From the desk of the chancellor: Creating an opportunity to increase impact of our work

For all the variations in faculty, staff, student and alumni perspectives, it has become clear during the past several months that we share a number of views and goals in common.

In this column, I want to address only one set of shared goals — the enhancement of our internal and external communications and the strengthening of our relationships with key constituents. I have heard these goals articulated as part of a larger hope that we can help elevate the substantive exchange of ideas, a strong sense of community and creative policy development to the place they deserve in public life. We face both the challenge and the opportunity of helping counter anti-intellectualism, rigid partisanship and ideology-driven perspectives with reason, informed discussion, the love of language, the appreciation of one another and a rich understanding of context.

At a national and international level, university education and research have never been more important. They are the target of major investments all over the world because of the hope they hold out in a global knowledge economy for sustainable economic growth, alternate sources of energy, preventive and, therefore, affordable health care, environmental preservation, cultural understanding and adequate forms of governance. Research universities with the quality, breadth and history of engagement characteristic of UW–Madison are rare and are all the more essential to efforts in the state, the nation and the world to turn enormous challenges into opportunities.

At the same time, the university faces the consequences of a global economic downturn and we will need to work very hard to make strategic decisions about how we deal with those consequences. Among our most important tasks is to be guided by principle, to remain true to our institutional mission, to consult widely, and vigorously and effectively to communicate the value and importance of higher education and of UW–Madison, in particular. To be effective communicators and interlocutors, we also need to understand the circumstances and the goals of our constituents, partners, and fellow human beings outside the university, ensuring that we build successful partnerships that enable us to work together to seize opportunities even in the face of constraints. We are working on contingency plans and processes for decision-making. When we have more information about the financial challenges ahead, we will also step up our communications with all of you.

UW-Madison is known for its history of generating public spiritedness and public intellectuals, whose perspectives were often developed in exchange with policy leaders across a range of sectors and at times of great social and economic stress. To invigorate that tradition of public engagement, we need to redouble our efforts at internal and external communications and at relationship-building, augmenting the already excellent work of our existing operations.

On Nov. 7, I announced the establishment of a new vice chancellor position. The individual who fills the position will be responsible for developing and implementing a strategic communications and relationship-building plan for the university. We are already extremely highly regarded worldwide for our contributions because of the great fundamental work that has been done here, but we are almost certainly even better than those perceptions suggest because we are notoriously low-key. Moreover, our organization is sufficiently broad that effective presentations of ourselves, even to one another on campus, is a serious challenge. Because perceptions are known to have an impact on how people behave, whether they are considering an offer of admission or the funding of a proposal, it is important that we present our best face to the world. That is one important goal of this position.

In addition, the new vice chancellor will be charged with generating the most effective means of putting our faculty, staff and students in dialogue with our external constituencies, so that our work is more visible and meaningful to a broader public. That will require that we create mechanisms to match faculty, staff and students who have similar interests and link them with people in government, industry, education, medicine and other vital sectors.

This kind of “matching” is one of the reaccreditation team’s most compelling recommendations and is well worth pursuing.

We have come up with a strategy to cover the compensation of this new vice chancellor in a way that is cost-neutral. While there are opportunity costs involved in the creation of any new position, I believe this investment is vital to the institution’s long-term well-being. It is part of my effort to build a team of senior staff members on whom we can all depend for the effective leadership of the institution during a period of challenge and opportunity. The successful team is one that is consultative, collaborative, open, creative and, ultimately, willing to make difficult decisions for the long-term good of the university.

The search committee, which will include university administrators, faculty, staff, students and representatives of our external constituencies, will begin its work right away, starting with the development of a job description and a posting sometime before the end of the semester.

The committee will work to submit the names of three finalists to me as early as possible in the spring semester. Please feel free to send any ideas you might have about the position to me and/or to the chair of the search committee, University Research Park Director Mark Bugher.

Carolyn “Biddy” Martin is UW–Madison’s chancellor.