STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) — The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point is looking to a much different future, but the Chancellor is saying that isn’t all bad.
The UW System just took a 250-million dollar cut in state budget support, which was felt at every campus. Chancellor Bernie Patterson says they lost some good people to voluntary separation and to out-of-state campuses, but is confident the campus will continue to deliver quality education to it’s 9,000 plus students.
Patterson says their effort to identify program priorities a year ago paid off. “I’ve often said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and so this has necessitated, in some regards, seriously thinking about what we can stop doing so we can start doing new things that are a higher priority.”
Patterson says there are good things that came from the budget process, including state approval for differential tuition so students don’t have to return a fifth year for bottleneck courses that are required for graduation, and going forward, the university can actually consider staff raises based on merit.
The Chancellor gave his State of the University speech Wednesday afternoon, highlighting changes made due to budget cuts and also looking at a bright but different future.
The previous tenure system is gone, but Patterson says this is actually an opportunity to create a tenure system that is on par with some of the best universities in the nation. The Legislature also gave the UW System the ability to consider raises based on merit instead of tenure for the first time.
He says the campus does have to adjust to several cuts, including key administrative staff. “Oh yes, absolutely. As our cutback in administration, three examples I use are doing the jobs that seven used to do, and some people would say, ‘It’s about time’ but, what we’re asking them to do is to work 65 hours a week, and there’s only so long people can sustain that, so there has to be some change going forward.”
There were several UWSP programs on the budget bubble, but many were saved including funds for the Paper Science position, the Aquaponic Innovation Center in Montello, and the Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility at Bayfield. The Board of Regents and the Joint Finance Committee’s efforts restored funding for these programs.
When students go back to school Wednesday, some campuses will experience a drop in enrollment due to transfer students. The number of students transferring to UW Madison from UW Stevens Point is up, and that’s a concern for Patterson. He says Madison is taking 800 more transfer students this year, and 47 are from Stevens Point. He says students have to look closely at what they want to accomplish before deciding to transfer to Madison. “They have a different brand and their position in the marketplace, so there’s something attractive about being at Madison, particularly if you like taking Political Science with 500 of your best friends. If that’s what you’re looking for, then they can absolutely deliver on that, but if you want to be engaged in undergraduate research as an undergraduate student with a faculty member and end up publishing a paper with that faculty member, then you need to be at Stevens Point.”
Patterson says UWSP also has fewer graduate students now than before, partly because people training to become teachers are affected by changes at the state where having a master’s degree doesn’t pay that much more than a bachelor’s degree.
If you believe student athletes go to college just to play sports, you’re wrong. Patterson told the crowd the UWSP student athletes have a combined grade point average of 3.15. The National Champion Men’s Basketball team has a cumulative GPA of 3.52, and the campus earned two Elite 89 awards. One was for the men’s basketball team and the other for the men’s hockey team. Patterson also highlighted the college’s cheer and stunt team, which works closely with the Extreme Dream Team, featuring cheer and stunt performers restricted to wheelchairs.
When looking at cuts, Patterson said their Business Manager Greg Diemer determined that cutting sports programs would have cost the campus more in enrollment and than they would have saved, and that sports is funded through student segregated fees and program revenue, not state aid, so it didn’t make sense to consider cutting sports.
(Listen to our interview with Chancellor Patterson from after the State of the University Address on our website, here.)
