Tracey Heatherington in her role as Associate Dean of the Graduate School attended the meeting to share some concerns regarding the ability of international PhD students to matriculate from PhD programs. Given the work limitations on international students, she has observed several cases where students cannot continue due to discontinued funding after a couple of years in the program. This led to a discussion regarding the admissions and funding decisions for PhD students more broadly across campus. The UC agreed that this could be an important issue and expressed a desire to see retention data for PhD programs across campus to better understand this issue. It was noted that the ability to retain these students directly affects UWM’s ability to retain its R1 status.

UC Chair Reisel provided an update of several meetings he attended in the previous two weeks, including the Chancellor’s retreat, the CEMAT retreat, and the BOR meeting.

The Zilber School of Public Health and the Letters & Sciences Dean searches are continuing, and Enrique Figueroa volunteered to serve as the UC representative to the SPH search. Jennifer Doering will continue as the chair of the L&S search and will also be the UC rep to that committee.