David Ward first arrived on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in the ’60s, and says he remembers fellow students taking on the civil rights movement and Vietnam War.
UW students, then and now, are “always exciting, a little different and constantly reinventing themselves,” he said, adding it is the variation in each generation of Badgers that he sees as the spirit of Wisconsin students.
“It’s beyond the curriculum, it’s beyond the campus,” Ward said. “It’s something that we do for ourselves.”
Ward held multiple leadership positions before taking on his first term as chancellor in 1993.
This initial chancellorship spanned seven years, during which he oversaw the expansion of campus facilities, as well as the creation of residential learning communities and advising services.
In 2011, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly called upon Ward to fill the role again, after the departure of Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin.
Ward said it was his sense of loyalty that brought him back to the university.
“I got the feeling that they couldn’t use somebody on the inside because it had been such a difficult time,” Ward said, referring to the campus division which resulted from Martin’s controversial initiatives.
In October 2011, Reilly extended the interim term to include a second year, which Ward said pushed him to be more than just a placeholder.
“That was when I said I can’t just hold the fort, I’ve got to keep the place moving,” Ward said. “That was good for me because it forced me to be energetic.”
In his interim role, he has emphasized the importance of implementing new learning technologies, while also seeking new revenue sources for the university as state funding support continues to decline.
But Ward’s second term has not been free of criticism. His decisions on student organization funding and university labor contracts have prompted students, faculty and teaching assistants to take action on numerous occasions.
It is this environment he will pass on to Rebecca Blank in the coming months.
Ward said his word of advice to Blank would be to remember UW-Madison is a “complex and messy place.”
“I’d encourage her to never believe in the quick fix because of that complexity here,” Ward said. “It’s the mile, it’s not the hundred yard dash.”
