Joel Spiess Appointed to New Position at UW-Milwaukee
Joel P. Spiess ’07, MS’11, was appointed chief enrollment operations officer and executive director of Student Financial Services at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee on November 16, 2025. In this role, he provides strategic, visionary leadership and oversees the leaders of five key departments, including Financial Aid, Scholarships, Registrar, Systems & Data Analysis, and the Student Financial Service Center. Spiess drives campuswide efforts to align and optimize UWM’s core enrollment operations — including student financial aid, enrollment systems, and advising services — to advance student access, registration, retention, and success. He oversees federal, state, institutional, philanthropic, and private aid funds with an entrepreneurial approach, stewarding approximately $200 million annually in student financial aid.
From 2021 to 2025, Spiess served as director of Student Scholarships at UW–Milwaukee, where he spearheaded transformative growth, including increasing scholarship dollars disbursed by 50 percent, expanding the number of students receiving scholarships by 33 percent, and supporting consecutive first-year enrollment gains of 3.0 percent (2023), 9.8 percent (2024), and 13.5 percent (2025). His innovative strategies and outcomes have been featured in invited presentations by the National Scholarship Providers Association and education consulting firm EAB, among others.
As chief enrollment operations officer, Spiess also serves as principal adviser and divisional strategist to the associate vice chancellor for Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success (SEMSS). The SEMSS division encompasses 11 departments and roughly 160 full-time employees. His responsibilities include shaping divisional strategy, preparing leadership communications, advancing strategic initiatives, coordinating assessment, and contributing to UWM’s strategic enrollment management planning process.
Spiess is a two-time UW–Madison alumnus, earning his master of science in educational leadership and policy analysis in 2011 and bachelor of music in education in 2007.
