oflovefaithhopedream

Let me tell you, it's an incredible experience to chair a university committee for multiple years, work very hard to serve at the request of your university, produce a thoughtful report with that committee, and then have the Provost of your institution attack it in the media without ever bothering to even speak with you about it. Welcome to UW-Madison and the passive-aggressive machinations of Provost Paul DeLuca. UW-Madison has serious problems when it comes to state relations and this Provost has a lot to do with that.  Time and again he has treated the Wisconsin public, its reporters, and its legislators as if they aren't smart enough to merit straight talk about hard issues.  Instead he smirks, waves his hands, and says he doesn't know what all the fuss is about. He dismisses any critique of the university as uninformed, offers "explanations" without any factual basis, and looks away when anyone asks a hard question. I've witnessed this time and again ove...

I received the following letter this morning from a colleague, and with her permission I am reprinting it because  the message it contains is a critical one for our community to hear and discuss.   Dear Sara, First, thank you sincerely for your courage to stand up for your convictions, and to air them at the Faculty Senate and in your blog. Please allow me briefly to share my personal experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concerning attitudes toward undergraduate education and inequity in faculty salaries, and how, from my perspective, these affect the budget of the university, the future of our children, and the economics of our State/country. I have been on the UW-Madison faculty of the School of Medicine and Public Health (Medical School) for twenty years.  The Medical School employs scientists with expertise found nowhere else on the campus (or even the world) and pays salaries that are considerably higher than those of faculty in many other school...

I have said it before and will say it again:   Please do not conflate the beliefs and actions of University faculty, students, or staff with the beliefs and actions of the Administrators. Today I am flat-out embarrassed by the possibility that anyone might think that the educators, staff, or students of UW-Madison uniformly support the latest shenanigans perpetrated by our administration.  Three such action are especially revolting. 1. Administrators sent threatening letters to our students who are working diligently to ensure that those "in charge" uphold the ethical code of conduct governing UW-Madison's business relationships, rather than kowtow to the business owners of Milwaukee.   More on that in the coming days. 2. The Interim Chancellor played "holier than thou" in a reprehensible letter  published Friday about the words of a faculty member, Lydia Zepeda, chair of the shared governance committee on Labor Codes Licensing Compliance. He used the race card ...

This letter went to Ward this morning.  Yesterday's Capital Time s noted that a key issue here is a failure on the Administration's part to listen  and communicate  with campus the same way it does with business. I couldn't agree more. May 3, 2013 Dear Chancellor Ward, We are deeply troubled by your latest statement on Palermo’s Pizza, in which you conveyed a continued refusal to acknowledge the findings of the National Labor Relations Board and Worker Rights Consortium. UW-Madison has a history of upholding our Code of Conduct, which the university adopted for a reason. You have repeatedly claimed to not have enough information to take action toward Palermo’s. This is despite the fact that last November, the National Labor Relations Board found Palermo’s in violation of numerous counts of violating federal labor law, including worker intimidation, physically blocking workers from going on strike, and illegally terminating 11 workers. Though the NLRB may have absolve...

This morning, Emeritus Professor of Economics Lee Hansen released a WISCAPE paper about the "resource costs of minority and disadvantaged student programs at UW-Madison" and in about an hour he will host a brownbag on the topic in the Wisconsin Idea Room at the School of Education.   I am on a flight to LA and thus will miss it; therefore I offer my perspective here. I have a wide range of experience that I can bring to bear on these issues, having analyzed the reports of UW-Madison and UW System myself for nearly a decade, chaired the Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions and Financial Aid shared governance committee for many years, and engaged in numerous analyses of the costs and benefits of higher education programs throughout the nation. I also know Lee, both personally and professionally.  As I offer these thoughts, I want to note the sincere belief that he seeks to improve  the ways in which we serve minority and disadvantaged students in this country, and does not...

This post is authored by Maria K. Giannopoulos,   Vice Chair of the Associated Students of Madison at the  University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached at  mgiannopoulo@wisc.edu  In an article  published by the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this week, Anil Wadhwani of Northwestern and Jonathan Green of Cambridge describe how the Northwestern University administration is giving students a voice in the college budget process. To some, giving students a voice regarding the use of their fees may be a no-brainer, but at many institutions administrators and staff unilaterally decide the distribution of fees and ideas for student services. The authors cite "shortsighted vision" and high student turnover as possible reasons to limit student engagement in the fee process. But at Northwestern, administration finally realized that despite these potential issues, student input was valuable and attainable. In Wisconsin, our conception of stud...

This afternoon I received the following email from a UW employee who, unlike myself, does not enjoy tenure and thus prefers to convey this advice to the incoming chancellor anonymously.  I recognize and sympathize with that concern, and thus am simply reprinting it here in full.  I believe this advice, coming from someone with plenty of experience at the institution, is worth full consideration. If you have your own words of advice to share, please send them along! Dear Dr. Goldrick-Rab – If Dr. Blank is willing to listen to you, and I hope she does, one thing you might want to suggest is that she does  not  start calling herself “Becky” but instead be referred to as Rebecca when she wants to go “casual.” David Ward was never been referred to by anyone as “Dave,” and if John Wiley had a nickname or pet name as a child, he certainly did not use that on his official correspondence or when he was quoted in the press.   This is, after all, the Universit...

Paul Fanlund's column today on the process through which Rebecca Blank was selected as chancellor raises some very important questions.  These strike me as the sorts of questions that one should ask regardless of whether or not they agree with the choice of Blank.  After all, these process issues go to the heart of how we select a chancellor at a shared governance institution. 1. How are we to know whom the campus "unanimously" supports? The current practice is that the process of official input from shared governance bodies ends when the search and screen committee names its four finalists. When that committee meets with the Regents special committee, it is to provide input on what people on campus said about all of the candidates.  At no point in the Blank search did the search and screen committee have the opportunity to tell the Regent committee whom the campus "unanimously" chose. Moreover, the search and screen committee did not have a clear selection of...

This story in today's New York Times made me happy because it emphasized an approach to revenue-generation consistent with the mission of many public universities, especially land-grant institutions: develop ways to produce excellent agricultural output.   Washington State University is selling beef, including Wagyu, and marketing it to alumni-- among others. This is a perfect fit for UW-Madison, which could strategically expand its exist talents via the Babcock Dairy (ice cream and cheese) and Bucky's Butchery , as well as the excellent crops that could be produced by star faculty. Here's a sample line of potential UW-Madison products that could be marketed throughout the Midwest and indeed across the country to our adoring alumni.  Ice cream It's already available, but why not ship it to alumni who miss it? As a friend put it, who wouldn't want to try ice cream made by the flagship university of America's dairyland? Cheeses (we have award winning cheddar , ...

Every employee at UW-Madison believes they deserve to be paid more, and the vast majority are right. It's time we recognize and begin to address the fact that most workers across Wisconsin are underpaid--in UW and far beyond. Increasing  compensation for everyone in the bottom half of the income distribution should be a state and national priority, especially given the evident and long-lasting consequences of widening income inequality. Unfortunately, the HR Design plan at UW-Madison is nearly silent on the issue of raising compensation for all currently underpaid employees. Instead, it focuses on how compensation levels  will be determined and how raises will be distributed when money is available.  It does nothing whatsoever to make sure more money is available. Remember that-- don't allow the desire for more pay to lead you to blindly accept the terms of a plan that doesn't bring more pay but rather changes the terms on which you are paid.   The biggest chan...

UW-Madison students are happy students, as we recently learned from the Huffington Post . This high ranking of our institution is a coup when it comes to attracting more applications, and since we rise in rankings by rejecting more applicants (and rightly care about happiness), this will likely be seen as a good thing. Of course I'm delighted that our students are happy. Pleased as punch that they rate our sports culture and political activity highly (a 9 and an 8 out of 10 respectively), and the opportunities for things to do "endless."  It's wonderful-- they are spirited, free-thinking, and enthusiastic, and as all of my students well know, I love to teach them. But with love (yes, really) I need to offer a little constructive critique. We have some things to work on and they directly pertain to the educational mission (and indirectly the affordability mission) of our school.   In that same set of rankings we scored just a 6 on "professors accessible" and ...

This piece is cross-posted from the Chronicle of Higher Education , where it originally appeared as part of a forum on higher education and inequality. I highly recommend reading the full set of posts contained on the COHE website. In 1947 the historic Truman Commission called for national investments in higher education to promote democracy by enabling all people to earn college degrees. Subsequent expansion of community colleges, adult education, and federal aid occurred not in the name of economic stimulation but to reduce inequality and further active citizenship. Those  ambitions have been steadily corrupted . Today the Tea Party casts the college-educated as snobbish and fundamentally disconnected. Many four-year colleges and universities reinforce that perception by focusing on rankings and alumni satisfaction rather than affordability and national service. Educators speak about business objectives, maximizing revenue through models that charge high tuition and give high aid...

The nation is waiting on the UVA Regents to do the right thing.  There is plenty of action afoot at UW-Madison to weigh in on these key issues of money and power, and you'll see more in the coming days. In the meantime, let's make this point loud and clear whenever and wherever possible. ‎"In solidarity with our colleagues at the University of Virginia, we affirm that a public institution of higher education is not a business." Here are initial signatories-- please comment on this post to add your voice. Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, UW-Madison David Ahrens, President, Wisconsin University Union Charity Schmidt and Matt Reiter, Co-Presidents of the TAA Seth Hoffmeister, President, United Council of Students Beth Huang, Incoming Vice-President, United Council of Students Sara Goldrick-Rab, Chair, UW-Madison Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions & Financial Aid

A few months ago I wrote about the HR Design process at UW-Madison.  Some readers questioned the accuracy of my assertions.  We have new confirmatory information obtained via open records requests.  It seems the Huron Engagement has been expensive, indeed.   In the following memo, the Wisconsin University Union summarizes what we now know. It's a bit long, so I have underlined and bolded key points. To: Interested campus employees From: WUU Date: June 20, 2012 RE: Memos from Huron Consulting Group As you may know, Wisconsin University Union (WUU) has filed a series of open meeting and open requests to UW administration to gain access to information on the HR Design Project (the Project).  We initiated these requests because we believed that the effects of the Project will likely be far-reaching and long-term and that despite the administration’s attempt to project a gloss of participation and transparency to the process, it was fundamentally top-down and opaque...

Today I welcome guest blogger Judith Burstyn , professor of chemistry and former chair of the University Committee at UW-Madison.  She has a short commentary in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, and with her permission, I am printing the entirety of that piece here. Judith was a faculty leader in the battle over the New Badger Partnership , and remains a key player in the efforts to preserve shared governance on our campus.  Apparently, at today’s University of Virginia, business values trump all. There is a troubling recent trend toward viewing all public institutions in market terms, where value is measured by dollars produced. In recent years, UW-Madison has felt this too, as some of our leaders focus on efficiency via new “flexibilities.” But universities are not businesses. The proper role of universities is the creation of knowledge for the public good, and education of the new generations of citizens and leaders for civil society. Business management approaches ar...

The smoldering ashes of public higher education can be seen and smelled across the nation, as the once much-lauded, now much-decried University of Virginia goes up in flames. Pardon my French, but it's about time everyone opened their eyes, ears, and mouth. This stuff stinks! It's impossible to count how often during the past several years those of us residing at her sister public flagships have heard UVA held up as a model, a "best-practice" of public higher education for the 21st century.  Haven't you heard all about her wondrous break from state government that allowed her the "flexibility" and "innovative freedoms" to raise tuition while expanding affordability, thriving when the rest of us starved?  We at UW-Madison got an earful of it from ex-chancellor Biddy Martin during the fiasco known as the New Badger Partnership . And true believers abounded. As I said then, that emperor has no clothes.  UVA hasn't been a true public universit...