UW System President Kevin P. Reilly's letter regarding Advantage Wisconsin

January 4, 2008

Dear UW Faculty, Staff, and Student Leaders:

As you know, the UW System is a major contributor to Wisconsin’s high quality of life and economic vitality. In fulfilling our teaching, research, and service missions, the 15 UW System institutions act as catalysts to prepare learners of all ages for an ever-changing knowledge-based global economy and multicultural society, strengthen communities, and create higher paying jobs.

My vision is to make the UW System the best in terms of developing advanced human potential in our state, helping to create the jobs that employ that potential, and strengthening the communities that support it. In a competitive world, our public university is Wisconsin’s strategic advantage.

In advancing the Growth Agenda for Wisconsin, we’ve made considerable headway in convincing people that our state faces major challenges, and that a renewed emphasis on higher education is vital to our future. To further this public conversation, we have worked with the Board of Regents, your chancellors, faculty and staff, students, external stakeholders, and others on a strategic thinking initiative called Advantage Wisconsin. We have identified seven core strategies the UW System should pursue to deepen our positive impact on the state. There are four impact strategies:

  1. Prepare Students Better prepare students with the integrative learning skills, multicultural competencies, and practical knowledge needed to succeed in and contribute to our rapidly changing, increasingly global society. This strategy includes elevating the importance of liberal education in all of our degree programs.
  2. More Graduates Increase the number of Wisconsin graduates and expand educational opportunities by improving access and increasing retention and graduation rates. This strategy includes much stronger and deeper partnering with the PK-12 schools to create better-prepared students. It also focuses on adult students, especially those with two-year technical college degrees, by attracting these non-traditional students with offerings that are more flexible and focused on meeting the needs of adult, working students.
  3. High-Paying Jobs Increase the creation of high-paying jobs by expanding our research enterprise while linking our programs to entrepreneurship. This strategy includes addressing barriers to our research and technology transfer and expanding research opportunities on the comprehensive campuses.
  4. Stronger Communities In partnership with communities, intensify our service impact through active engagement, research, and learning applied to the state’s greatest challenges. This strategy, as well as #3, builds strongly on the Wisconsin Idea.

There are three enabling strategies that will help us pursue the four impact strategies:

  1. Resources Balance, diversify, and grow our financial resources while developing our human talent. Maximizing all revenue sources is a priority- GPR support, tuition revenue, external grants, program revenue, and private giving. The UW System is only as strong as our faculty and staff. Advantage Wisconsin is identifying many areas of opportunity for faculty and staff development activities.
  2. Operational Excellence Increasing operational excellence by becoming more flexible, nimble, responsive, and cost efficient. These changes need not affect the quality of teaching or research. Rather, we are exploring changes in regulation and the use of technology to enhance teaching and research. Our focus is also on business processes that can be done more efficiently.
  3. Collaboration Forging collaborations across campuses, as well as with external partners, to further leverage individual strengths and increase our collective impact on Wisconsin. Increasing our collaborations is a key to achieving the other six strategies while maximizing the use of our resources.

These seven core strategies do not replace campus, college, or departmental strategic plans. Rather, these seven strategies form an umbrella under which we can work together to enhance the success of each institution and maximize our collective impact as a system

A series of cross-institution and campus-specific Think Tanks have been developing key ideas for how we move ahead with the seven core strategies. Perhaps you have been involved in discussions on your campus. In addition to UW faculty and staff, each group involved external constituents to provide an outside perspective. The Think Tank ideas are exciting and a draft of our enriched strategic framework will be discussed with the Board of Regents at its February meeting. We’ve been sharing information with the Regents about Advantage Wisconsin at each of their meetings since September, and there is a lot of support for the initiative and the core strategies.

In addition, we have discussed our strategic framework with key legislators and have reached out to the state’s business community, which has been increasingly supportive of this agenda. In particular, the recommendations of the Wisconsin Technology Council and Competitive Wisconsin show growing support of higher education among the state’s key business leaders.

Your chancellor and provost have been working with us on this initiative. Your input and participation is encouraged as well. Please consider helping us with this important work by providing your ideas and perspectives. Visit our website at: http://advantage.wisconsin.edu to review the seven recently posted Think Tank reports, obtain more information about Advantage Wisconsin, and share any thoughts you wish to offer using the online feedback form.

Thanks again for your continuing efforts. I look forward to leading Advantage Wisconsin in a way that helps every resident feel a personal stake in the success of the UW System and that places our University system at the top of the list in public universities positively transforming their state.

Sincerely,
Kevin P. Reilly
President, UW System