View area storm coverage and share your photos.

UW-Madison chancellor search: Mulcahy says UW can't rest on laurels

Todd Finkelmeyer  —  5/15/2008 12:18 pm

If you are in the camp that believes all is well at UW-Madison, Tim Mulcahy may not be the perfect fit to replace John Wiley as the next chancellor.

Mulcahy, who spent 20 years at UW-Madison before leaving to become vice president for research at the University of Minnesota in February of 2005, isn't afraid to note that he'll be asking some tough questions and pushing for plenty of change, if needed, should he be appointed the next leader of Wisconsin's flagship university.

"The University of Minnesota has done a tremendous job of looking at itself as an institution and plotting a new course for its future, and I think the University of Wisconsin needs to undergo a similar type of introspection and review of what it has been, what it wants to be going forward and the development of new strategies to get there," said Mulcahy, who held a range of jobs at UW-Madison, including as associate vice chancellor for research policy from 2002-05, before leaving for Minnesota. "The landscape of higher ed across the country is changing dramatically.

"... So the university needs to decide what its strategies and priorities are for the future, who we need to engage as stakeholders, and establish effective partnerships."

"... (UW-Madison is) in a lofty position. We are in an enviable position as a university, but we won't hold that position if we aren't as deliberate, and I would suggest more deliberate, than our competition. If we sit still they are going to eat our lunch, and we can't afford to do that."

Starting Monday and running through Thursday, each of the finalists to become the next UW-Madison chancellor were to spend a day interacting with faculty, academic staff, students and community leaders.

Following a public reception in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Union Wednesday, Mulcahy met with members of the media.

"This is a great honor for me to have the opportunity to come back to an institution that shaped me as a person, and shaped me as a professional and has shaped my family in very important ways," Mulcahy said in his opening remarks. "I've learned a great deal in my time here at Wisconsin. I think my three years away from Wisconsin have actually galvanized the experiences that I have had here with some new ways of looking at issues, with some new strategies with some problems that are common to many state universities with the size and scope of the University of Wisconsin."

One of the major issues facing public universities like UW-Madison is the dwindling financial support from the state legislature. Mulcahy noted that it is unrealistic to believe states are suddenly going to start giving more money to higher education.

"Let me be very explicit, I think the university deserves more support than it is able to get from the state legislature," said Mulcahy, who oversees a research program of more than $600 million on five campuses at his current job in Minnesota. "So I don't want to create the impression that the university's budget or request from the state is inflated. It is not.

"What I was trying to get at is the reality of the situation is that it's unlikely that from state sources and from the competition for state priorities that the university will be able to get all of the resources it needs from a state. So my suggestion is that what we as a university need to do is we also need to come to the table as responsible stewards of resources and say we're not just coming with our hand open saying this is what we want, we're coming to say we need this from you to support the bigger vision and here is what we're doing to provide support from the sources we already have.

"We're looking at programs that are no longer as vital as they may have been in the past. We're reallocating internal resources to help cover part of the cost. We are looking for more efficient and effective ways. ... To me it's the partnership aspect. ... Ideally we should get that support from the state, but I think you also have to acknowledge the reality that state resources are limited and I think the university has to be more persuasive and effective in getting its piece of the pie, and to do that I think we have to be willing to put some ideas on the table that change how we utilize our existing resources."

In addition to getting the most out of existing resources, Mulcahy also stressed the importance of developing new partnerships between the university and the rest of the state.

"When I talk about partnership, I'm talking about the give and take of any true partnership," he said. "If any one of you think of a partnership that you value and respect, you recognize that there are times when you give and there are times when you take, but you do it in the best interest in keeping the relationship strong. And I think with all of our stakeholders we need to do a similar thing.

"Those stakeholders include students. Those stakeholders include faculty and staff. Those stakeholders include the system, the legislature, our corporate partners across the state and the nation. We have to understand their needs and how we can fulfil their needs while still honoring the basic academic mission."

And, sometimes, hard decisions will have to be made.

"I think, to be honest with you, we need to look at what we currently do now and say, 'Do we need to continue to do all of the things that we do now? Are some of these programs more appropriate at one of the other system schools? Is Madison doing the best job in this area or that area?' The resources available to innovate or create going forward are not going to be new resources. It's unlikely that there's going to be a large influx of new state support -- not just for this university but any state university -- and so to innovate and create new programs to really take it out of the box, we may have to go back into the box and say that there are things in the box that no longer are a priority that we can no longer support. Those are tough conversations and I think it's hard an any campus to have those conversations, but I think it's imperative that those conversations happen at the UW."

One of the issues Mulcahy stressed repeatedly at Wednesday's press conference was accountability.

"Basically to be able to articulate the value proposition that the university offers people of the state and the nation," he noted. "To identify what it is we think we are uniquely qualified and best at delivering, and then provide measurable end points and bench marks to demonstrate that we are delivering on this process."

Mulcahy said that issue of accountability, at least when he was here, wasn't always stressed at UW-Madison. And he'd like to change that.

"The idea of being more accountable is a culture change," he noted. "The idea that we may have to listen to others to figure out what they need us to deliver on their behalf. One of the things I like to say, and it gets me in trouble but I'll say it anyway, is as academics we not only think we know the answer but many times we think we know the question. And I don't think that's always the case. I think we have to rely on people to tell us what the issues are.

"For example, when we have spoken to the employers in the state of Minnesota, we learned from them what they are looking for in graduates of the university. And they identified a whole array of learning skills and knowledge that they would like graduates to have. We need to take that, and we have at Minnesota, taken that to say, 'Let's be sure that our curriculum addresses those kind of issues so when we do graduate students we have prepared them well for the job sectors that are looking for our graduates.' .... So the culture change has to be that we need to listen to stakeholders more than perhaps we have in the past."

Mulcahy joined the human oncology faculty at UW-Madison in 1985 and served as associate dean for biological sciences from 1996-2002. Despite his background in the natural sciences, he noted Wednesday that he still considers the humanities, arts and social sciences to be a very important part of a well-rounded education.

"The one thing that Wisconsin should never become is a research institute," Mulcahy said. "It should be a research university -- and what the means is all of the various factors that come into play with research and its implications and how it impacts people's lives needs to be informed and discussed in the context of the values that are represented in the humanities and the arts and the social sciences."

Public receptions are to be held for all four UW-Madison chancellor candidates from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Union. The final public reception will be Thursday for 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.

Gary Sandefur, the UW's dean of the College of Letters and Sciences since 2004, had his public reception and meeting with the media on Monday. Sandefur, who has spent the past 24 years on the UW campus, 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.

Carolyn Martin, the provost at Cornell University, an Ivy League school in Ithaca, N.Y., had her public reception Tuesday. Martin was a lecturer at UW-Madison in the early 1980s and earned her doctorate from UW-Madison in 1985 in German Literature before moving to Cornell.

The four candidates interviewed Wednesday with UW System President Kevin Reilly and a Board of Regents search committee, led by chair David Walsh.

Reilly and the Regents' committee will meet again on May 21, when they will decide which candidate to recommend to the Board of Regents. The new UW-Madison chancellor officially will be appointed at the next regularly scheduled Board of Regents meeting June 5-6 at UW-Milwaukee. Wiley, who is stepping down from his post in September, has been UW-Madison's chancellor since 2001.

For more information, including a complete resume for each of the finalists, visit the UW-Madison's chancellor search Web site.

Todd Finkelmeyer  —  5/15/2008 12:18 pm