UW-­‐Stout Budget Response Narrative April 2016 Focus on economic development and the needs of employers UW-­‐Stout continues to respond to the needs of a growing economy along the I-­‐94 corridor from the Twin Cities to Eau Claire. At the November 2014 Board of Regents meeting, Todd Berry of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance identified this corridor as one of two hot zones of economic growth in Wisconsin. This economic growth parallels population growth for the region, confirmed by the fact that several of the counties along this corridor have seen consistent growth for over two decades. St. Croix County, for example, has been in the top two fastest growing counties in Wisconsin for over 20 years. To keep pace with this economic growth and employer demand, since 2000, UW-­‐Stout has added 30 new undergraduate and 14 graduate programs (including two terminal degrees), more than doubling the number of program offerings. Our outstanding program growth has allowed UW-­‐Stout to carry out our mission as a polytechnic university and has provided excellence in job placement and enrollment. Therefore, we measure our success by the success of our graduates in the workplace. Our new employment report shows that 97.3 percent of our graduates were working or continuing their education within six months of leaving campus, and over 80 percent of them were employed in their field of study. This is the second year in a row that we increased the percentage of our graduates who found satisfying positions within six months of leaving campus. The annual starting salaries just for our 2014-­‐2015 graduates was over $51 million. All of these outcomes indicate that our 48 undergraduate majors are very closely aligned with the needs of business and industry in Wisconsin. As Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University, UW-­‐Stout continued to emphasize experiential learning with 1,032 students participating in our Cooperative Education Program in 2014-­‐2015. In addition, nearly 800 employers attended our fall and winter career conferences in 2015-­‐2016 to recruit our students to either full-­‐time positions, co-­‐op positions or internships. UW-­‐Stout’s Discovery Center engaged faculty, staff, students and project managers in solving the problems of business and industry at employer locations throughout Wisconsin. These efforts resulted in client-­‐reported impacts exceeding $30 million in the past year. Since its inception in 1994, the Discovery Center has engaged in more than 5,000 technology transfer activities, resulting in more than $500 million in client-­‐reported impacts and over 4,000 jobs. UW-­‐Stout continues to implement ways of making our offerings more affordable UW-­‐Stout is now offering 44 of 48 undergraduate majors at 120 credits to help a student complete their education in four years. The four remaining programs exceed 120 credits because of accreditation requirements. We also are offering a guaranteed three-­‐year program for four of our programs. Other good news UW-­‐Stout continued to enjoy success in attracting new students, hitting record enrollment for 2015-­‐16 at 9,535 (headcount). This record enrollment was an increase of 1.75 percent from last year, despite
awarding a record 1,995 degrees in 2014-15. Applications are strong for 2016-­‐17 as well, so another record is possible. In addition, we exceeded our enrollment targets for new freshmen, transfer and graduate students. We also are making improvements in our retention and graduation rates. UW-­‐Stout posted several other strategic milestones. Our newest program, mechanical engineering, is a phenomenal success—exceeding all of our expectations. This year’s class, with only four months to market it, has 60 students. Next year we are expecting a freshman class of nearly 200 students. We asked for this program because our employers said they needed more engineering graduates in northwestern Wisconsin, and we are well on our way towards addressing that need. In addition, we are coming off a visit from our accreditation agency, the Higher Learning Commission, and already have received positive feedback from the reviewers. Challenges imposed by the 2015-­‐17 state budget (and the accumulation of budget cuts over several years) Our final portion of the allocated reduction was $4.7 million a year, with a one-­‐time assistance of $1.5 million from UW-­‐System. We have attempted as much as possible to keep the impact of this reduction from our academic area, with only 14.4% of the reduction and 8.45 of 55.50 FTE positions eliminated from the instruction area. We are reducing the number of our colleges from four to three and currently are working on a plan to reorganize and reduce our Student Services area. My office also took a cut of 16 percent. Our No. 1 challenge is the retention and recruitment of high-­‐quality faculty and staff. This was an issue BEFORE 2015-­‐17 because of the lack of adequate (or any) pay plans, and now has reached a critical state. I don’t use “critical” lightly. UW-­‐Stout faculty salaries are at 79 percent of the salaries of their CUPA (College and University Professional Association) peers, and instructional academic staff salaries are at 78 percent. Faculty salaries were at 95 percent of the national average in 1995-­‐96. Our IPEDS data shows that UW-­‐Stout’s average salary for all faculty and instructional academic staff is about $25,000 lower than the average salary of our polytechnic peer group. UW-­‐Stout’s turnover rate is at 9 percent and expected to continue to stay at this high level. I could give you a litany of faculty and staff who we have either lost or had to find money for increases to keep, as well as failed search after failed search because of comparatively low salary offers. But I want to talk about Dang Yang, whose name should be familiar because in October he received the 2015 Ann Lydecker Educational Diversity Award. We are losing Dang, our multicultural recruitment and retention coordinator and advisor in our Dean of Students office, to a lateral position at the Chippewa Valley Technical College for a $13,000 a year raise. We did not have the money to match that offer and, frankly, we couldn’t have matched it because his salary would have unfairly exceeded those paid to our other advisors. The list of faculty who have secured offers elsewhere, with some leaving and some accepting a counter-­‐
offer, is too lengthy to detail. Suffice it to say: The fund the Provost Office has for meeting these offers is nearly depleted, and we are not even close to the end of the fiscal year. The most recent was a professor in our video game design and development/computer science program, who was recruited by another university. Luckily, it appears that he will accept our counter-­‐offer because you can imagine what it is like recruiting computer science professors with video game design experience. Another significant area of concern for us is laboratory modification or improvement. This is an important area for us because, as a modern polytechnic university, we have twice as many labs as classrooms. We have had to permanently cut $300,000 in this area, and it is impacting our ability to keep these laboratories as modern as possible. Maintaining our physical plant also is becoming much more of a challenge. Through retirements, attrition and other moves, we have lost 18 of our custodial positions in the past year and now have 21 for the entire campus. Try as we might, the simple fact is that our campus does not appear as “clean” as it once did. Students also have expressed concern that not having as many custodians has impacted our dedication to recycling and sustainability. Our custodians are the first line of action for recycling and not having as many custodians has affected our ability to sort items for recycling, etc. Our Strategic Planning Group last year made a series of recommendations on how to address the budget challenge, and one of the major recommendations was to reorganize our college structure, reducing the number of colleges from four to three. We are implementing that recommendation, with a resulting savings of $360,000. But this also will add to the workload of the remaining three deans and other office personnel. Another SPG recommendation was to save money in our student services area. Again, we accepted that recommendation and are putting in place a major reorganization that will save about $150,000 a year while maintaining essential student services. In addition, in June 2015, our department chairs were given the charge to increase class sizes by an average of three seats per section. We are implementing new workload policies to better serve a growing population of students. However, these workload changes may hurt the faculty’s ability to engage in research and service activities. Putting all of these budgetary impacts in proper perspective, UW-­‐Stout’s ability to sustain its level of service to employers and to our students is reaching a breaking point. Thank you. Bob Meyer Chancellor UW-­‐Stout