UWM Chancellor Mark Mone will step down next spring

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone announced Wednesday that he will leave his post next spring and return to teaching at UWM's Lubar College of Business.

Mone will have served as chancellor for 11 years, the second longest in UWM history and twice as long as the average tenure of a college president. He said he decided to share his decision now to allow for a "smooth transition to a new leader."

Mone, 65, also said he felt it was the right time for him to step down while the university has "momentum on many fronts" after facing the challenges of the pandemic, ongoing budget cuts and declining enrollment.

"We have accomplished so many remarkable things together while weathering the strongest of headwinds," Mone said in a statement Wednesday.

Mone’s resignation announcement came the day before the July 4 holiday, and a little over a month after facing backlash from a deal he brokered with pro-Palestinian protesters. The agreement drew the ire of UW System President Jay Rothman who, in a rare rebuke, issued a statement expressing disappointment in UW-Milwaukee.

In statements Wednesday, Rothman and UW Board of Regents President Amy Bogost praised Mone’s leadership. Rothman said Mone has “deftly balanced” UWM’s commitments to top-tier research and equity initiatives.

“For the past decade, Mark Mone has consistently elevated UW-Milwaukee with the goal of improving the lives of students and enriching the greater community," Rothman said in the statement.

Mone will have served as UWM chancellor for 11 years

A first-generation college student who grew up in central Washington state, Mone trained in French cuisine and worked as a chef and a food and beverage director at a number of hotels. He returned to college to pursue a career in academia and worked his way up to administrative positions.

"The best test of leadership is tough times," Mone said on the December day he was named chancellor in 2014.

Mone faced plenty of those. There was the $250 million budget cut across the UW System by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2015. There was the decadelonh drip of declining student enrollment, a problem also plaguing most other colleges in the Midwest.

UWM enrolled more than 23,000 students when Mone took the reins. That's fallen to about 18,000. The university's employee ranks have also shrunk from about 5,100 to roughly 4,400, including the loss of nearly 200 faculty members.

Mone's legacy includes his decision to close UWM at Washington County at the end of this school year and UWM at Waukesha after the spring 2025 semester. UWM absorbed both campuses in 2018. Their closures will lead to the layoffs of dozens of tenured faculty and other staff.

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann said Mone was "faced with an impossible situation" because of demographic changes that result in fewer students to recruit and a "fiscally unsustainable model" for the branch campuses. Schoemann said Mone "continually listened and earnestly examined options to provide higher education opportunities."

Research activity, fundraising, student financial aid support among Mark Mone's accomplishments

Among Mone's achievements was achieving status as a level-one research university, an honor awarded to institutions with the highest levels of research activity and development in the country.

Mone helped the university launch its Connected Systems Institute, which will play a major role in Microsoft's development of data centers in Mount Pleasant. He was also involved in launching the Northwestern Mutual Data Sciences Institute and several partnerships aimed at reducing education inequities.

Mone extended a tuition promise program that makes college more affordable for low-income students. The Legislature declined to fund it, telling universities to fundraise for the program. Mone and the UWM Foundation raised enough money to continue the program through the 2024-25 school year.

UWM last summer received its largest gift in history, a $20 million donation from the Zilber Family Foundation to the Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health. The gift will support faculty, provide student scholarships and expand research on health disparities in Milwaukee and across the state.

Mone will return to teaching after the coming school year. He joined UWM's faculty in 1989 as a professor of management.

Also looming over Mone's decision to step down is his diagnosis with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of cancer, in 2020. He said then that his outlook was positive because the cancer was caught early.

Mone's statement on Wednesday didn’t mention his health and he declined to comment to the Journal Sentinel about it. He continued leading UWM through his treaments and chemotherapy, finding purpose and structure in the work during a time of uncertainty.

He also found a source of strength and support in Marquette University President Michael Lovell, who shared his own cancer diagnosis in 2021 and died last month.

Milwaukee's two largest universities will both be searching for their next leaders over the coming year.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWM Chancellor Mark Mone will step down next spring