Good afternoon,
I hope you had a great Super Bowl Weekend! I enjoyed visiting with Bridget and Reagan in Oklahoma and celebrating the Packer’s victory.  As you may know, much of the country has experienced cold weather and some freakish snow.  As was the case in Oklahoma. It is extremely ironic that after all of our time in Wisconsin, Reagan participated in making her first snowman in Oklahoma. Â
As we prepare for the release of the Governor’s budget (expected on or around February 22) UW System called a special meeting last week to plan for possible scenarios. Particular attention was paid to responding to the Governor’s call for creative and entrepreneurial opportunities to address the current budget shortfall. While no final recommendations have come forward, I am hopeful that some of the flexibility ideas many of us have discussed will be considered.
In addition, I will begin discussions this week with numerous campus leaders about possible approaches to various budget reduction models. Let me reiterate that we have not yet received our budget but it is in our best interest to begin serious discussions now about how we might address various levels of cuts.
This week I will travel to Madison for the Board of Regents meeting where I am sure the budget will be a significant discussion. I welcome your input, ideas, or observations. Please look for announcements in the near future of an open campus forum to discuss the budget situation. In the mean time, if you have questions or hear rumors that you wish to confirm or deny, please contact Jan Hanson, Faith Hensrud, or me.
If you have not already done so, I would like to encourage each of you to complete the Climate Survey. I would also like to reiterate to the campus community the security and complete confidentiality of this survey. The survey results will be submitted directly to a secure third party server, where any computer identification that might identify participants is deleted from the submissions. Any comments provided by participants are also separated at submission so that comments are not attributed to any demographic characteristics. These comments will be analyzed by the outside consultant using content analysis and submitted as an appendix to the survey report. Anonymous quotes from submitted comments will also be used throughout the report to give “voice†to the quantitative data.
In addition, the external consultant (Rankin & Associates) will not report any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals that may be small enough to compromise confidentiality. Instead, Rankin & Associates will combine the groups to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable. Please also remember that you do not have to answer any question or questions about which you are uncomfortable.Â
The information provided from this survey will help UW-Superior learn more about our current climate, identify opportunities and make our campus a more welcoming and inclusive community. Thank you to those who have already completed the survey and again I would encourage the rest of you to take 20-30 minutes to Share Your Voice on this very important topic.Â
Last weekend, Jake Smith broke the all-time UW-Superior scoring record in men’s basketball. Congratulations to Jake on making this incredible milestone and becoming part of Yellowjacket history. This week on campus, we have a vocal recital on Tuesday night by students Aaron Wainman and Ashley Bueschel that is sure to be spectacular. Yellowjacket action this week includes women’s basketball, track and men’s hockey. The Office of Multicultural Affairs continues their “College Student for a Day†program this Wednesday.  And to help beat the winter blues, YAC has a handful of fun activities planned for Frost Fest Week.   Â
I hope you have a great week. Thank you for all that you do.  Â
Chris Markwood
Interim Chancellor
