Over the past few weeks, in meetings with college, division and shared governance leaders and the campus community, we have outlined our proposal to end the practice of central spending at UW Oshkosh in years to come. This represents Phase I of our ongoing efforts to bring expenditures in line with revenues and close a budget gap I addressed in January.

In effect, we are proposing to wind down central spending through an approach you will see in spreadsheets you can download and review here: Central Funding Proposal (PDF).

We want to continue our practice of sharing this information and gathering beneficial guidance and feedback as part of our UW Oshkosh Plan for Financial Transformation. The proposed central funding transfers and reductions you will see are spread out over three fiscal years, not two as we originally envisioned. That is a result of faculty and staff member feedback to Interim Provost Koker over the last few weeks. There were concerns about the immediacy of budget reductions, so we expanded our timeframe.

As you will see in the sheets, between Fiscal Year (FY) ‘19 and FY ‘21, we propose winding down centrally funded programs and expenditures by assigning them new college and divisional homes while also enacting reductions. In each fiscal year, we employ three categories of action to propose:

• “STAY”: Temporarily preserving the central budget item in central funding; in essence, taking no action that particular fiscal year.
• “TRANSFER”: Identifying another funding source and shifting the home and responsibility for funding. This may involve a shift to a division or institutional unit (i.e., Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Finance and Administration, etc.) or identifying and assigning an external funding source. If the receiving unit does not, or cannot, fund the transfer, then that unit must cut the activity.
• “CUT”: Permanently reducing an amount of funding for the activity. Units can restore the funding if they are able to prioritize or find new funding sources.

Feedback is welcome on this and future proposed budget developments. Share comments via the form in the lower right of the main Budget Development page.

Thank you for your time, input and spirit of stewardship.