Dear Marquette colleagues:
We are writing to share the results of the Marquette 2031: Securing Our Future Steering Committee’s work — a first step on our journey of continuous improvement to ensure Marquette University thrives for generations to come. Throughout this six-month process, the Steering Committee kept our mission, the distinctiveness of Marquette, and our students’ educational, spiritual and personal growth front and center in our decision-making.
While Marquette is in a strong financial position, there are complex economic and demographic pressures facing higher education — fewer high school students, increasing unfunded tuition discount over the past decade, rising operational costs and questions about the value of higher education. We cannot continue to do things the way we always have and expect Marquette to thrive for the next 150 years.
Our Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan and Securing Our Future are two sides of the same coin: paying for the investments outlined in our strategic plan requires finding ways we can reduce costs and generate new revenue opportunities.
Strong institutions look ahead and work to get stronger — the Securing Our Future Steering Committee began that work this summer. As the members of the Steering Committee reflected on their experiences, it became clear how Marquette’s Catholic, Jesuit mission inspired our work. Indeed, the Steering Committee’s process was an exercise in communal discernment: become aware, understand and take action.
Steering Committee’s cost reduction and revenue generation recommendations
The full Securing Our Future Steering Committee report is available on the Teams site. The Executive Leadership Team has reviewed and accepted the report recommendations. The financial impacts will be reflected in the university’s multi-year budget beginning with FY26, which the Board of Trustees will review in December.
The Steering Committee report includes both transformative and specific recommendations, which are defined below. Recommendations were generated from the campus ideas portal; academic and administrative unit leaders (deans, vice presidents, vice provosts, chiefs of staff and chief officers); and work with an external consultant; and then vetted by the Steering Committee. With respect to FY31, the Steering Committee identified an initial $10.8 million in cost reductions and $3.3 million in revenue generation (revenue is risk-adjusted) — for a total of $14.1 million — along with setting a course to achieve the $31 million goal through transformative recommendations and additional decisions made by ELT.
- Transformative recommendations: The Steering Committee’s transformative recommendations are broad, large-scale priorities that will benefit from the involvement of experts beyond the Steering Committee members. The financial impact of these transformative recommendations will be further defined as this work progresses in the coming months.
- Specific recommendations: The Steering Committee’s specific recommendations are discrete actions that can be adopted and implemented over time. Most of these specific recommendations came from academic and administrative unit leaders and the campus ideas portal.
Implementation and shared governance
Recommendations from the Securing our Future Steering Committee will be implemented as part of the “Healthy Campus” theme of the Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan. As announced last week, Lora Strigens, vice president for planning and facilities management, and Alix Riley, chief academic effectiveness officer, are co-leading implementation of our Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan.
In the coming days, your University Leadership Council leader will meet with your team to discuss the recommendations that apply to your area and next steps. Implementation of some recommendations will begin immediately; others will require additional integrated planning and will be implemented over time.
As Steering Committee co-chairs, we met with University Academic Senate leaders and University Board of Undergraduate Studies and University Board of Graduate Studies committee chairs in late August and again this week to discuss which Steering Committee recommendations call for shared governance processes to move forward — for those that do, we will work together to ensure the appropriate steps as outlined in the Faculty Handbook. To that end, specific programs recommended for modification or closure are not listed in the report because the Steering Committee did not want faculty and staff in those programs to hear about the recommendation from a campus document. Instead, deans who recommended programs for modification or closure are speaking directly with those who oversee these programs before they move through the shared governance process as the next phase of careful discernment. Any program modifications or closures will have a teach-out plan to ensure students currently in the programs can receive their degrees.
We extend our sincere thanks to the Steering Committee members and hundreds of people across campus who engaged with us during the last six months. Through this process, committee members gained deeper respect for the complexity and nuance of the university’s operations and a commitment to advancing our mission.
Above all else, we want to affirm that the Steering Committee’s work reflects a commitment to communal discernment. Throughout the process, the committee kept Marquette’s mission and values at the forefront of our discussions and made recommendations with these in mind.
We are grateful for the engagement across campus these past few months, and we look forward to the integration of this work through our Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan.
With gratitude,
Dr. Jill Guttormson
Dean and professor, College of Nursing
Co-chair, Marquette 2031: Securing Our Future Steering Committee
Ralph Weber
Vice president and general counsel
Co-chair, Marquette 2031: Securing Our Future Steering Committee
