First-Year Progress Report
Priority: Be responsible stewards of our resources
Achievements related to research begin with UW–Madison’s ranking as third in the country for research expenditures — a key measure of one of the university’s core missions. As one of the nation’s largest and most prolific public research universities, the UW enjoys global recognition for work ranging from stem-cell discoveries to K–12 educational policies and the special challenges of postsecondary education.
Cross-campus initiatives include undertaking a comprehensive Sustainability Initiative. Led by a steering team of faculty and staff from disciplines across the campus, working groups are focusing on energy, food, natural and built environment, materials and consumption, health, and transportation — all geared toward using the campus as a model for sustainability efforts.
The initiative will build on the accomplishments of the We Conserve program, which has reduced energy costs by almost $10 million annually.
A campuswide Administrative Process Redesign project, which engaged nearly 500 participants, has focused on improving the university’s research and grants processes through five large-scale redesign projects this year. Results include reducing award set-up and increasing researchers’ access to financial data (see table).
The university completed construction on seven building projects, many of which feature the latest in energy-saving and green technologies. The renovated School of Education Building is on track to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification, and is the first state of Wisconsin building to receive an Energy Star rating.
The 11th Annual Showcase highlighted more than 50 best practices, allowing campus units to share innovative ideas and learn from each other to improve work processes.
Hundreds of faculty and staff across campus engaged in developing a campuswide information technology strategic plan that lays a foundation for the campus to provide state-of-the-art support for our research and teaching missions. Significant progress has been made to establish an e-learning roadmap, offering a suite of instructional technologies, and new learning and collaboration spaces. Technology infrastructure is advancing to support campus storage needs, a new identity and access-management system, data-center aggregation planning, information security, and campus and regional network solutions.
The campus’s Great People Campaign is focused on raising funds for three synergistic elements — undergraduates, graduate/professional students, and faculty — to support the intellectual capacity of campus and the core of the university’s greatness.
Administrative Process Redesign (APR)
| Projects | Performance After APR |
|---|---|
| Award setup | Average award setup time reduced by 82 percent. |
| Principal investigator financials | Web-based tool developed for faculty to manage and project research program finances. |
| Developing grant sub-agreements | Processing time reduced by 85 percent. |
| Collaborative research approvals | Average response time for approvals is now one day, an improvement of 75 percent. |
| IT access for exiting employees | Two-thirds of terminated employees have IT access removed the same day the HR representative is notified. |
| Improve HR process for requesting overload | Fifty percent approved on the same day requested. |
| Corrective non-salary cost transfers | Processing time reduced by 83 percent. |