May 6th, 2010
The following message was broadcast to the campus community by Chancellor “Biddy” Martin on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. It is reproduced (with minor reformatting) in its entirety here for reference and comment by S&W readers. The letter consists of several sections, each of which may be accessed directly via the links below.
A Year-End Letter: Opportunities, Challenges, Impressions
By Chancellor Biddy Martin
- Preamble
- The Madison Initiative for Undergraduates
- Great People Scholarship Campaign
- Research Administration and Funding
- Graduate Student Funding
- UW Foundation Presidential Search
- Global Health and Sustainability
- Diversity
- Faculty and Academic Staff Salaries
- Collaboration with WAA and UWF
- University Relations/Communications
- Looking Forward
- Eds.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in College costs, Compensation, Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget | 1 Comment »
April 29th, 2010
Since our previous posting on the subject of the pending motion before the Faculty Senate, a revised motion has been released by the University Committee. The new version was disseminated via email by the chair of the University Committee, Prof. Bill Tracy. The following links contain
As before, we urge campus faculty and staff to carefully study all aspects of the motion and to post comments here prior to the Monday (May 3d) meeting of the Faculty Senate.
Posted in Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, The UW-Madison Campus | 1 Comment »
April 27th, 2010
On Tuesday, February 23, 2010, the first Campus Forum on Financing Public Higher Education took place in the Memorial Union, hosted by PROFS, CAPE, and UFAS. As summarized in greater detail in a previous article in S&W, the purpose of this first forum was to identify and explain the current fiscal challenges facing the University of Wisconsin. Future planned forums in the series will dissect proposed solutions. Members of the local press as well as interested faculty, staff, and students were in attendance.
For the benefit of those who could not attend, we are now belatedly posting (courtesy of CAPE) a link to the complete video record (157 MB) of the presentations by the three distinguished speakers: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE); Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs; and Kevin Reilly, President of the University of Wisconsin System.
All three presentations made clear that the budget problems facing the state of Wisconsin, and therefore the University, will be with us for some time to come and will require difficult choices.
Planning for the second forum in the series, which will likely take place in early Fall 2010, is now underway.
Posted in College costs, Compensation, State-University Relations, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget, The University System | 1 Comment »
April 22nd, 2010
The following motion was presented at the April 12 Faculty Senate meeting concerning the proposed restructuring of UW-Madison’s research enterprise. It is reproduced here to encourage comments and discussion by the UW-Madison community prior to a vote at the next meeting of the Faculty Senate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, The UW-Madison Campus | No Comments »
February 22nd, 2010
As reported here and elsewhere, the Academic Staff Executive Committee (ASEC) Ad Hoc Committee on the Research Enterprise already released its report back on January 22.
We had been waiting with bated breath for the counterpart committee appointed by the faculty’s University Committee (UC) to release its own findings on the same issue. This report was originally due by the end of 2009, but this deadline could not be met.
The following message has just now (2:50 pm today) been broadcast by the University Committee: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, The UW-Madison Campus | 1 Comment »
February 19th, 2010
How will we pay for public higher education in Wisconsin and at UW-Madison in the years to come? Metaphorically speaking, we have entered a dark fiscal tunnel of unknown length, and that glimmer of light up ahead just might be an oncoming train. According to former UW System President Kathryn Lyall (pers. comm.),
[T]his is the overarching policy issue of the decade (century?) and we need all members of the university community, as well as those in the wider public, to understand the inexorable trends that are driving the university’s future and what it can expect to do for the state in the future.
Three separate campus organizations — PROFS, UFAS, and CAPE — have come together to jointly sponsor the first of a planned series of public forums on the subject, to be held Tuesday, February 23, 4:00-5:30 pm at the Memorial Union (check Today in the Union to confirm the room location; tentatively the Wisconsin Inn). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in College costs, State-University Relations, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget, The University System | 2 Comments »
February 12th, 2010
The first few weeks of the Spring semester have seen significant growth in the readership of S&W — 1,200 unique visitors and almost 20,000 hits in the month of January alone, most of which occurred after the start of the semester. S&W is being followed on Twitter by most of the local media, and we know for a fact that some important media coverage of campus-related issues was prompted by our first drawing attention to those issues here. Also, we note that whenever articles have been posted on topics of widespread interest, such as new developments in the Graduate School restructuring controversy or the animal lab citations, readership has briefly surged to 2-3 times the “background” level.
So, for the moment at least, we are no longer struggling to raise our profile. The readership is there. All that is needed to sustain and further build that readership is a steady supply of content that is (a) highly relevant to our readers and (b) not available elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 7th, 2010
S&W recommends the following article from Jack O’Meara of PROFS — it goes beyond some of what we’ve seen in the regular press about the Regents’ recent initiatives: Regents Plan Next Steps for Growth Agenda.
Generally speaking, we’re finding that the PROFS website is an excellent source of information and commentary about campus issues. Not only do we recommend bookmarking the site, but we strongly encourage faculty who are not that familiar with PROFS to read more about PROFS here and consider joining.
- the Editors
Posted in State-University Relations, The University System | 2 Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
(Last updated Feb. 2, 2010)
Links to all relevant articles in the press, including some recent national coverage, are collected here in chronological order for the convenience of readers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, The UW-Madison Campus | 3 Comments »
January 25th, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education made brief mention of the Capital Times article on the report from the Academic Staff Executive Committee (ASEC) Ad Hoc committee on the Research Enterprise. (Unfortunately, the Chronicle misattributed the report to the faculty, which has not yet issued its report on the same subject.)
Of greater interest than the Chronicle posting itself is one reader’s response, a short excerpt of which follows:
The real story here is not the restructuring of research supporting systems but the broader issue of disintegrating research administration infrastructures at Wisconsin, and indeed across the United States. Offices that manage sponsored programs (grants, contracts, research fellowships, etc.) universally have had flat budgets for the past decade, and yet this period saw an unprecedented growth in research funding (e.g., doubling of NIH grants) as well as a torrent of new regulatory requirements governing all aspects of research (electronic submission of proposals, research subjects, animal care, conflict of interest, export controls, accounting, reporting, auditing, technology transfer, etc.).
(continue reading comments)
From our vantage point at S&W at least, this is indeed a new perspective on the restructuring issue. We hope more readers will weigh in.
Posted in Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, State-University Relations, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget | No Comments »