UWM chancellor presses ahead with plan that includes tenured faculty layoffs

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is going ahead with a proposal that will lead to the layoffs of 35 tenured faculty, despite the plan’s rejection last week by the university’s faculty senate.

In a memo submitted Monday to Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman, UWM Chancellor Mark Mone wrote that he was recommending the Board of Regents “approve the program discontinuance of UWM’s College of General Studies and its three academic departments: Arts & Humanities, Math & Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences & Business.”

The regents are scheduled to hold their next regular meeting Aug. 22 and 23. The meeting agenda has not yet been posted.

The proposal to end the college and the departments includes a plan to lay off 35 tenured faculty. The proposal cites Regent Policy 20-24, adopted in 2016, which allows for faculty layoffs “for reasons of program discontinuance.” Under that policy, “faculty layoff will be invoked only in extraordinary circumstances and after all feasible alternatives have been considered.”

The regents adopted the policy after the Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker enacted changes that deleted tenure-related guarantees from state law and allowed tenured faculty to be laid off due to changes in university programming.

The College of General Studies (CGS) and its three academic departments were created when suburban two-year UW branch campuses in Waukesha and Washington counties were merged with UWM in 2018.

“The interest in two-year liberal arts associate degrees has declined so sharply that the continued operation of CGS and its academic departments is not supported by market demand, actual and projected enrollments, or cost effectiveness,” Mone wrote in his letter to Rothman.

The UWM faculty senate discussed the administration’s proposal August 7 and voted 24-11 against it, although the action was advisory.  

Mone acknowledged the faculty rejection of the plan and offered rebuttals to arguments that faculty critics have made.

In a statement posted last week after the UWM faculty vote but before Mone’s letter, Nick Fleisher, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Wisconsin conference and an executive committee member of the AAUP’s UW-Milwaukee chapter, urged the university administration to change course.

“Closing the branch campuses, as mandated by the Universities of Wisconsin president, does not require the shuttering of CGS, and closing CGS would not require laying off its tenured faculty,” Fleisher wrote. The statement is posted on the website of the AAUP UWM chapter.