Martin would be first openly gay chancellor to lead UW-Madison
Back in 1994, Carolyn "Biddy" Martin was part of a Cornell University committee that was in charge of drafting a policy to make health insurance and other benefits available to same-sex partners.
At the time, Cornell was joining a growing number of universities and businesses that were recognizing homosexual couples.
Flash-forward 14 years, and Martin now finds herself days away from being appointed the next chancellor at UW-Madison, which still doesn't provide domestic partner benefits despite years of attempts by UW officials to secure such benefits from the state Legislature.
"I certainly think it's an important thing to have, and I believe that the university's recruitment and retention of staff and faculty depends on benefits of that sort," said Martin in a teleconference with reporters Wednesday.
"Domestic partner benefits are, in my view, a matter of fairness but also a matter of competitiveness," added Martin, who, if confirmed by the Board of Regents next week, would be the first openly gay chancellor to lead Wisconsin's flagship university.
The provost at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., since July 2000, Martin was recommended as the next chancellor of UW-Madison on Wednesday by UW System President Kevin Reilly and a Board of Regents search committee chaired by David Walsh. Martin is expected to be officially approved for the post when the full Board of Regents meets late next week in Milwaukee.
Although Martin made it clear she believed it was important to make domestic partner benefits available to keep the university competitive with its peers, she stopped short of saying she would make the issue a top priority when she takes over at UW-Madison on Sept. 1.
"Well, to be honest I believe UW-Madison and the system is on record, already, as supporting domestic partner benefits, and I will certainly join my colleagues in that support," said Martin, who will become just the second woman to lead UW-Madison. Donna Shalala, the current president at the University of Miami, was the first 20 years ago.
Whether Martin might have any particular impact as an openly gay leader of UW-Madison is "an interesting issue," said James Steakley, the incoming faculty adviser for UW-Madison's undergraduate certificate program in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) studies.
"I know that she'll be an inspiration to a lot of people who are enrolled in our LGBT certificate program," said Steakley, a longtime professor in UW-Madison's German department who got to know Martin when she was working toward her Ph.D. in German literature in the mid-1980s.
Is Martin a good fit for Madison?
"In some ways, it seems like a very good fit," said Steakley. "In Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin has the first lesbian Congressperson -- the first to come out with public knowledge before they were in Congress.
"But we are also living in a very contradictory place because we just lost the constitutional amendment (the state banned same-sex marriage in the fall of 2006), and we're the only Big Ten school without domestic partner benefits. So I'm hopeful that she will be an advocate for this. I think she knows how to do it in a non-abrasive, stimulating and non-threatening way, and I think she will move that agenda forward."
At the very least, Martin -- who wrote a book, "Femininity Played Straight: The Significance of Being Lesbian" -- pledged once again on Wednesday to be a champion for a diverse UW-Madison campus.
"Diversity is absolutely key," she said. "It's been a major focus of mine as provost here, and it will be a very high priority for me as chancellor at UW-Madison. I know it has been a priority at the University of Wisconsin, and there are several very interesting programs. It's a very difficult challenge but one of the most important ones that we face.
"Advocacy is crucial, and accountability is equally important in our efforts to make sure that we diversify not only the student body but also the faculty and staff."
Martin has been at Cornell since leaving UW-Madison in 1985 and has been at her current post of provost -- the university's chief academic officer and chief operating officer -- for nearly eight years.
As provost, Martin helped raise $110 million for a life science building, developed a program to make financial aid available to middle- and low-income students and put together a retention plan for faculty, a current issue at UW-Madison due to its relatively low pay scale for professors, at least when compared to peer institutions.
File photo
Carolyn Martin (center), shown during a reception May 13 in Madison, has been picked to be the next UW chancellor.
