Archive for September, 2009

A skeptical audience for restructuring

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

The second town-hall style meeting was held today concerning the proposed restructuring of the Graduate School to split off its research-related functions into a separate administrative unit.    (If this issue is not yet on your radar screen, it should be — see here and here).

The meeting was well-attended, primarily by folks from Letters and Sciences this time since L&S was the nominal sponsor of this particular event.

Provost Paul DeLuca built his pitch around the following contentions:  (1) our “research structure is broken,” and, therefore,  (2) only the creation of a new administrative hierarchy, headed by a Vice Chancellor for Research who reports directly to the Chancellor, can save the University from the threat of a major meltdown.

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Posted in Graduate School, Letters and Sciences, The University System, The UW-Madison Campus | 8 Comments »

If it ain’t broke … fix it?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

UW-Madison Provost Paul DeLuca, Jr., has proposed a restructuring of  the graduate school that would split its research function from graduate education. While the details of the proposed changes remain hazy (update: some details are now clarified in the video linked to below), it is clear  that the consequences could be far-reaching in terms of impact on both the research and graduate education missions of the University.  It is essential that faculty and staff pay close attention to this issue and exercise their right to weigh in on this decision under the established UW tradition of shared governance.

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Posted in Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, The UW-Madison Campus | 1 Comment »

A Fresh Start

Monday, September 28th, 2009

The campus has been awash lately in profoundly important new developments, ranging from the narrowly-averted forced unionization of RAs to the clawback of raises to the mandatory furloughs to the proposed restructuring of the Graduate School.   All of these issues deserve, but have not yet been receiving, a fully open and informed airing by campus citizens from across the spectrum of opinion.    The exceptionally urgent need for a public forum has given me the impetus to finally solve the spam problem and reopen this site.  This I have now done by adding a reCaptcha plugin to the comment function (for those who are interested, reCaptcha also helps digitize old books! — read more here).

There remains, of course, a significant hurdle to be overcome:  For there to be readers, there must be writers.  For there to be writers, there normally has to be at least the prospect of readers.

During the coming weeks, I will  try to break the logjam by  actively recruiting colleagues who are willing to invest in the future of this forum by contributing opinion pieces even before a significant readership is established.  If you would like to be one of those contributors, I urge you to contact me with your proposed topic.

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience, and I look forward to your support.

- the Editor

Posted in Site Information | No Comments »