Chancellor Carolyn Biddy"" Martin will address the university at the Kohl Center today, as a matter of formally introducing herself to the campus and outlining her plans for UW-Madison's future.
Biddy talked with the Daily Cardinal last month to give us an idea of her goals and visions for the university. She established priorities, focusing the majority of her attention on the early years of her tenure. Her priorities are to protect and enhance the academic values of this institution, to protect academic freedom, recruiting and retaining faculty in order to uphold UW-Madison's high academic standing, making sure tuition remains affordable while increasing the need-based financial aid program, increasing diversity in the faculty, staff and student body, and invigorating the Wisconsin Idea, which makes sure UW-Madison's efforts benefit both the student body and the state of Wisconsin.
Martin conceded she does not have specific initiatives for each priority, but she has solid frameworks from which to begin. For ""crucial"" increased funding, Martin pointed to methods of increasing revenue from all available sources: the state, The UW foundation, and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, as well as private philanthropists. However, significant increases in funding must come from private sources. Martin said, ""Over the long haul, it will be private money that will provide that margin of excellence,"" stemming from efforts to find new donors and maintaining relationships with current donors.
Discussing diversity, Martin said she needed to learn more to determine the successes and failures of Plan 2008, and also acknowledged a major source of increased diversity could come from an increase in need-based financial aid. Martin cited an aggressive approach to minority candidates in ""trying to devise more aggressive strategies."" Martin stopped short of offering a concrete plan in saying, ""But what will those be? I just can't tell you yet. I don't know enough about what people have tried here."" Martin impressively cited her work at Cornell to increase faculty diversity by mandating efforts to seek out minority candidates for open faculty positions. Furthermore, Martin wanted to create new relationships with graduate programs and other areas that would provide quality minority candidates for the faculty, while recognizing such an effort is labor-intensive and time consuming. Martin's dedication to improving campus diversity is admirable, and hopefully she can familiarize herself with UW-Madison's previous efforts to increase diversity so she will know where the university fell short and how she can succeed.
The chancellor expressed both a need to increase funding, but also to increase tuition. ""Tuition will rise. It's unrealistic to say it wont rise. It's a matter of the rate of increase ... should UW-Madison tuition be the lowest in its peer group? Probably not. It's not indicative of the relative quality of education."" Martin said. It is fair to bring UW-Madison at least to the middle of its peer group in tuition cost because the increased revenue will help pay for faculty salaries, maintaining and improving UW-Madison's academic prowess.
While her priorities are in line with what would serve the university best over the long term, we hold some reservations about the specific plans Martin plans to employ, in most part because they don't exist. No one expects Martin to walk in and drastically change the status quo of any of her priorities. She acknowledged it should take seven to 10 years for any substantial improvements in faculty salary and diversity.
UW-Madison can wait, but current students should be able to see some improvements during their remaining years. Chancellor Martin should familiarize herself with the history of this university and find specific and tangible approaches to addressing the priorities she laid out. Today's speech would be a golden opportunity to share at least a start to what these approaches might be.
