A new commission promises to assess the future of undergraduate education based on research and data, rather than the anecdotes and hyperbole that undergird many analyses of higher education these days.
The Badger Herald sat down with Chancellor Rebecca Blank and Dean of Students Lori Berquam on Oct. 28 to discuss a range of topics including sexual assault, tenure policy, concealed carry on campus and diversity.
Below is a transcript of the conversation, which has been edited for style and clarity.
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.”
Faculty representatives at UW-Madison approved a new campus policy on Monday laying out a narrow set of circumstances under which tenured professors may be fired.
It won’t happen as quickly as hoped, but University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Monday she expects the UW System and its campuses will end up with a new tenure policy that offers the same protections as what the governing body of the flagship campus unanimously endorsed Monday.
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.
In major college football, the average compensation package for coaches has gone up 110 percent in the last 10 years, USA Today reported this week … But at Wisconsin, the head football coach position pays less now than it did in 2012, a rarity in the Power Five conferences, the driving forces of big-time college sports.
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.
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.
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:
University of Wisconsin System leaders are continuing to travel throughout Wisconsin to build stronger connections between businesses, citizens and higher education.
Two top leaders within the University of Wisconsin System are hitting the road this fall to make new connections and strengthen existing relationships between Wisconsin businesses, residents and the public higher education system.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison fundraising challenge has exceeded expectations, with an endowment fund generating almost $250 million for professorships and chairs.
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.
A record-shattering gift to help recruit and retain world-class faculty has grown to be worth a quarter-billion dollars thanks to urgent and strong support from alumni, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is poised to announce Tuesday.
The largest-ever gift to UW-Madison has turned out bigger than expected.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison fundraising drive that began last fall with a $100 million pledge has generated a quarter of a billion dollars, university officials announced Tuesday.
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.
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.
I’ve been to many places in Wisconsin in my two years as chancellor, but always with a singular purpose: to meet someone, to speak to a group, to visit a company. Vacation is a time for travel with less of a purpose.
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.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank weighs in on the future of tenure at UW-Madison on WPR’s Central Time.
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.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been in the midst of a debate over tenure for college professors in Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin faculty continued to speak out against potential tenure changes in the state budget and Chancellor Rebecca Blank spoke on her plan to retain tenure protections at a listening session in Union South Monday.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank says she’s heard from many graduates of UW-Madison that they want to help the school.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank says faculty are unhappy with proposed changes to their job protections, and she is worried she’ll lose top people as a result.
Recap of Chancellor Blank’s appearance on the Sunday program “UpFront with Mike Gousha.”
“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.”
Many UW-Madison faculty members are worried their jobs could be at risk after the Joint Finance Committee recently voted to remove tenure from state law. Tenure offers protection for academic freedom and was designed to make sure people can express ideas without fear of retaliation.
A proposal in the state budget to cut the tenure system from state law is drawing criticism from those who work at the University of Wisconsin. Chancellor Becky Blank said the tenure plans are not a disaster, but faculty members demanded answers late Tuesday at a faculty senate meeting.
UW-Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank plans to meet with the university’s faculty senate Tuesday to address concerns about the changes to tenure.
University of Wisconsin leaders moved forcefully on Monday to stem the fallout from lawmakers’ plans to strip tenure protections from state law as UW-Madison faculty planned an emergency meeting on the matter for Tuesday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Monday she will work with faculty to quickly draw up tenure protections for the state’s flagship campus “that would be the equivalent of any of our peers.”
A Board of Regents committee advanced a policy change Thursday that gives the regents a greater role in the process of searching for campus leaders.
More than 360 professors who have won some of the university’s most prestigious research awards signed a letter they plan to send to the UW-System Board of Regents before their meeting Thursday.
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.
The Internet continues to reshape entire industries. Few know this better than journalists like Katie Couric, who has recently shifted from reporting news on television to reporting news online. In her speech to graduates at the University of Wisconson Madison, she talked about the importance of taking risks and failing gracefully.
Katie Couric had some uplifting words of advice to give graduating students of the University of Wisconsin-Madison during her commencement speech on Saturday morning.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank will deliver a high-profile lecture Thursday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., as this year’s winner of the Moynihan Prize.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank updated University of Wisconsin’s Faculty Senate Monday on recent developments to raise money to make up for the deficit created by Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million budget cut to the UW System.
Chancellor Blank has a blog that talks about the need to weaken the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make room for state budget cuts.
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.
A foreign delegation featuring 47 government ministers from 28 countries spent Wednesday touring Madison-area centers of technology and entrepreneurship, starting with a tour of healthcare software giant Epic Systems Corp. in Verona and moving on to many examples of UW-Madison-related innovations.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank and other University of Wisconsin System officials say increasing non-resident tuition will bring UW’s rates up to “market value,” but some experts worry the spike will decrease enrollment.
Thousands of UW-Madison students will have fewer courses to choose from and longer wait times to see academic advisers next year. Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced the University will eliminate 400 positions for the 2015-16 school year to trim $21 million.
The state’s flagship campus, UW-Madison, and its affiliated entities contribute $15 billion a year to the Wisconsin economy, according to a report commissioned by the university and funded by its foundation.
For every taxpayer dollar spent on the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the university generates $24 for the state economy, according to a new consultant’s report.
Tuition for graduate students and nonresidents would increase by at least several hundred dollars next year at most University of Wisconsin System campuses under a plan a regents committee approved Thursday to help the schools brace for $300 million in cuts Gov. Scott Walker has proposed in his budget.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank is taking a long-promised plan to raise tuition for nonresident and professional students to the Board of Regents this week.
The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team came up a little bit short in the national championship game against Duke on Monday. Joy Cardin and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank discuss what the program means for the university, especially its great run in 2015.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank says she is taking seriously concerns of discrimination against gays raised by Indiana’s new religious freedom law while Duke University declares it stands with the LGBT community.
Criticisms alluded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank at the state’s Joint Finance Committee hearing Tuesday amid discussions of the proposed budget cuts and autonomy for the UW System.
The Student Labor Action Coalition held a rally Friday pressuring Chancellor Rebecca Blank to cut licensing ties with VF Corporation, the parent company of JanSport.
Tension was evident in Union South’s Varsity Hall Monday during a public forum discussing the ramifications Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed UW System budget cuts could have on UW-Madison undergraduates.
New this afternoon from PolitiFact Wisconsin: Amid the uproar over Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin System, we check a claim by UW-Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank. She says UW-Madison “spent down reserves” as it was told to do two years ago and, facing the new cuts, has “no more reserves to spend down.”
State Democrats defended Chancellor Rebecca Blank Thursday after Republicans attacked her Wednesday for “playing politics” with her university.
The leaders of the state’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee accused UW-Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank of playing Washington politics with the current budget debate, noting her ties to U.S. President Barack Obama and her predecessor’s support for elements of Gov. Scott Walker’s plans that she opposes.
Chancellor Blank statement: “Our recent conversations with legislators have been positive and we understand the pressures they are facing. As I have stated in the past, flexibilities offered through a public authority model are welcome and would eventually allow the System to function more effectively. However, we continue to be concerned about the impact of a proposed $300 million cut. We look forward to working with legislators throughout the budget process to reduce the impacts on the university.”
The co-chairs of the state Legislature’s budget committee slammed University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank Wednesday for “bringing Washington politics to Madison.”
