UWSP budget cut strategies successful: chancellor
8/28/2015
Portage County Gazette

​​By Sarah McQueen

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) Chancellor Bernie Patterson focused largely on where the university stands in the wake of the latest state budget during the chancellor's address Wednesday, Aug. 26.

UWSP will start off the fall semester in slightly better financial shape than had been originally projected last spring when Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget proposal was released. UWSP still faces major cuts, to the tune of $5.76 million slashed from the base state funding, but the cut is $1.6 million less than first anticipated.

Patterson said much of the last six months have been dedicated to dealing with the budget crisis and attempting to be as transparent as possible as the entire UW System prepared for steep budget cuts.

These budget cuts had to be handled differently than the last round in 2011 when Act 10 was  implemented, said Patterson.

“We knew that if we wanted to get the same old results, we should do it the same old way. So we did it differently. It was about talking to peopleone on one, it was about calling on our friends to speak on our behalf, it was about developing deeper relationships and partnerships with those in position to make a difference,” said Patterson. “Let me talk about a few of the things we did get done. We got the budget cut reduced from $300 million to $250 million. On this campus that meant $1.6 million. That is a lot of positions.”

UWSP also stood to lose seven programs supported through segregated funds. The cut would have amounted to $1.4 million. Four of those programs were refunded in the final version of the budget.

Among the programs that had funding restored were the Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility, the Becoming an Outdoors Woman program, the paper machine operations and the environmental program grants.

Programs that did lose some funding include Environmental Education-Environmental Assessments, Environmental Education-Forestry and the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology. Total loss for these programs amount to $770,500.

One of UWSP’s most effective strategies in making up lost funding was implementing the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP), offering qualifying employees the chance to retire early. Thirty-two employees took advantage of this offer, resulting in $863,400 for UWSP.

UWSP planned the budget for 2015-16 last February based on a worst case scenario, before the cuts were reduced and before the separation program. This means with the $1.6 million in cut reductions and the separation savings, the campus will be able to reinvest $2.5 it was not counting on back into the university.

“These are not new dollars,” said Patterson. “These are dollars that were in our budget in other places and now they are going to be redistributed for the highest priority needs on this campus. That is what is going to move us forward.”

Those dollars will be used to fund instructional positions, student recruitment, career services and advising, and library resources.

One other avenue for increasing revenue was opened up to UWSP in the form of differential tuition, pending student approval in a referendum this fall. Differential tuition can only be used to provide academic advising and help relieve bottleneck courses, courses that students have to wait to get into due to high demand. The goal is to help students graduate within four years.

“We have been fighting this battle for six years,” said Patterson. “No one for a minute thought that we were going to get this done. We are not done yet, but we got the Joint Finance Committee to write it into the budget.”

UWSP has come close to passing differential tuition on several other occasions, and though it has passed student referendums before, the legislators have slashed it from the budget twice.

“Our students led this effort. I can’t tell you how many times they took vans and drove to Madison and walked the Capitol, door to door,” said Patterson. “In addition to our students, it was the community and business leaders. More than two dozen wrote letters to the governor. Others called. This community stood up for us.”

When fully implemented, differential tuition will bring in an extra $3.3 million for UWSP. Differential tuition will be paid once a semester and solely for UWSP needs, unlike regular tuition which gets turned into the UW System.

Another change UWSP will see this year is a new form of shared governance. Replacing the former faculty senate will be a common council, which will consist of three sub-councils. Each sub-council will represent one personnel category – faculty, academic staff and university staff.

“It’s going to have a louder voice than ever. That is how shared governance is going to work at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Like it has been, but better,” said Patterson. “This is the first major change in governance I think since the system was formed in the early ’70s.”

Tenure was also a major concern in the state budget for many UWSP employees, and Patterson addressed that issue as well.

“We have been given an opportunity here. Tenure is at the core of any good university. We have an opportunity to build a tenure system here on par with the best universities in this country,” said Patterson. “And for the first time we can give merit increases to faculty and staff for job performance. We are going to use that very carefully but that is a new flexibility that we have.”

Patterson said retaining faculty and staff is going to be a priority for UWSP, especially after losing 93 employees since February.

“That is significant. Of those, 32 participated in the VSIP program. For some it came at the perfect time, but for many it was a very difficult decision,” said Patterson. “Why did they leave? You have to know that some of them probably left because of the salary situation in this state.

“We were working on this when the budget crisis hit,” he said. “We had invested $1.2 million in salaries over a three-year period of our own money right here in Stevens Point. We are going to continue to do that as we recover from this situation. Just know that will return as a priority for the administration and for the campus.


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Article Tags

Chancellor; Budget