Carolyn Martin knows UW-Madison. She was a lecturer at the university in the early 1980s and earned her doctorate from UW-Madison in 1985 in German Literature.
Yet Martin, who has spent more than 20 years at Cornell University, an Ivy League school in Ithaca, N.Y., also brings an outsider’s perspective in her quest to become UW-Madison’s next chancellor.
“It’s always an advantage to know a place and to love a place, and then also to have had experiences elsewhere and to know from first-hand experience how things can be done differently,” said Martin, who has been Cornell’s provost — the university’s chief academic officer and chief operating officer — since 2000. “And that’s the advantage that probably anyone from the outside would bring — that’s just a fresh pair of eyes, a new look at things, a less strong sense for people who have been here longer that things have to be done in the way that they’ve always been done.
“Of course, it often turns out that they’ve been done for a long time because it’s the right way to do them. But a fresh pair of eyes is always good in each situation.