“Leading UW–Madison and serving the people of Wisconsin has been an honor and a privilege,” Blank said. “Now it’s time to let someone else step into leadership. I have many connections with Northwestern and am excited about this new opportunity.”
Blank highlighted UW-Madison’s designation as a “Green Ribbon School,” the first of the Big Ten to earn such an award. Reducing environmental impacts and costs, improving the health and wellness of faculty and staff and providing effective environmental and sustainability education are components considered in the selection of Green Ribbon schools.
Blank has been with UW-Madison since 2013. Prior to her tenure at UW-Madison, Blank worked in three different presidential administrations, was dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and was a member of Northwestern University’s faculty as the director of the Joint Center for Poverty Research.
The second-longest serving chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will step down in May next year to become the first female president of Illinois’ Northwestern University.
Northwestern announced Blank’s selection Monday, where she will succeed Northwestern’s 17th president Morton Schapiro. Blank will become the first female president in Northwestern University history.
The university announced Monday morning that Blank will become the next president of Northwestern University starting in summer 2022, where she will make history as the institution’s first woman president. She will replace long-time president Morton Schapiro, who assumed leadership in 2009 and announced his departure from Northwestern in March.
Blank, who announced Monday she is leaving to become president of Northwestern University in 2022, was named chancellor here in February 2013 when she was acting secretary of commerce under President Obama. Now she is leaving, and the consensus among insiders I spoke with Monday was that (a) she’s done an excellent job of navigating UW through exceptionally challenging times and (b) finding a replacement of her stature may prove profoundly difficult.
Northwestern University announced today that Rebecca M. Blank will become its next president, beginning in the summer of 2022. Blank is currently the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a post she has held for eight years.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank is leaving the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become the first female president of Northwestern University, the suburban Chicago school announced Monday.
Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will step down this summer to take up the presidency at Northwestern University, the private research institution announced Monday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank will leave the university at the end of the school year to become the first female president of Northwestern University.
Blank became chancellor of UW-Madison in 2013. She has deep ties to Northwestern and the Chicago area, serving as a faculty member from 1989 to 1999 and directing the Joint Center for Poverty Research. She was married in Chicago and her daughter attended Northwestern as a student.
After months of grim financial forecasts, University of Wisconsin System leaders presented a much rosier financial outlook this week as campuses settle into another school year shadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recent coverage of the University of Wisconsin-Madison asserts that students and administrators are overly sensitive and reactionary, falsely pursuing small, insignificant symbols, rather than supporting significant goals of racial equity and not maligning an alumnus.
Cardona will double down on Wisconsin today. First, he’s scheduled to visit Eau Claire for an elementary school tour and pep rally alongside local Superintendent Michael Johnson. He’ll then travel south for a stop at the flagship University of Wisconsin-Madison with school Chancellor Rebecca Blank.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited the UW-Madison campus Monday as part of his “Return to School Road Trip” across the Midwest to talk up the Biden administration’s efforts to get students back into classrooms safely.
UW-Madison reported on Thursday that nine out of every 10 members of the campus community are fully vaccinated — even without mandating students and employees to get the shot. “I’m proud of our students and employees for taking this important step to protect themselves and others,” Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in an announcement. “And I’m grateful to our staff, who worked tirelessly to achieve these results.”
Video: UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank details the university’s plans to combat a likely increase in COVID cases on campus due to the highly-contagious delta variant with in-person classes starting September.
UW-Madison isn’t expecting Foxconn Technology Group to honor a $100 million pledge made to the university nearly three years ago, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said this month.
A top university official in Wisconsin is butting heads with state Republican legislators over who has the authority to impose COVID-19 restrictions on campus.
Just hours after a Wisconsin state legislature committee on Tuesday required all University of Wisconsin schools to receive permission before issuing new coronavirus guidance, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank reinstated her campus’s indoor mask mandate.
University of Wisconsin officials who want to ward off a rising COVID-19 caseload now must get permission from the Legislature to implement masking, testing or vaccination requirements, according to a plan Republicans adopted Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced it would require students, employees and visitors wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status starting Thursday, as COVID-19 cases surge and political pressure mounts.
“This is an overlap which we should have identified when schedules were being set,” Blank said in the campuswide email. “Our process didn’t work in this instance and for that I’m deeply sorry. The first day of classes is a significant occasion and especially so this year as we return to in-person instruction — after last year, many students want the excitement and sense of belonging that comes with the first day of classes.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank is apologizing for a university decision to start the school year on the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashana.
University of Wisconsin chancellor Rebecca Blank was selected as the chair of the Big Ten Conference’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors on Wednesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison said this week it will not require COVID-19 vaccinations this fall, as a growing minority of campuses across the country, including in the Big Ten, are doing so.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank solicited feedback from a select number of voices on what qualities and characteristics in the next Badgers athletic director mattered to them. School officials have declined to reveal who was invited to offer input, but it has emerged that Blank held listening sessions with Badgers coaches, some UW players and a group dedicated to equity and diversity in the athletic department.
The UW System Board of Regents on Wednesday morning approved a contract with McIntosh, 44, a former Badgers football player who will be only the third UW athletic director in 32 years.
The University of Wisconsin plans to name its new athletic director Wednesday, with Chancellor Rebecca Blank revealing her pick to replace the retiring Barry Alvarez.
UW is more than six weeks into its search for Barry Alvarez’s successor to lead the athletic department, an enterprise with an annual budget of more than $130 million. The school has been silent on whether any lessons from the failed presidential search were learned, but it is operating with a similar degree of secrecy.
In March, The Washington Post reported that University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank sought to move a conversation around the COVID-19 pandemic and students returning to campus in the fall to a private portal used by presidents and chancellors of the 14 Big Ten universities.
It was a comment to that effect by Rebecca Blank, the chancellor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, that helped ignite the debate in her state over faculty course loads. Blank started a political firestorm by saying that, when top faculty got job offers from other institutions, she sometimes reduced the number of courses they had to teach as a way to get them to stay.
With the appointments of Whitten and Wilson, five Big Ten universities will now be headed by women. Joan Gabel is president of the University of Minnesota; Kristina Johnson is president of The Ohio State University; and Rebecca Blank is the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. Three other Big Ten campus heads are Black: Johnathan Holloway, appointed in 2020 at Rutgers: Darryll Pines named president of the University of Maryland also in 2020; and Robert Jones who became Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016.
The American Economic Association named UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank a distinguished fellow, an honor that just four economists in the country received this year.
Crumbling concrete, rusted rebar and falling facades were among the selling points on a campus tour Monday designed to shore up support for the University of Wisconsin System’s more than $1 billion request to repair or replace aging facilities.
Gov. Tony Evers ordered emergency repair work to Van Hise Hall after concrete slabs broke off the UW-Madison building earlier this week and an engineering company found the building’s remaining panels “pose an immediate threat to public health, welfare and safety.”
Chancellor Rebecca Blank understands the importance hiring the right person to replace University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.
“Leadership matters,” Blank told reporters Wednesday after UW officials announced the formation of a nine-member search committee. “And leadership matters for maintaining the culture and the ethos and the quality of programs we have here.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has formed a large – and diverse – search committee to find a replacement for outgoing athletic director Barry Alvarez.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has several times in recent weeks noted her disappointment with the amount of vaccine allocated to University Health Services. Officials have encouraged the campus community to look elsewhere, noting in a Monday social media post that appointments for the week were already full.
The search for the next University of Wisconsin athletic director officially is underway, and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank made it clear she understands the magnitude of finding the right person to replace Barry Alvarez.
Quoted: Lawmakers in the U.S. have for years debated how to track poverty, and child poverty in particular. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, when the country is caught in a deep recession that has forced families deeper into financial difficulty amid widening inequalities, “it’s not surprising” that politicians have found renewed interest in curbing this hardship, said Rebecca Blank, a macroeconomist who worked on anti-poverty policy for the the Clinton and Obama administrations and now serves as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison’s spring 2021 commencement ceremony will be in-person at Camp Randall Stadium instead of the virtual format it has taken the last two semesters due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Thursday that it will hold two in-person graduation ceremonies this year, with the caveat that graduates will not be allowed to have guests present.
The university announced Thursday that its traditional stadium ceremony will be held for only graduating students in two ceremonies, one for undergraduates and another for graduate students, both of which will be May 8.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized after it was reported that she suggested to other Big Ten leaders that their emails related to the COVID-19 pandemic be moved to a private portal.
Blank issued the apology in a statement Monday, saying, in part, “I regret the language I used in my email exchange with other Big Ten chancellors, which appears as though I intended to use the Big Ten board portal to skirt my public records responsibilities. This was surely not my intention and I apologize for that appearance.
’I think she was right to apologize, and I welcome the fact that it came swiftly and clearly,’ UW ethics and media law professor says.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized for her email correspondence with Big Ten leaders last summer that suggested moving communications to the network’s private platform amid COVID-19 discussions for the fall semester. The University of Wisconsin System is reviewing the matter after learning about it last week, according to a spokesperson.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized on Monday for emails she sent last summer suggesting COVID-19 communications between Big Ten leaders be moved to the network’s private portal, an approach one expert on Wisconsin’s public records law called “clearly illegal.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank was among various Big Ten Conference leaders who aimed to keep conversations about plans for the college football season hidden from public view, opting to use an internal Big Ten portal in lieu of email correspondence, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
When the presidents and chancellors of the 14 Big Ten universities began discussing the prospects of students returning to their campuses last fall amid the coronavirus pandemic and with football season looming, they weighed many considerations, from public health to financial impact.
In other pandemic-related developments Wednesday: UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in taped remarks for the Wisconsin Counties Association’s annual Legislative Exchange meeting that a normal fall semester hinges on the pace of vaccinations for faculty, staff and students. She said the university is an authorized vaccinator and hopes to vaccinate all faculty and staff by the end of the spring semester.
Interim University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank teamed up Wednesday to address the Wisconsin Counties Association at its annual legislative exchange, responding to the governor’s budget announcement and sharing financial updates.
The University of Wisconsin System leadership praised Gov. Tony Evers 2021-2023 budget proposed last week, as it nearly doubled the already-ambitious initial request to help UW pull out of its financial deficit.
COVID-19 has caused the “biggest financial disaster” the university has ever seen, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said. Through federal stimulus money, furloughs, pay cuts for leadership, travel restrictions and targeted budget cuts to different units, Blank said she’s optimistic the financial gap can be resolved over the next two years. But she also renewed her case for giving the university borrowing authority.
In her yearly address Friday to the UW Athletic Board that also touched on budget issues and pending NCAA legislation, Blank said the Badgers have been “more hesitant to jump in if we think there are any risks than some other teams.”
In one of the first campus-wide emails of the new year, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank shared some new, slightly odd wisdom for the semester ahead: “Pool your drool.”
Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that Madison’s thriving industries, such as biotechnology, software and gaming, are “areas that are basically all very much rooted in both the students who graduate from here and the faculty and the research work that we do here”.
As we prepare to resume classes, we’re going to continue doing our part to curb the spread of the virus. We learned from experience that a high degree of testing, followed by quickly isolating and quarantining those who test positive or were exposed, is key to limiting that spread.
When COVID-19 cases skyrocketed in early September, Chancellor Rebecca Blank knew she had to try something. So on Sept. 9, the fifth day of classes, when the university reported 404 infections of the nearly 5,300 it would accumulate by the end of the semester, she announced a two-week lockdown for two large dorms and a campus-wide pause on face-to-face instruction. “A lot of people thought that we would never recover from that,” she said in an interview on Friday, the final day of the semester. “More than one person has come up to me and said, ‘I thought we’d never get back to in-person classes. I thought you’d have to send everyone home.’ And, you know, we did recover from that.”
