Administrative Services

During recent years, Administrative Services has ambitiously advanced major improvements in the campus’s facilities, while simultaneously updating and improving the financial and support services required for effective teaching, learning, and service to our community.

With more than $100 million in active capital improvement projects, the appearance of the campus is changing in fundamental ways.

Consider the following major projects:

• The New Academic Building, scheduled to open in the fall  2011, an environmentally friendly building, will provide a contemporary home for the College of Business and numerous College of Letters and Science departments.

• The Student Success Center (September 2010), a LEED Gold $7.5-million renovation of the former Elmwood Commons facility, features the state’s largest geothermal heat pump system.

•  Plans for the construction of a new $34-million residence hall to be built adjacent to the Reeve Memorial Union, were finalized.

• The former Lincoln Elementary School (August 2010), to be renamed Lincoln Hall, housing the Division of Lifelong Learning and Community Engagement and the Children’s Learning and Care Center, was acquired.

In addition to these significant efforts to develop and refurbish facilities to respond to increasing enrollment levels and provide suitable space for instruction, housing and the delivery of student services, we are continuously involved in making updates to the Campus Master Plan in the following ways:  installation of pedestrian malls, redevelopment of Pearl Avenue, replacement of service venues of the flood-destroyed River Center, the construction of a new Conference and Visitors Center on the Fox River, and identification of other sites and options for  potential future development.

Our University’s commitment to sustainability was demonstrated by breaking ground on the new Renewable Energy Facility. This facility will be the nation’s first commercial-scale dry fermentation anaerobic biodigester.  The facility will convert agricultural, food and yard wastes to biogas – generating up to 10 percent of the campus demand for heat and electricity.

Additionally, Administrative Services continues to work with the Campus Sustainability Council as an active and aggressive participant in implementing the University’s comprehensive 2008 Campus Sustainability Plan.

Other efforts by the University’s Budget Office provided leadership, information, and support to oversee and implement operational budgets and various state-mandated changes and adjustments. In addition to offering new informational presentations, modifications were pursued to improve budget administration and reconciliation.

When the Facilities Management Building was demolished to make space for the new academic building, the University acquired an abandoned grocery store and refurbished it into the Campus Services Center. In order to provide transportation from the campus to that site across the Fox River, the University established a shuttle service and provided more than 5,000 rides during that first year of service. Parking improvements included establishing tiered parking rates for residential students and other parking improvements at the Oshkosh Sports Complex.

The Center for Career Development and Employability Training (CCDET) provided key outreach services in such divergent areas as  community-based residential facilities, AmeriCorps, workforce development, truancy prevention, youth apprenticeship and various key state human and social service programs and has grown grant activity to nearly $8 million annually, a 40-percent increase over the previous year.

The University made improvements to better serve the needs of the campus community through an emergency notification system. Additional service improvements were made by postal services, document services and central stores.

As noted from these accomplishments, the Division of Administrative Services embraces a commitment to continuous re-examination of all operations to develop new approaches that will advance efficiency and effectiveness while embracing sustainability principles and practices.