Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

1730 Van Hise Hall

1220 Linden Drive
Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1559
(608) 262-3826
(608) 262-3985 Fax

email: vpacad@uwsa.edu
website: http://www.uwsa.edu

January 28, 2010

To: Chancellors

From: Rebecca R. Martin, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Re: Template for Degree Goals

Thank you for submitting your initial ideas for increasing the number of graduates at your
institution. Collectively, the plans embody a wide variety of goals and strategies to achieve them.
We would like to move closer to developing systemwide goals by getting clarification on the
numbers indicated in your plans.

Attached is a template for you to complete. The purpose of this template is to place
institutional degree goals in a common framework and clarify some of the related changes in
enrollments, retention rates, and graduation rates that you expect to achieve the degree goals. The
template has been pre-populated with available data for your reference. Of technical interest are
the success rates for URMs, which are computed over a three-year period to reduce the effects of
variability in this small population. In addition, the template includes a formula that estimates the
Access to Success goal in the year 2015. As you know, we have committed to reduce by half the
gap in success rates for these populations by 2015, as part of the Ed Trust/NASH Access to
Success initiative.

Please return the completed template to Sharon Wilhelm (swilhelm@uwsa.edu) by

Wednesday, February 17, so that we can compile and share the information with Chancellors
prior to the February 26 Administrative Staff meeting. We fully understand that the numbers you
provide will be preliminary and likely will not reflect adequate discussion among campus
stakeholders. To facilitate campus discussions, a set of talking points will be sent to you by the
end of this week. In addition, the Office of Communications and External Relations is in the
process of developing a case statement that will be provided to you next week.

Looking ahead, we hope to finalize these numbers in March, in order to develop the UW
System Plan for presentation at the April Regents’ meeting. In May, we will be asking for your
campus plans for achieving these goals. We will discuss the framework for developing these
plans with you when we meet on February 26th.

Thank you for your efforts thus far. I truly believe we are laying the foundation for a
better future for citizens of Wisconsin and beyond. Please feel free to contact Sharon Wilhelm or
me if you have questions.

cc: Provosts
Chief Business Officers
Cabinet
Sharon Wilhelm, Interim Associate Vice President
Universities: Madison, Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Parkside, Platteville, River Falls, Stevens Point, Stout, Superior,
Whitewater. Colleges: Baraboo/Sauk County, Barron County, Fond du Lac, Fox Valley, Manitowoc, Marathon County, Marinette, Marshfield/Wood
County, Richland, Rock County, Sheboygan, Washington County, Waukesha. Extension: Statewide.