UW-Madison chancellor search: Sandefur stresses relationships
If Gary Sandefur earns the nod as the next chancellor of UW-Madison, the soft-spoken dean of the UW's College of Letters and Sciences hopes to build a better university one relationship at a time.
"I think building relationships is something that is very important for the next chancellor, no matter who that person is," Sandefur said during a news conference Monday at the Memorial Union. "I would want to try and build relationships not only with the Governor's office and state legislature, but also with civic and community and business and educational leaders throughout the state.
"So I would like to spend a good deal of my first year just talking and visiting with people in the state of Wisconsin and our alumni and supporters in the country and around the world to build a strong relationship between myself and the people who have an impact on the university."
Starting Monday and running through Thursday, each of the finalists to become the next leader of Wisconsin's flagship university -- with 40,000 students, 16,000 employees and an annual operating budget of $2.2 billion -- were to interact with faculty, academic staff, students, community leaders and members of the local media.
Following a public reception in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Union Monday, Sandefur met with, and answered questions from, a group of reporters in the Capitol View room on the Union's fourth floor.
And, quite often, Sandefur stressed the role of developing relationships as a central theme to many of his answers.
If there is one main criticism of current chancellor John Wiley, who is stepping down in September after leading UW-Madison since 2001, it's that he doesn't have a good working relationship with some of the state's lawmakers.
"My philosophy to working with the legislature would be similar to what I will use for everyone," Sandefur said. "I would like to spend a lot of time talking with the Governor and the Governor's staff and the legislative leadership about the university, and I'd like to do it not just when we need something, but I'd like to maintain regular contact to make sure what their concerns and needs are. ...
"So instead of going downtown to ask for things or going downtown to yell about something, I'd like for there to be this sort of ongoing relationship between myself and the legislative leadership just so we have channels of communication open and we can make sure that we all understand what each other's end of State Street is trying to accomplish."
In addition, convincing the people of Wisconsin as a whole about the importance of UW-Madison could go a long way in making state lawmakers look more favorably on the Madison campus.
"In some ways, support from people of Wisconsin is as important as support from the legislature," Sandefur said. "Because if the legislature feels like you're doing something that the people of Wisconsin want done, then it makes it easier for them to help the university."
Sandefur also noted: "John (Wiley), I think, has been unfairly criticized for his efforts (with state lawmakers). I think he has actually done a lot to try and maintain contact with the legislature. But it is something we need to do."
If Sandefur were to become UW-Madison's next chancellor, he said a major portion of his time on the job -- up to half of it -- likely will be spent on fundraising issues.
"I think it's pretty obvious that private fundraising is a big part of the way the university is going to increase its resource base over the next several years, over the foreseeable future," he said. "And chancellor Wiley, all of the deans and many of the department chairs, have been very involved in trying to raise private money and developing relationships with people who give us money now or, in some cases, who may give us money in the future.
"Right now I spend about 30 percent of my time on development and fundraising activities. I'm guessing as chancellor it would get closer to 50 percent. I think that's a big part of what the next chancellor needs to do is get out and, again, build relationships with donors and alumni and to try to raise as much money as we can for different parts of the university."
Although two of the other finalists for the UW-Madison chancellor opening have ties to the UW, Sandefur is the only internal candidate. He was asked if his leadership style would be different from Wiley's.
"I think I would be different," Sandefur said. "Not in a negative or a positive way. It's just that John Wiley and I are different people. He has a different background than I do. His background is in natural sciences and in physics and I'm a sociologist by training.
"I've learned a lot from John. He's been a mentor and a friend over the years. ... But I think we would be different in how we approach things.
"I think one similarity that we share is we both like to make decisions based on information. So I really believe in making decisions by taking into account information and data that you have on a problem. So that is something we share in common."
Sandefur, a sociology professor, has spent the past 24 years on the UW campus and has been in his current role as dean since 2004. He is a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma and is known for his research on American Indians, race and ethnicity, family structure and poverty. He co-wrote the definitive text "Growing up With a Single Parent: What Hurts? What Helps," in 1994 with fellow sociologist Sara McLanahan.
Sandefur currently oversees 39 departments in the arts and humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. More than half of UW-Madison's students are enrolled in Sandefur's college, which employs about 3,000 people.
Public receptions are to be held for all four candidates from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Union. The public reception schedule for the remainder of the week includes:
Tuesday: Carolyn Martin, provost at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who was a UW-Madison lecturer in the early 1980s and earned her Ph.D. in German literature from the school in 1985.
Wednesday: Tim Mulcahy, who has been vice president for research at the University of Minnesota since February 2005. Mulcahy spent 20 years at UW-Madison, including as associate vice chancellor for research policy from 2002 to 2005.
Thursday: Rebecca Blank, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan from 1999 to 2007. Blank, who is currently on leave and is the visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, was on the President's Council of Economic Advisors under former President Clinton in 1997-99.
For more information, including a complete resume for each of the finalists, visit the UW-Madison's chancellor search Web site at www.chancellorsearch.wisc.edu.
File photo
Gary Sandefur, the dean of the UW-Madison College of Letters and Science, has spent the past 24 years on campus.
