty involved in doctoral education. Critically assess doctoral programs for viability.
(c) Provide expanded support for master’s degree programs and students. Link   resources to critical assessment of programs.

(2) Expect all faculty to be active scholars and where possible to seek extramural support.

(3) Focus resources on areas of excellence.

(a) Hire scholars and gather them into these areas of excellence with an initial     emphasis on areas which have the demonstrated potential to generate extramural funding.
(b) Review departmental structures to strengthen and focus core disciplines and stimulate interdisciplinary coordination and cooperation within and across colleges.
(c) Seek endowment targeted to support scholarship.

(4) Introduce undergraduates to and organize undergraduate instruction around a paradigm of discovery, including undergraduate research and creative activity.

2. The learning experience for undergraduate and graduate students
Principles:
(1) To enhance the quality of the undergraduate student body
(2) To improve the quality of instruction
(3) To promote diversity in the undergraduate and graduate experience

Strategies:
(1) Improve the academic reputation of UWM.
(2) Increase recruitment efforts to seek undergraduate students with high academic achievement throughout the state, the nation and around the world.
(3) Intensify efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student body and faculty.
(4) Hire faculty committed to integrated teaching and research.
(5) Enhance the quality of the undergraduate experience.

(a) Improve and coordinate professional and faculty advising.
(b) Expand undergraduate research and scholarly opportunities.
(c) Support innovative teaching.
(d) Integrate all freshman and other new students into UWM through a variety of activities which focus on increased contact with faculty and produce a greater     sense of student community.
(e) Implement the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Committee on the           Undergraduate Experience.

(6) Enhance the quality of the graduate experience.

(a) Improve and coordinate faculty advising.
(b) Expand and increase fellowship and assistantship support.
(c) Support innovative teaching.

(7) Increase teaching development opportunities for instructional staff.
(8) Hire enough faculty to maintain the undergraduate and graduate instructional programs of each unit.
(9) Require all units to regularly review their curricula in terms of (i) emerging trends in their disciplines, (ii) opportunities for cross unit collaboration, and (iii) programmatic adjustments to match available resources.
(10) Encourage all UWM programs to include community involvement as part of the curriculum (internships, field experiences, etc.)
(11) Identify and modify institutional barriers to campus access and program completion.

3. Campus facilities

Principle:
(1) To improve UWM’s infrastructure to match its status as a major research university

Strategies:
(1) Improve the quality of and access to the library holdings and service as key resources for the campus.
(2) Enhance the research infrastructure, including equipment and staff support.
(3) Provide state of the art information technology to the campus.
(4) Stabilize and increase maintenance and custodial support.

4. Campus work environment

Principle:
(1) To establish a collegial and supportive work environment for all members of the UWM community

Strategies:
(1) Foster at the levels of departments, schools and colleges, and the upper administration, collegial support for all faculty to grow as creative scholars and effective teachers from initial hiring throughout their careers and into retirement.
(2) Expect and assist administrators at all levels to continue their academic role and at the same time encourage and provide professional development to advance their administrative skills.
(3) Insure bureaucratic support for all members of UWM that is accessible, affordable, accountable, and responsive.
(4) Continue open access to the UWM campus while maintaining health, safety, and security remain high priorities.

5. UWM and the larger community

Principles:
(1) To bring UWM’s public image into synchrony with its position as a major, Research II University
(2) To enhance the recognition of UWM within the state and across the nation as a major university particularly concerned with the principal frontiers of knowledge of urban society

Strategies:
(1) Develop a powerful public relations campaign to promote the university.
(2) Effectively communicate the accomplishments of the faculty, staff, and students.
(3) Provide intellectual leadership to address metropolitan issues by fostering interdisciplinary research on urban problems.
(4) Encourage scholarship with a direct benefit to the citizens, economy, and quality of life of southeastern Wisconsin.

6. Scarce resources

Principles:
(1) To deal creatively with budgetary constriction
(2) To increase the diversity of funding for UWM

Strategies:
(1) Identify and maintain the appropriate size of the undergraduate and graduate student body required to support a comprehensive program array.
(2) Increase significantly the UWM endowment.
(3) Support activities and hiring which markedly increase extramural funding.
(4) Investigate merging programs, departments, schools, and colleges in order to more effectively utilize resources.
(5) Install effective methods to make fiscal decisions. Insure effective administrative-faculty cooperation in fiscal decision making.

7. Implementation of the Strategic Plan

Principle:
(1) To effectively implement the Strategic Plan

Strategies:
(1) The Faculty and administration will jointly develop coordinated and integrated tactics to implement the Strategic Plan.
(2) The FAPBC will represent the faculty in this process.
(3) The University Committee and the Chancellor will provide the UWM community with a yearly report on the progress of the Strategic Plan. March 7, 1996