E-mail from UW-System:
Friends,
As many of you know, one of the changes we are making in the Office of Academic Affairs is to our grant
programs. At the Provosts’ Retreat in June, you made clear that simplification and flexibility were needed
for how UWSA structured its grant programs. Based on your input, we will be vastly simplifying our grant
programs by collapsing the 10 separate grant programs listed below that we had previously funded, into
two programs. Note that the Applied Research Grants are not included at this time and will be handled
separately for now.
COBE (Committee on Baccalaureate Expansion)
Closing the Achievement Gap
Supporting the Growth Agenda
PK-16 Teacher Quality Initiative
PK-16 Teacher Recruitment & Retention
OPID Undergraduate Teaching & Learning
OPID Conference Development Grant Program
Curricular Redesign
Support Grants for Racial and Ethnic Studies
Race and Ethnicity Campus Reading Seminar
The revised grant programs will entail a more holistic review process, including institutional representation
in the decision-making process. As we move forward with this change—which we hope to implement for
the 2012-13 funding cycle—we need the Provosts’ involvement.
All UW institutions have committed to the Growth Agenda for Wisconsin. The revised grant funding will
be used to incentivize real change and build the programs that UW institutions want to advance their
Growth Agenda goals. I propose that the revised grant programs be directed towards two pots of money,
one larger and one smaller:
1. The larger pot will go towards institutional change grants, designed to fund significant
projects resulting in measureable institution-wide, multi-institutional, or systemwide change, and
with the potential for multi-year funding;
2. The smaller pot will go towards funding regional or systemwide meetings, conferences, and
institutes, and collaborative professional development opportunities.
The point on which we would like your input is to determine a set of priorities for each of the two grant
programs. We are hoping that we can establish broad priorities that will allow us the flexibility to fund the
projects with the potential for the greatest impact. Please send your thoughts on possible priority areas
for each of the two grant programs listed above.
I know this is a busy time of year for all of us. In order to move these changes forward, however, I ask
that you respond to Bob Jokish, bjokisch@uwsa.edu, by Monday, September 12. We will discuss the
proposed revisions at our September 16 meeting, with the goal of sending the RFP to your institutions in
early fall.
Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.
Mark
Mark A. Nook
Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of Wisconsin System
1730 Van Hise
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706