Questions Left Unanswered at the UW-Milwaukee Merger Listening Session

The UW-Milwaukee campus merger listening session on Tuesday, Dec. 12 ended a half an hour early as the attendees realized that the board members did not have the answers to their questions.

“We’ll tell you what we know, which is not a lot because a lot of it is a flux,” said Ron Perez, Interim Dean of the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health and chair of the Regional Campus Transition Committee.

The room of about 20 people exchanged glances and chuckled in annoyance when question after question went without an answer.

Among those people is Payroll and Benefits Specialist at the UWM Human Resources Center, Marissa Trgo.

The merger, or “joining,” as Perez prefers to call it, was approved by the UW Board of Regents on Thursday, Nov. 9. Committee members have until the deadline of July 1, 2018 to have all details worked out.

By that time, committee members are hoping that all issues regarding the campus joining will be resolved, or at least a road map will be developed to solve them.

Right now, the UWM Regional Campus Transition Committee is divided into several functioning committees, all of which are responsible for looking at different issues.

There are committees focused on academic affairs who deal with continuing education and higher learning, commission which includes the possible addition of associate degrees into UWM’s list of degrees and governance which pertains to issues of university staff and students.

Members of the functional teams range from UWM professors and provosts to UW-Waukesha and UW- Washington County associate deans and administrators.

An in-depth break down of all the members can be found on the UWM website.

“Eventually we are one institution…we’ll make this work,” said Perez.