Provost Britz joined us and discussed preserving the research base at UWM. The UWM operating budget in the year ending June 30 was $31 million lower than the year before, accomplished with a combination of one time and base cuts. The campus did not have to exhaust its safety net of reserves to the extent expected earlier in the year. There will be additional budget cuts in 2016-17 as mandated by Act 55, and the campus is currently calculating whether it will be necessary to plan for $20 million in cuts as was done this year.

The committee awaits more detailed budget analyses of where the cuts were taken, by division and employment category. The committee is particularly concerned that our capacity to raise research funding will be impaired if the size of the faculty shrinks.

Another world university ranking system ranks UWM gives UWM a world rank of 322. See http://www.webometrics.info/en/search/Rankings/university%20of%20wisconsin%20milwaukee.

Kyle Swanson and Laura Pedrick joined us to discuss the strategic enrollment management task force. The modeling team modeled projections for high school class side, tuition, etc. to determine where interventions (and investments) should be made. See https://uwm.edu/cemat/sem/ for more detail. The goal of enrollment management is to stabilize and grow enrollments and tuition revenues.

We had pie in honor of Margo Anderson’s last UC meeting of her term.