Chancellor Mnookin on expanding pathways for student belonging and success

The following message from Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin was shared with all students and employees in an all-campus email on Wednesday, June 9, 2025. This message is being translated into multiple languages. Please check back for updates.

Dear campus community,

We are in the season when we welcome thousands of incoming students to SOAR and when many new faculty members and graduate students arrive on campus. You can feel their new-to-Madison energy, their excitement often mixed with a certain degree of understandable trepidation. They come from all over Wisconsin, from just about every state in our nation, and from a great many other countries too, ready to contribute their talents to our community.

But it is not enough simply to bring talented people to UW–Madison. To remain a world-class institution, and to meet our full potential for excellence, we must also work to create and maintain a welcoming community that supports student, faculty and staff success. This is top of mind as I write to you today with important campus updates about changes and organizational shifts we are making to enhance undergraduate student success and to continue to support an engaged UW–Madison community where all members can thrive.

Working Group Examines the Student Experience, Makes Recommendations

More than a year ago, I began having conversations with many across campus about how we might enhance pathways to success for all UW–Madison undergraduates. While we have made significant strides in recent decades in increasing our four-year and six-year graduation rates, as well as student retention after freshman year, I wanted to know whether there is more we can do, consistent with legally available options and mechanisms, to further support the success of all of our students.

To help answer this question, I asked then-Provost Charles Isbell last fall to lead a working group charged with completing a data-informed review of how we are supporting our undergraduates, particularly through the array of campus-level programs and resources that allow Badgers of many different backgrounds and interests to feel at home and thrive here.

The working group developed six principles to guide its review:

Advancing success for all students
Connecting every student with the best support for them
Ensuring pathways to belonging for all students
Strategically organizing campus-level student support work
Engaging in continuous assessment and improvement
Responsibly stewarding university resources

The review continued throughout the 2024-25 academic year, with then-Provost Isbell and other senior leaders gathering input from campus and community stakeholders. Three major recommendations emerged in the working group’s report:

Make support more visible and easier for all students to access by repositioning campuswide student assistance along three functional lines: academic support, well-being and community support, and financial support.

Enhance support in particular for students with financial need and for first-generation students. Data on student achievement shows that high financial need is associated with longer time to graduation. Prioritizing support for these students is a natural corollary to campus’s substantial investment in Bucky’s Tuition Promise and Bucky’s Pell Pathway. A distinct but overlapping group is first-generation students, who may have fewer of the family support structures often found in multigenerational college households to assist with navigating college. Support services for these groups have been dispersed across multiple units across campus, making them challenging to navigate.

Develop mechanisms for providing data-driven student support across the undergraduate student population. To accomplish this, improve data sharing mechanisms, work to create a ‘navigator’ system that can assist all students in more easily finding the support they need, and help advisors more proactively and effectively support students.

Expanding Pathways to Student Success

I have accepted the working group’s recommendations, which include the reorganization of our existing administrative structures. In particular, we will consolidate campus-level support for undergraduates in functional areas:

Efforts focused on student well-being, involvement and belonging at the campus level will be centered within Student Affairs. A new office within Student Affairs serving first-generation students and students with financial need will open during the next academic year.

University-level academic support will be housed within the Division for Teaching and Learning. Schools and colleges also provide a great deal of community support and academic support, and they will continue to do so.

Initiatives around financial support will be focused within the Office of Student Financial Aid.

Across all of these offices, we will measure and evaluate our efforts and set clear goals for success, as recommended by the working group. In addition, we will seek to provide the strongest possible student support as efficiently as possible.

As a result of this consolidation of campus-level support, we are making two other organizational changes:

The Division of Diversity, Equity & Educational Achievement (DDEEA) will sunset as a freestanding division. DDEEA has been the home for a set of scholarship-linked student support activities that serve approximately 5% of our student body. These programs, which provide holistic academic support for students receiving specific scholarships, will largely be relocated to the Division for Teaching and Learning, along with the leaders and academic advisors supporting this work. DDEEA also provided some important employee support functions that will move to the Office of Human Resources, and DDEEA had several individuals focused on institutional data collection who will move to join Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research (DAPIR).

Currently, University Housing reports to the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration. Recognizing the vital role that residential experiences play in fostering student success, belonging and holistic development, University Housing will move to a dual reporting structure, leveraging leadership and expertise from Student Affairs as well as Finance and Administration.

I believe these changes will allow us to serve many more students with an even greater array of resources. It will also set us up to be able to develop better flows of information to support success, to develop a strong student navigator system, and to report on our progress. One result of this reorganization is the elimination of a small number of duplicative non-student-facing positions in administrative and event support and communications. We will do all we can to support these valued colleagues as they seek their next role, either at the university or elsewhere.

Maintaining Areas of Excellence

I want to be clear that the university will continue to support several important program areas:

Student cohort and support programs previously housed in DDEEA, including the Center for Educational Opportunity, First Wave, McNair Scholars, Mercile J. Lee Scholars, Office of Experiential Learning and NDGNS, PEOPLE, and POSSE. In addition, scholarships awarded to current and incoming students as part of these programs will not be impacted in any way by the organizational changes. Students in these programs will continue to have access to robust support.
Student cultural centers and residential learning communities, which provide essential support for students from various backgrounds, and opportunities for all students to educate themselves and build cross-cultural competencies. We will also continue to host campus events that celebrate and promote cross-cultural exchange and learning.

Alongside our focus on our undergraduate students, we will continue to provide resources and support for faculty and staff to ensure that our workplace is accessible and free from discrimination and harassment.

In addition, Professor and Associate Dean Percival Matthews, who then-Provost Isbell and I appointed earlier this year as special advisor on access and community, has begun convening a group of school, college and division leaders responsible for building community and fostering a sense of belonging. The group is discussing shared opportunities, challenges and good practices to support students, faculty and staff across all backgrounds and beliefs, consistent with our legal obligations. The group will continue to share its input with my leadership team, including additional ideas for how we can support an internal culture that is inclusive, fair, and supports excellence and opportunity.

I want to thank former Provost Isbell and the other leaders who helped formulate these recommendations: Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration Robert Cramer; then-Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Derek Kindle; Vice Provost for Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research Allison La Tarte; Assistant Vice Provost for Student Engagement and Scholarship Programs Raul A. Leon; Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Lori Reesor; and Senior Vice Provost and Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning (now interim Provost) John Zumbrunnen.

I also want to state clearly and unequivocally that diversity of all kinds, including diversity of viewpoint and diversity of identity and background, remains a core value of our university. We must create the conditions here, including through programs and support services, that allow all of our students, faculty and staff to flourish and to reach their full potential. Fostering cross-cultural competency among our students will prepare them to thrive in our complex world. Creating opportunities for respectful dialogue across our differences of background and beliefs, and building a shared appreciation for our pluralistic society, are our imperative.

And finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to the staff and leaders of DDEEA for their tremendous institutional contributions. They have helped our university reduce barriers to success and have made a life-changing impact on countless students, as well as faculty and staff. Their good work positions us to move forward with renewed focus on achieving access and community for all.

Jennifer L. Mnookin

Chancellor