UW-Waukesha Future Update: May 28th, 2008

Graduation, for academics, is always a good time to stop and reflect on the way the school year has gone. And it’s been a good year for UW-Waukesha.

The biggest news for the campus has been the completion of the Waukesha County Higher Education Needs Assessment. This study was done by a group that’s come to be called the Waukesha Higher Education Coalition—a group composed of UW-Waukesha, Waukesha County Technical College, the Waukesha County Action Network (a business advocacy group), and the Waukesha County Executive’s Office. These organizations began to work together last (calendar) year to discover what this growing, thriving county really needed and wanted in terms of public higher education.

One of the most important things we found was that the citizens of Waukesha County, like those in the rest of Wisconsin, need more four-year degrees and trust the public higher education system in the state to deliver them. This discovery isn’t particularly surprising. The state has found itself, along with the rest of the world, catapulted into a knowledge economy, where continual learning provides the necessary edge for continued prosperity. A college degree can provide an individual with the requisites to compete in the increasingly hard-run race of the global economy.

Right now, UW-Waukesha provides a foundational education for our students. We emphasize both the knowledge and the skills on which to build a professional or technical education. When our students finish their coursework with us they move on with a variety of abilities: information literacy, clear communication, groupwork skills, critical thinking, and, perhaps most importantly, the attitude and capability to continue learning. These five—we call them “the smart skills”—are the direct products of the foundational liberal arts education provided by our campus. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning a career as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, an accountant, or a CEO—these are what you’ll need in order to succeed.

We’re looking, however, beyond the excellence in freshman and sophomore education that we already provide. We’re looking to bring degrees onto our campus from other UW institutions. We’re looking to facilitate bringing more four-year degrees into the county, whether they appear on our campus or elsewhere. The work of UW-Waukesha and the Waukesha Higher Education Coalition has only just begun to remake the face of public higher education in the country and the region.

Education in the twenty-first century must, like everything else in society, constantly be on the move. It must be lean, in order to best use its limited resources. It must be agile, in order to adapt quickly to shifting circumstances. It must be smart—not only in terms of responding to a changing world, but in order to create a future in which we and our children wish to live.

We have the work of a generation before us, as teachers, students, and citizens. We continue to move—Forward.

Patrick Schmitt, Campus Dean