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Category: Chancellor

Students and community members urge chancellor to reconsider investments

Posted on
Daily Cardinal

A swarm of UW-Madison students and community members, led by the student organization Climate Action 350 and its city affiliate 350 Madison, protested in front of Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s office Thursday to demand the divestment from fossil fuels.

Divestment would include the university and the UW Foundation taking all the money that is invested in fossil fuels, which scientists have attributed as a cause of global warming, and putting that money into ethical and sustainable entities, according to the organization. Once it is removed, Climate Action 350 will have no control over where it is placed, but will have suggestions of what would be better.

Rebecca Blank: UW-Madison ready to work with African-American students

Posted on
Capital Times

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is well positioned to work with African-American students on campus climate and other race-related concerns, chancellor Rebecca Blank said Monday. “We do have students who experience real isolation on this campus. The question is what we can do to reduce those experiences,” Blank told members of the University Committee, the executive committee of the Faculty Senate.

A Conversation with the Chancellor

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

What is it like to oversee Wisconsin’s largest and highest ranking university, with over 43,000 students, billions of dollars in research funding, and the “Wisconsin Idea” of serving the state? In this hour, Chancellor Rebecca Blank discusses the pleasures and challenges of her role as UW Chancellor.

Another Commission Will Take On the Future of Higher Education

Posted on
Chronicle of Higher Education

The “future of higher education” landscape — already ringing with cacophonous predictions from all manner of task forces, books, conferences, and self-styled disruptors — is about to get another. This week the American Academy of Arts and Sciences will announce its own Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education.

Chancellor Rebecca Blank: Concealed carry proposal ‘defies common sense’

Posted on
Badger Herald

University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank says she would not send her daughter to a college that allows concealed weapons in university buildings, and hopes to mobilize parents statewide to voice the same concerns to lawmakers.

“I’m the mother of a sophomore at Northwestern University,” Blank told The Badger Herald editors last week. “I wouldn’t send her to a school where she could end up in a dorm with someone with a gun in the room. I just wouldn’t do that.”

Rebecca Blank: Ray Cross’ 180 on tenure undercuts credibility of Board of Regents

Posted on
Capital Times

UW System President Ray Cross’ about-face on a campus-specific tenure policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison makes the Board of Regents look bad, abets faculty seeking extreme provisions and potentially delays adoption of a policy, threatening faculty recruitment, said Chancellor Rebecca Blank. Cross also undermined her ability to broker agreement on tenure issues among UW-Madison faculty, Blank said in an Oct. 22 email to Regent John Behling.

Committee approves lifting out-of-state cap for UW-Madison students

Posted on
Channel3000.com

Noted: UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank told the committee Thursday the waiver would push the institution to recruit harder within and outside of Wisconsin. She added her institution is “uniquely situated” to make sure Wisconsin’s best and brightest don’t leave for colleges in other states, and to bring students from other states into Wisconsin and get them to stay for work.

“I’m looking at all sorts of ways to partner with industry in the state, with professional organizations in the state, to put industry and Wisconsin businesses in front of my students in a way when they get to their senior year, they’ve heard of these companies, they know something about them, they are more likely to go work for them,” Blank said.

Survey: More than 1 in 4 UW women sexually assaulted

Posted on
Channel3000.com

More than one in every four undergraduate women (27.6 percent) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison report being a victim of sexual assault, according to a new survey released Monday morning by the Association of American Universities (AAU). That’s a higher rate than the 23.1 percent of female undergraduates who reported being victims in the survey conducted by 27 universities nationwide.

The data comes from a questionnaire that was sent by email to UW students in April and May. Roughly 22 percent of the undergraduate population answered the questions in the survey. It also found that of those students who were sexually assaulted, only 26.1 percent reported the incident to authorities.

The official poverty measure is garbage. The census has found a better way.

Posted on
Vox.com

Noted: The official poverty measure was developed by the Social Security Administration’s Mollie Orshansky in 1963 and defined as three times the “subsistence food budget” for a family of a given size. As former acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank (then a Brookings Institution fellow, now chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Madison) explained in 2008 congressional testimony:

Morgridge matching gift to UW exceeds expectations

Posted on
Wisconsin Radio Network

A $200 million gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison will help to attract and keep top-quality faculty, and has grown larger and faster than expected. UW alumni John and Tashia Morgridge put up $100 million dollars last year and urged UW supporters to match it. They figured that would take up to three years, but it only took seven months to raise an additional 125-million.

Faculty members think massive donation will help retain top professors at U of Wisconsin Madison

Posted on
Inside Higher Education

Facing what is sure to be a difficult retention season, given this year’s battles over the future of higher education funding and tenure in Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin at Madison is today announcing the results of a massive donation-matching campaign aimed at recognizing top faculty members with endowed chairs.

UW campus officials prepare for new year after tumultuous summer

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After a summer of turmoil over budget cuts and tenure protections, chancellors in the University of Wisconsin System now must convince faculty and staff that all is not doom and gloom as a new academic year begins this week.

A defiant UW-Madison Chancellor Becky Blank, who won’t address her faculty in person until Oct. 5, has vowed to do everything possible to fend off competitors who attempt to lure away her best and brightest researchers. Wisconsin’s higher education woes were widely broadcast to a national audience as Gov. Scott Walker launched his presidential bid while he and state lawmakers were cutting education spending.

Spheres of influence: 2015 most influential people in Greater Madison

Posted on
In Business Madison

Rebecca Blank: When Gov. Scott Walker proposed $300 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System, his most outspoken critic was UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank. It’s not just that she was outspoken, it was the impact of her advocacy — particularly the competitive disadvantages created by associated faculty changes — that helped turn public opinion against the governor’s plan.

Liberia: In the Shadow of Ebola

Posted on
allAfrica.com

Monrovia — Emmanuel Urey and his family’s struggle is the subject of a gripping documentary production by Independent Lens which trails Urey, a Liberian going to school in Wisconsin but who was in Monrovia with some of his children when the Ebola virus broke out. The film is both an intimate portrait of a family in the center of a terrifying crisis, but also a fascinating look at how a country in the aftermath of a long civil war handled a major health scare.

Rebecca Blank: UW should have same or better tenure as peers

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

“Recent action by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has the potential to threaten that longstanding commitment to fearless inquiry. I am worried about the risk this creates for UW-Madison, by alienating and demoralizing the faculty who have built this into one of the world’s finest education and research institutions. Abrupt changes to tenure and shared governance — another historic underpinning of UW-Madison — could drive away the people we most need to attract and retain. That these changes are being recommended without public discussion or consultation from those who will be most affected adds to our collective concern.”

Aztalan visitor center plans to debut May 30

Posted on
Daily Jefferson County Union

Noted: As part of the special event, Professor Sissel Schroeder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Anthropology will provide a brief presentation at the park shelter at 2 p.m. She will discuss her archaeological field school excavations, which will be under way at the time and focus on the residential homes of the prehistoric people who populated Aztalan.

Scott Fitzgerald: Some legislators still have ‘bitter taste’ after UW System surplus flap

Posted on
Capital Times

In an interview broadcast Sunday on WKOW-TV program “Capitol City Sunday,” state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, indicated that restoring funding to K-12 education and to transportation are also among the top priorities … [W]ith the UW Board of Regents voting to raise tuition on out-of-state and graduate students, Fitzgerald said there “seems to be even less of a commitment to backfill” a $300 million cut to the UW System over the next two years. The way that Fitzgerald described it, there is still some animosity left over from the Legislature’s 2013 dealings with the UW System over the latter’s fund surpluses.