OVCR Strategic Planning Process and Reorganization Progressing

By Natasha Kassulke, natasha.kassulke@wisc.edu

After months of listening, learning and analysis, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) has completed an ambitious effort to take stock of UW–Madison’s research enterprise—and set its course for the future.

The OVCR, with Urban Impact Advisors, a consulting firm with deep expertise in higher education research, conducted nearly 100 in-depth interviews with campus leaders, faculty and staff, and external partners, benchmarked UW–Madison against peer institutions, and examined the forces currently reshaping the research landscape.

That work now sets the stage for the next chapter: building a research enterprise resilient enough to thrive amid unprecedented opportunity, mounting fiscal pressures, and the increasing complexity of regulatory, financial and administrative requirements.

“Great research institutions don’t just respond to change—they plan for it, intentionally and boldly,” says Vice Chancellor for Research Dorota Brzezinska. “Moving forward will require clear priorities, sustained collaboration across campus and with external partners, and the flexibility to adapt in a rapidly changing research landscape—while continuing to invest strategically in people, infrastructure and ideas. With those elements in place, UW–Madison can strengthen its research enterprise to seize new opportunities despite growing fiscal pressures.”

To imagine the next phase of OVCR’s service to the University, Brzezinska has convened an advisory group that includes representatives from university schools/colleges, OVCR leadership and faculty governance, ensuring a broad range of perspectives are incorporated into the vision for the future. The OVCR leadership also developed a mission and vision for the research enterprise.

To remain competitive and grow the research enterprise, Brzezinska adds that UW–Madison must:

• Diversify its funding model to be less reliant on a few sources.
• Respond to complex state, national, and global research challenges with
  interdisciplinary approach and partnership.
• Enhance services and align leadership and staff to be better able to respond to growing complexities in the research space, while meeting ethical and security requirements.
• Become less risk-averse to achieve greater industry support.
• Work closely with partners to bolster philanthropic support for research at UW–Madison and to support moving discovery on campus from lab to market furthering the Wisconsin Idea.

 

“The progress of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research’s strategic plan reflects strong leadership and a clear commitment to advancing UW–Madison’s research excellence,” says Erik Iverson, CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). “WARF is proud to partner in this work to help translate discovery into innovation, economic growth, and meaningful impact for Wisconsin and the world.”

A critical component of the reorganization is a proposed new structure intended to reallocate efforts and activities that address long-standing concerns and for the OVCR to better support the research and scholarly mission of the university.

The structure will also reflect the increasing complexity of managing the research enterprise, provide greater resources/support for training and extramural large grant development, support alignment of research priorities across campus, and form and support research teams intentionally and strategically towards large interdisciplinary extramural opportunities.

“The new structure creates clarity of roles and responsibilities in the OVCR,” says Vice Chancellor for Research Dorota Brzezinska. “We are reimagining our functional areas to ensure that UW–Madison has a research office that can more effectively support the research enterprise of today and is better positioned to meet the needs of tomorrow.”

Brzezinska says the proposed new OVCR structure is an investment in organizational excellence and better aligns with the UW-–Madison Strategic Framework by:

• Building on the success of our past priorities and take bold steps toward our vision of being a model public university in the 21st century
• Providing a modern research support structure that fosters innovation, promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, and drives discovery on future research challenges.
• Growing UW–Madison’s research enterprise and expand its global impact, supporting the scholarship of faculty, staff, and students
• Ensuring continued vitality, competitiveness, and strength in development and training for faculty, staff, and students.

The proposed new OVCR structure includes:

• Creating a smaller team of full-time AVCs, responsible for strategically focused portions of the OVCR portfolio for the entire campus, rather than a division. This includes mission shaping programmatic areas, research operations and administrative functions.

• Changing reporting lines to support functional needs and operational requirements.
• Strengthening compliance and research security staffing.
• Launching a new Research Development Office to provide greater resources and support for strategic research portfolio management, training and extramural grant development.
• Assuring success across all areas of research and creative expression, including Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, for both interdisciplinary teams and individual researchers.
• Creating four part-time faculty fellow positions to provide strategic divisional representation.

 

“The faculty fellows will be ambassadors for research across campus with a key role in fostering innovation, creativity, and cross-disciplinary efforts,” says Brzezinska. “The OVCR reorganization’s success hinges on collaboration and engagement at every level to foster an environment that values creativity, risk‑taking, and impact.”

Key will be operational excellence across the research administration lifecycle, which also includes some changes at Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP) to clarify service expectations, improve consistency and accountability, increase transparency into workloads and status, and create a more streamlined and predictable experience for schools, colleges, departments, and researchers.

Key indicators of progress will include clearer service expectations for core functions, more transparent turnaround times for high-volume activities such as contracting, award setup, and invoicing, stronger visibility into workload volumes and process status, and continued emphasis on financial compliance and timely reporting.

To support this work, Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP) is developing a dashboard that will serve as a central tool for monitoring and communicating operational performance. The dashboard is designed to provide greater visibility into activity volumes, workload distribution, process status, and selected turnaround metrics across key service areas. It will also help highlight trends over time and support more informed conversations with campus partners about priorities, capacity, and opportunities for improvement.

RSP expects to refine and expand these tools through ongoing engagement with key stakeholders in the coming weeks and months.

“While change can be challenging, we’re operating in an incredibly dynamic environment, says Kurt McMillen, Associate Vice Chancellor, Chief Research Administration Officer and Director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. “The federal research landscape is shifting rapidly, and emerging forces like AI and other transformative technologies are reshaping how institutions must respond. This reorganization effort positions the OVCR, and UW as a whole, to adapt, evolve, and continue leading at the forefront of a rapidly changing research ecosystem.”