The Leader

As the 2006-2007 school year begins, The Leader had an opportunity to interview UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago about his goals for the upcoming school year and the future of the university.

Money tops the list. “The first thing that we have been pushing really hard is to get additional resources to the campus,” Santiago said. “It is a pretty under funded place. I think to the credit of the campus, we do a lot. We serve more Wisconsin students than anybody else. I think that we are probably the most efficient campus in the system.”

Other plans have been in the works during the summer while most students have been away. The chancellor and his colleagues have been working very hard to improve the success rates of students at UWM.

“UWM is a campus that is in much demand,” Santiago said. “But we need to support the students that are here. We need to make sure that the students that come to UWM are well-prepared and that they have a good opportunity to succeed here. I see that as a kind of broad array of thing that we’re doing—we’re revamping first year courses. We’re adding advisors—really beefing up the student support part of it. We’re building new resident halls—the North Avenue Resident Hall will be up by next year and that will provide 488 new beds for freshman.”

Last year, UWM looked at ways to change the entry requirements to improve the success rates for students. Additional progress was made over the summer.

“UWM in terms of our entry requirements is, from my perspective, very accessible,” Santiago said. “If you have a 21 ACT score or above you get a regular admit. If you’re in the top 50 percent of your class you get a regular admit. What we did was we looked at the top 50 percent of students and found that those that were coming in with ACT scores under 17 were really struggling. And what we tried to do is if you are in the top 50 percent and your ACT score was 18 or above you’re in. If it’s below 18 what we do we review the files very carefully and we’ll admit some of those students and we’ll give them the kind of support they need so they can succeed.”

Santiago admitted that parking will continue to be a problem for the UWM community.  “We are concerned about preferred residential parking—one of the things that we said is if you are going to rezone the streets for residential only parking, make sure that we have enough spaces so that our students can still park,” Santiago said. “The worst of all worlds for us if they rezone the parking around the university and then they eliminate the lots, the county lots down near the lakefront and the bus routes are not coming close to campus—it is a real disaster for us.”

Santiago said that UWM is willing to discuss parking policy issues, but said that options need to be discussed. He said that compromises will have to be made by each side.

Athletics will continue to be a strong and important part of campus life for the 2006-2007 year as facilities continue to improve.

“One of the things that we did do, and we’ll have a ribbon cutting in September, is if you look at the soccer field, we got lights up for the first time in 30 years, we got lights up,” Santiago said. “Our soccer teams, men and women’s are really good nationally recognized programs and the problems that they have had when it comes time to go to the NCAA, the competition will not come here because they do not have the lights. Now we got lights, the field will be a good venue. I think that it will attract a lot of students.”

Over the school year, many will notice the new signs around campus.

“This is our 50^th year, so we will have a series of celebratory events,” Santiago said. “Some of the colleges are 40 years old but the university as a whole is 50 years old. We’re going to plan a year long series of activities.”

The anniversary also marks the success of programs and areas for improvement.

“If you look at UWM, it is a comprehensive research university; it is most known I think nationally for areas such as the arts, the fine arts, the humanities, the social sciences and the professional schools, we’re very strong,” Santiago said. “Where I think we need to build is engineering and the basic sciences. We don’t have a medical school. But we do need to have a critical mass of scientists and engineers. I do not think we have that critical mass yet.”

Last year UWM was looking at the possible merger with UW-Waukesha. This continues to be looked at this year.

“Right now our campus is involved in a system-wide project with the two-year campus leadership—and we’re looking at three models,” he said. “We are really trying to determine what the financial implications for each of the three models. We want to know the implications of the merger. We are still studying it.”

Chancellor Santiago has high hopes and major goals for the upcoming school year and is more than ready to begin working on improving our campus.

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