UW Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt announced the school’s next  voluntary retirement incentive program in an email late Wednesday afternoon.

He wrote: “As many of you know, voluntary retirement incentive programs provide eligible employees the opportunity to retire earlier than they may have planned or considered with a portion of their salaries available as an incentive payout. I continue to view this kind of program as a humane, efficient and effective strategy to help us honor long-serving employees and keep our workforce aligned with UWO’s enrollment.  

“The good news is we have increasing confidence in strong fall 2023 first-year class enrollment and improved student retention. The bad news is we also expect we will be continuing to manage high operational costs throughout the university due to inflation. As more than 80% of UWO’s budget is invested in people, personnel costs must be addressed if we are to strengthen the university’s fiscal standing. In the short term, a voluntary retirement incentive program helps us further stabilize the institution’s annual finances. Over the longer term, it helps fortify its reserve funds, a significant factor in UWO’s stability.”

Employees eligible for the retirement incentive program and their supervisors will be contacted within the next two weeks with details about notification requirements and deadlines. Interested employees would have to retire on or before Jan. 10, 2024, based on a formula for payout.