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Fall plenary address focuses on change
By Kristin Kern
“Our goal remains to have capacity to offer on-campus housing to all incoming freshman” - Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago
Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago presented his fall 2008 plenary address to students and faculty in the Wisconsin Room on Thursday, Sept. 18.
Santiago’s address entitled, “Changing with Our Students and Our Times,” highlighted the change and growth in students university experience here at UWM.
One way in which times are changing is the rapid increase of online courses that students are taking advantage of. “Online instruction enables us to reach students who because of work, family responsibilities, or location have very limited opportunity to engage in classroom instruction,” Santiago said.
In the fall of 2003-2004 around 350 students were enrolled exclusively in online courses, while this fall over 1,000 students are enrolled in exclusively online courses.
While the enrollment for online courses is continually growing, the campus Master Plan is continuing to move forward, “We will continue to pursue opportunities for additional growth like Innovation Park, Academic Health Center and the Harbor Campus,” Santiago said.
Another change in the experience of UWM students is more students are living on campus this fall. The addition of Riverview residence hall has allowed 2,455 more freshman students to live on campus.
While more students are living on campus the demand for on campus housing still exceeds the current capacity by several thousand potential students, according to Santiago.
There are currently three sites in consideration for new residence halls to house more students, “Our goal remains to have capacity to offer on-campus housing to all incoming freshman,” he said.
UWM student body is also changing in its ethnic, cultural and geographic diversity. “One of our goals of Access to Success program is to increase the proportion of underrepresented students of color by one percentage point each year,” Santiago said. “I am pleased to note that among fall’s new freshman, more then 16% are underrepresented students of color compared to 14% in 2007-2008.”
UWM is also working collaboratively with City of Milwaukee schools, teachers and students to help prepare city students for university level work and life, according to Santiago.
“That effort will continue to be central to UWM’s mission,” he said.
Santiago ended his afternoon speech on an optimistic note, “You, our faculty and staff, have done an outstanding job of building the groundwork for our future growth,” Santiago said. “Together, we must seize this moment if UWM is to become a truly transformative force in Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin.”
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Pundit on Sep 22, 2008 at 07:35 AM:
To increase the proportion of graduate students, and thereby the potential for knowledge creation and economically rewarding technological innovation, Santiago should do the following: 1) Reserve a percentage of University Housing spots for those far-thinking incoming students who sign a contract stating that they agree to progress through at least their Master’s at UWM (yes, thinking that specific six years down the road is a stretch for most freshmen, but not for all). This helps boost UWM’s tuition revenue as well because they then have more students locked in for the long term (or else the student who signs the contract but later abnegates would pay a fine of several thousand dollars). From probability, this overall larger wave of graduate students then increases the likelihood that the next big investment coup will result in furthering the Research Growth Initiative. 2) Mandate a lower Athletics Director salary cap as a condition for shifting funding from the Kunkel (Children’s) Center to Athletics to simultaneously decrease the latter’s deficit while shifting the overall student demographic towards those who have the immediate availability to commit fully to intensive full-time study (to help the Research Growth Initiative). Not only would Athletics then be able to stabilize programming expenses with a new, lower-paid director but also the incidence of “fee babies” from faculty, staff, and students who feed off the fruits of student segregated fees from infancy to grade school would be greatly curtailed. Obviously, this point would necessitate the active participation of the Student Association to ensure it is an exercise in shared governance or else it would be an ultimately blocked exercise in unilateral university governance. When we all get behind this, there is no way the university administration can deny the utility of this two-pronged approach.