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Host Eau Claire will familiarize regents with campus 

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents only visit each UW campus once every six or seven years, so Chancellor Donald Mash is planning to showcase UW-Eau Claire’s Marks of Excellence while hosting the Oct. 4 and 5 meeting.

Presentations and campus tours will familiarize the regents and other UW officials with UW-Eau Claire’s operations.

“They’ll have an opportunity to get a sense of what the campus is like and really get a stronger appreciation for the quality and excellence that is here,” said Andrew Soll, vice chancellor for business and student services.

And while the regents are at UW-Eau Claire, Soll said students will have a chance to learn what the board does.

“Having the regents meet here makes an outstanding opportunity to see the board members,” Soll said. “They’ll no longer be this mythical thing that meets in another corner of the state.”

The 17-member board, which governs the UW System, is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 5, in the Council Fire Room of Davies Center, on UW-Eau Claire’s lower campus. Board committee meetings are planned for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 4, also in Davies Center.

Student Senate President Andy Oettinger said he believes the opportunity for students to have personal contact with the regents is the most important part of the visit.

“Exchanging business cards now will make our lobbying efforts easier in the future,” he said.

Oettinger said the presentations may also help UW-Eau Claire whenever it must deal with the Board of Regents in the future.

“Anything increasing exposure and education to the Board of Regents will be good for the university -- as long as the whole story is given and as long as the students are being focused on,” he said.

The board’s Education Committee is scheduled to hear a final report of the evaluation by its regional accrediting agency, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, said Carole Halberg, special assistant to the chancellor.

The reaccredidation process includes a university self-study, which is followed by an evaluation team’s visit to the campus. The team then generates a report based upon the visit and self-study.

UW-Eau Claire submitted its self-study report in July 1999, and the evaluation team visited the campus Sept. 27, 28 and 29, 1999. The process will be finalized when the report is received by the regents, Halberg said.

The report states that UW-Eau Claire met all the general institutional requirements and the five criteria for accreditation. It also lists strengths, challenges and the team’s advice and suggestions for institutional improvement.

Halberg said Mash plans to tell the committee what Eau Claire is doing to meet the team’s challenges.

“The report has words like model and exemplary – it’s a very positive report,” Halberg said.

Ronald Satz, provost and vice chancellor, said UW-Eau Claire received many good comments in the report. “When we receive that kind of report, it’s a signal that our students will be sought by employers, grad schools and professional programs,” he said.

The NCA fully accredited UW-Eau Claire for another 10 years, Halberg said.

Kevin Boatright, assistant vice president for UW System university relations, said accreditation is very important for universities. “You have to be accredited for students to be eligible for federal financial aid,” he said.

Satz said UW-Eau Claire never anticipates it will lose accreditation, but the university wouldn’t remain afloat without it.

The quality of UW-Eau Claire causes its accreditation to never be in doubt, said Boatright, who added the process is important for self-evaluation.

“It’s definitely a report the university has paid attention to and is responding to,” said Jan Larson, interim assistant to the provost and vice chancellor.

Satz said he plans to follow Mash’s remarks with a presentation about The Center of Excellence for Faculty and Undergraduate Student Research Collaboration. The Center was created by the regents in 1988.

“The NCA report said faculty and staff collaboration is one of the hallmarks of UW-Eau Claire’s quality,” Larson said.

Satz will introduce faculty members, students, and alumni, who will tell about their experiences in faculty and student research collaboration, Larson said.

“(Satz) believes the people who make the best storytellers are those who are doing it,” she said.

Larson said Satz will provide the regents with “Profiles in Excellence,” a magazine which will highlight Eau Claire’s faculty and student collaborative research.

Students get a lot of credit for the success of the collaborative research because they support it through differential tuition, Larson said. UW-Eau Claire full-time undergraduates pay an extra $50 per semester through differential tuition to support students’ academic opportunities, such as faculty and student collaborative research.

Soll said he plans to speak to the board’s Business and Finance Committee about UW-Eau Claire’s operating budget challenges and how the university has generated more funding through differential tuition.

“I want to give the board a sense of how constrained the budgets really are,” Soll said, adding that he will lay out the sources and uses of Eau Claire’s budget to help the regents understand how the university uses its money.

“I doubt that this presentation will have a direct impact on students the day the regents come,” Soll said. “But the more the regents understand, the more supportive they may be to provide more funding.”

Soll will also give two campus tours on Thursday. A general interest tour at 9:30 a.m. will provide an overview for the regents, and the second tour will focus on space and facility issues following Soll’s presentation to the board’s Physical Planning and Funding Committee.

The committee is scheduled to hear Soll speak about the process Eau Claire is using to solve campus space issues.

“We’re entering a phase over the next decade or so of some significant facilities development,” Soll said.

Although UW-Eau Claire isn’t asking the board to take any action on facilities during this meeting, Soll said he hopes to have identified the best solutions for campus space issues before February 2002.

“(The presentation) will be helpful so when we present our proposed facilities plan, hopefully it’ll be something they can support readily,” Soll said.

Oettinger, who has seen the presentation regarding space issues, said in most cases the future changes in facilities are going to be student-friendly.

Plans are likely to include new buildings with larger classrooms along with the destruction of old buildings, Oettinger said.

During the full board meeting, Boatright said the host university is allotted some time to make a report.

“It’s a great opportunity for campus to not only showcase to the regents but also to system administration and chancellors from other institutions,” he said.

Mash plans to highlight the “Marks of Excellence” he uses in the television commercials for UW-Eau Claire while presenting his report to the regents, Halberg said.

“There’s a number of board members that haven’t physically been to Eau Claire, so (Mash) will give a basic orientation of the kind of campus we are and what makes us special,” Halberg said.

The “Marks of Excellence” include faculty and student research, service learning and international education, she said.

Karl Markgraf, director of the Center for International Education, said Mash has asked him to speak to the board about Eau Claire’s study abroad program, international students and faculty development opportunities.

“We have one of the highest study abroad participation rates of any American university,” said Markgraf, who added 24.1 percent of Eau Claire’s 2001-2002 graduating class will have studied abroad, while the national average is 3 percent.

Halberg said Mash will also share what he thinks it means to be liberally educated and possibly link it to what he said when he became chancellor in 1998.

At his inaugural address, Mash said, “What and how we teach our students, the experiences we recommend to them and provide for them, and the way we help them connect learning with living are critically important and must undergo continual change.”