“UWM will require space and facilities that are commensurate with the 21st century, rather than the mid-20th century.”

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago stressed the need for UWM’s campus to expand both physically and intellectually at his once-a-semester plenary address in the Wisconsin Room of the Union on Jan. 25.

Santiago called it “unconscionable” that the second-largest school in the state of Wisconsin is also one of the most densely populated research universities in the country.

“(UWM) can not serve the students of this region, create tomorrow’s workforce and be the catalyst for regional economic growth if we continue to work almost exclusively from an acutely compressed, 93-acre East Side campus,” Santiago told the crowd of students, faculty and staff.

The chancellor added that the large concentration of students in one area has created the need for more parking, classrooms and housing. UWM currently has roughly 302 students for every acre of campus space, while the University of Wisconsin has 44 students per acre.

To help relieve some of the congestion, Santiago plans on spreading UWM’s reach throughout southeastern Wisconsin with increased funding from both public and private sources. His plan calls for eventually opening some kind of a clinical health care center in or near downtown Milwaukee, which Santiago said would “provide a concentration of patients and a first-rate environment for clinical training and research.”

He pointed to the recent announcement of Rockwell Automation’s $1 million grant to the school as an example of the types of positive relationships UWM could have with the community.

Santiago added that the model for higher education has changed in the 21st century from one more reliant on students and faculty coming together in one central location to a more spread-out model where the people who make up a university are “distributed from a primary hub geographically and electronically across regions, and often across the globe.”

“UWM will require space and facilities that are commensurate with the 21st century, rather than the mid-20th century,” he said.

The chancellor’s speech also focused on several positive aspects. Santiago, who announced in October that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, started his speech by assuring the audience that he was “back on the job, full-time (and) fully recovered,” which led to applause from the crowd.

He also welcomed new Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Helen Mamarchev and announced a planning process for a new UWM School of Public Health.

“UWM has significant strength in core areas that can support the creation of a new school of public health,” he said.

The UW Board of Regents recently endorsed the creation of a School of Public Health at UWM, and if established, it would become the first new school added to the campus since 1975.

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