UW-Madison faculty, staff and students continued to scrutinize Provost Paul DeLuca's graduate school restructuring proposal at his fifth and final town hall meeting Friday, while Chancellor Biddy Martin offered several reassurances.
The proposal would decouple the school's current structure—where Martin Cadwallader acts as both dean of the graduate school and vice chancellor of research. According to supporters, it would increase UW's influence within federal grant agencies and address increasingly complex financial and safety regulations required for federal grants management.
""This is not some blithe proposal … this is about insuring that we can proceed without damage,"" Martin said, alluding to several compliance-related ""near misses"" the university barely averted, which could have jeopardized research in animal care use, human subject use, and biological and chemical radiation safety.
Critical audience members focused less on the need for change and more on the proposal's lack of transparency and specifics, and its inattention to shared faculty governance.
DeLuca acknowledged he hadn't expected ""much controversy"" when he presented his proposal to the University Committee in July, when the Committee, led by Chair Bill Tracy, urged him to slow down, deploy two ad hoc committees of academic staff and faculty to submit independent recommendations, and to gather more input.
Although some voiced support for the provost's new approach, others, like journalism professor Lewis Friedland, said he remained wary of the plan's unforeseen implications.
Friedland said his spouse teaches at UW-Milwaukee where a recent, similar restructuring produced a ""marked shift away from funding university social sciences and humanities … and faculty governance because of the centralization of power.""
Martin, who said she witnessed Cornell University's similar restructuring as both faculty member and provost, reassured faculty that centralization was not the goal. She added ""the relative amount of [Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation] funding that the humanities and social sciences receive wouldn't change under any reorganization,"" and that discretionary funding for underfunded areas would likely increase.
A Faculty Senate meeting scheduled for Nov. 2 will consider a Sociology Department resolution to formally oppose any restructuring until the committees and faculty have had time to deliver their recommendations. DeLuca and Martin have said ""interim action"" may be necessary to protect the university.
