July 7, 2005

REMARKS AND ESSAYS:
Building Wisconsin's Future or Building Storm Shelters
Presentation by University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Chancellor Bruce Shepard to the UW System Board of Regents, Madison, July 7, 2005

It is my responsibility, this morning, along with my colleague Chancellor Wells, to offer examples of how campuses are addressing the challenges of budget reductions. There is nothing special about showcasing UW-Green Bay or UW-Oshkosh; any one of our colleague chancellors could be up here providing as good or better illustrations. And, that is our purpose, to illustrate, to put a face on what it means to be dealing with budget reductions at the campus level.

We will each take only five minutes and so, unavoidably, our presentations will not be detailed. But, this is so that we may assure time, during discussion, to pursue in detail those subjects of particular interest to you.

We will be using the metaphor of weather: hurricanes to be precise. Now, neither Rick nor I are vying to take Willard Scott’s job. And, the subject is far too serious to be approached using the entertaining banter of the typical TV weather person. But, we use hurricanes because, at the campus level, that’s what it feels like.

I ask that you turn to the handout, the table at the top of page 2.

Hurricane 1, the budget reductions for the biennium just concluded. Damage assessment on the UWGB campus: $2,100,000. Perhaps not enough to qualify for federal disaster relief.

Damage, nonetheless. But, that storm is history. People pulled together, we made the reductions, and kept our focus on advancing our mission, your mission.

Hurricane 2 arrived unexpectedly. Weather forecasts were for brighter days; we had already paid our dues. Or, so we were told. But weather forecasting is an iffy business, and we learned we would need to submit budgets that required, in UWGB’s case as you can see in that same table, a reduction, for the biennium, of another $1,325,500.

Now, please bear with the weather metaphor for one more moment. That first hurricane brings out the best in us all. We pull together, keeping our eyes on the promise of brighter futures once the storm passes.

What happens when an unexpected second hurricane quickly follows? Keeping a campus whole fiscally is the apparent problem; keeping the campus whole emotionally – even spiritually as education is, after all, a calling for most of us – is even more problematic.

Now imagine a third hurricane: that is what is now just offshore. It is the cuts resulting from recent legislative action and, for UWGB, means reducing our budget for the biennium by another $2,062,000.

My assignment is to briefly describe Hurricane 2, the process we went through at your direction to prepare biennial budgets consistent with the Governor’s proposed budget for the next biennium. You see UWGB’s numbers in the table at the bottom of page 2. Bottom line: cut $1,325,500.

Pages 3, 4, and 5 describe our process. They are available in case you wish to delve into those subjects. And, there is much more I could share: pages of instructions, campus-wide communications, Web pages sharing every detail and every number we knew as soon as we knew them.

I include those sample pages, though, to make only these points. Our process – even when we only had one month between the Regents’ adoption of guidelines and our submission of our budget to System – was inclusive, fully respectful of shared governance responsibilities, and guided by principles collegially agreed upon. The same, I would hasten to add, could be said of every other UW campus.

I do want to pause for a moment to look at the table on the top of page 6. I speak to many groups about our challenges, and this table is always an eye opener. Our annual budget is $73,000,000. Hurricane 2 is “only” $1.3 million dollars. Surely it is not hard to find that amount in a budget of $73,000,000.

Look at the breakdown, though. Most of our budget is in gifts, grants, and auxiliaries. These are funds provided to us for services we are committed to provide in return.

Federal auditors do not let us play games with their grants and contracts; the philanthropically inclined appropriately demand faithful stewardship of the gifts they have made to us for specific purposes; and the customers buying services from us – be they residence hall rooms, Weidner Center tickets, or books at the bookstore – expect full measure in what we, in return, are obligated to deliver to them.

That leaves GPR/tuition. Instruction was to be protected. We used the narrowest possible definition of instruction in order to maximize latitude to make the least damaging choices.

Even then, we are left with only a fraction of that original budget, we are left with $20,000,000 to be precise, where 100% of the cuts had to be targeted. There in that $20,000,000 is where you find libraries, student computer labs, career placement, counseling services, advising services, business services, admissions, registration, orientation, programs to secure the rewards of diversity, retention initiatives, and all the necessities of running a small town: snow removal, building maintenance, mail delivery, police services, grounds keeping, health services, heating and cooling, and the like.

I have listed the areas we have cut at the bottom of page 6. Rather than dwell on those, I would like to turn your attention to the top of page 7, what was protected until now.
   • 100% of instructional capacity
   • Direct student support services
   • Direct academic support services
   • Campus safety
   • Facilities services
   • Plan 2008 commitments
And, no gimmicks – no new fees or passing the buck to balance the budget.

That, in five minutes, is the story of Hurricane 2 at UWGB. We were able to protect mission-critical functions.

We then admitted students and made contractual obligations to faculty and staff. And now, Hurricane 3 – twice the size of Hurricane 2 and hitting even as we now are already in the biennium to which it pertains.

Chancellor Wells will now address Hurricane 3, and I will be taking notes because, frankly, I have not a clue as to how we will address it at UWGB – fiscally or emotionally.

This I do know because I know the “next level of cuts” that we considered but, through great effort, were able to protect during Hurricane 2: It will no longer be possible to hold harmless our mission-critical functions.

Office of the Chancellor
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University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
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