TARGETING TOMORROW

The UW-Madison as the 21st Century Begins

Office of the Provost
University of Wisconsin-Madison
500 Lincoln Drive, Bascom Hall
Madison, WI 53706-1380
email: prov@bascom.wisc.edu

INTRODUCTION

Strategic planning, however, is not the work of a day. The program that this document presents for the future has been years in the making. It has a history.

Subsequent to its reaccreditation by the North Central Association in 1989--subsequent to that organization's certifying that UW-Madison had maintained rigorous educational standards--the university issued Future Directions: The University in the 21^st Century. This executive document provided a foundation for strategic planning for the new decade. It called on the university to attend particularly to maintaining the best faculty, staff, and students; to strengthening undergraduate education; excelling in research; strengthening its public service; promoting equity and diversity; and integrating academic planning and budgeting. Elaborated at length, each directive had a clear rationale that could be implemented.

Chancellor David Ward used Future Directions as a basis for strategic planning in his role first as Provost, and then as Chancellor, updating strategic plans as major initiatives were advanced. The most recent plan was issued as A Vision for the Future: Priorities for the UW-Madison in the Next Decade. That appeared in 1995 subsequent to broad consultation on and off campus and to intensive study of its every point. A Vision assimilated Future Directions into its priorities and became the focus of the self-study prepared for the university's reaccreditation with the North Central Association in 1999.

The NCA's consultant-evaluators tested the results of ten years of strategic planning and found them successful. They praised a vastly improved program of undergraduate education, commended a world-class excellence in research, found significant progress in equity and diversity, singled out administrative leadership in strategic planning, and celebrated the UW-Madison's success in attracting private support and its fostering collaborative work with industry. Strategic planning, without a doubt, had made a difference in areas of need that had been defined a decade before.

A Vision for the Future reorganized the recommendations of Future Directions into four priorities dealing with research, undergraduate education, globalization, and the Wisconsin Idea.

These priorities helped to shape the Self-Study published by New Directions: The Reaccreditation Project in 1999.¹ The Project involved 60 members of the faculty, staff, administration, civil service, and student body who formed six committees that met with hundreds of constituents within and without the university and concluded that, with some modifications, the four priorities of A Vision were a valid program to guide strategic planning.

The suggestions that we now present in Targeting Tomorrow seek to anticipate a new decade of challenges and strategies. In doing so, they draw on the intensive efforts of hundreds of people over the last decade and are deeply indebted to their thoughtful and imaginative work.

YESTERDAY

The committee that wrote the self-study for the UW-Madison's reaccreditation with the NCA in 1989² used the opportunity to initiate strategic planning for the campus. It suggested six directions for the university to take in the '90s:

1. Recruit, develop, and retain the best faculty, staff and students.

2. Strengthen undergraduate education.

3. Excel in research.

4. Strengthen the university's commitment to public service.

5. Ensure an environment of equity and diversity.

6. Integrate academic planning and budgeting.

With the premise that Knowledge is Power, the committee saw that the university's challenge was to provide students with the education and skills they needed for their personal development as citizens of the state, nation, and world. It became ever more evident that the scientific and artistic development of individuals as well as the physical, mental, and moral vigor of families, societies, and polities lay in better educated and more sophisticated students. The job of the university, then, was to provide that education and sophistication more widely and more thoroughly. To do that it had to take into consideration unmistakable trends in the state and nation.

Wisconsin would, by the year 2000, have a population with a median age of just about 38 years. Moreover, the population of the country overall showed an increase in minorities, who, historically, had not nearly the educational advantages of the majority population. But even among the majority, men had the advantage of women in education and in the workplace. These trends indicated that greater attention needed to be paid nationally to educating those who were aging, minority, and female even as the United States became, internationally, the principal world power, militarily and economically. The challenge to the UW-Madison, therefore, was to prepare its students well enough for them to participate effectively in local, national, and international enterprises. The Future Directions Committee presumed that state aid would remain constant to support this work in the decade of the '90s. That presumption proved optimistic as state funding for UW-Madison decreased from 34% in 1990 to just about 27% in 1999.³ Consequently, there was less money and, because of that, fewer people to do more work.

Taking into consideration age, diversity, and demand in population trends in Wisconsin and nationwide, Future Directions predicted a decrease in undergraduates, a slight increase in graduate and professional students, more special students, and new programs for all. Through the 1990s undergraduate enrollment dropped briefly then rose again; graduate enrollment decreased; the percentage of special students remained fairly constant; and the professional programs grew significantly. Overall the student population in fall 1989 numbered 43,695; in fall 1998 numbered 40,109. The total number of women enrolled in all programs in 1998 it exceeded that of men;⁴ and the percentage of all ethnic minorities enrolled increased during the decade by nearly 25%.⁵ The university responded to the call for more scholarships and fellowships and student aid increased. But tuition, as a source of revenue, did not rise in proportion to the decline of state support. The UW-Madison's resident tuition and fees for undergraduates remained about 26% below the average of Big Ten universities (excluding Wisconsin).⁶ The faculty lost 243 positions.⁷ Average salaries for Full Professors in 1997-98 trailed by 10.7% those of peer institutions.⁸ The UW-Madison was in the midst of these changes in the spring of 1995 when Chancellor David Ward introduced, after lengthy study and broad consultation, a vision for the future of the university.

A Vision for the Future: Priorities for the UW-Madison in the Next Decade (1995)

The mission of the university as stated in A Vision is "to create, integrate, transfer and apply knowledge." That mission involves three interpenetrating themes: the learning experience, the learning community, and the learning environment. With learning, then, as its integrating idea, A Vision strove for four goals that, if achieved, would help create, integrate, transfer, and apply knowledge.

1. Maintaining our research preeminence.

2. Reconceptualizing undergraduate education.

3. Joining the global community.

4. Updating the Wisconsin Idea.

The physical environment of the campus also needed to change with deliberate speed to implement Vision priorities. Consequently, buildings are being built, added to, and renovated in accord with a comprehensive Campus Master Plan for the UW-Madison in the 21^st century.¹⁰ This plan includes highly sophisticated and technologically enriched academic facilities that allow the university to maintain its prominence in research in the Information Age.

A Vision for the Future had been in place for four years and had permeated every aspect of campus life by the time the North Central Association sent a team of consultant-evaluators to Madison in April 1999 to examine the university for reaccreditation.

TODAY

The Reaccreditation Project: A Self-Study (1999)

Two major recommendations, however, did not easily fit within the Vision priorities as they were articulated in 1995. One related to rewards, values and time; the other to graduate education.

Rewards, Values, and Time. The university has attempted to articulate a set of core values. Primary among them is that we are a learning community that creates, integrates, transfers, and applies knowledge. But this message is endangered to the degree that competing values are not integrated with this core value. Thus differing loyalties--whether to a project, unit, department, school or college--can distract individuals from contributing to the university's broad mission. And rewards like compensation, recognition, and time to pursue new ideas do not now invariably follow those who do serve this mission. The time required of faculty and staff to work both within and across disciplines or to work with student residential communities, just to take two examples, needs to be adjusted to the demand that these same individuals do significant research. Not that research should disappear. It must not. Research is manifestly needed to create new knowledge, which itself promotes learning within as well as outside the classroom. Thus as we seek to support a true learning community our balancing act needs better to integrate its various parts. We must encourage and support varieties of creativity and innovation that give life to this endeavor while constantly keeping in mind that time is a limited resource and that the rewards we earn should support the values we profess.

Graduate Education. The UW-Madison has made, in the last decade, undergraduate education a priority, putting into place residential learning communities, encouraging smaller class sizes, organizing an assessment program, establishing the Teaching Academy, introducing undergraduate research scholarships and fellowships, and emphasizing specialty classes for entering freshmen among other things. While these continue and new initiatives are devised, we need a similar degree of imaginative planning and organization to reconfigure graduate education.

Whereas doctoral programs must maintain their integrity and their orientation to the discovery of new knowledge, other kinds of graduate education also require study. Some Masters' degrees, for example, need to be designed that are not simply stepping stones to a doctoral program. In some fields, at least, they need to be thought of as terminal degrees that provide a high level of proficiency for students looking to enter business and industry, rather than the academy. And these new Masters' programs will require a high level of customization in their teaching.

The university already has in place some pilot programs for Capstone degrees. They are meant to "top off" undergraduate education, rather than introduce students to graduate education. As these programs and others become established in the curriculum, they will train a largely professional audience and require both internships and on-site mentoring of research. The dimensions of capstone degrees and similar programs are not yet completely understood and will demand both study and flexibility to become a significant part of graduate education. Certain questions will certainly arise: Who will provide the instruction? How much new infrastructure will be needed to administer Capstone degrees? How will the funding for such programs be managed?

This introduction of new kinds of graduate education does not mean, however, that the established research role of the university will disappear. Universities have traditionally supplied new knowledge through basic research that has brought about significant changes in the way we live. The University-Industry Relations Office transmits knowledge created at the UW-Madison beyond the campus' borders. At the same time that this transfer of knowledge from the academy to industry takes place, basic research must retain its indisputably primary place on campus.

Report of the NCA Consultant-Evaluators (1999)

It is rather remarkable--and a bit of a puzzle, actually--that a state of such modest size and wealth has managed to build and to maintain for so long such a truly world-class institution. As one of the Team members observed, "This is a state and a university that delivers far beyond its resources."¹²

The consultant-evaluators went on to praise the university's vastly improved program of undergraduate education, commended a world-class excellence in research, found significant progress in equity and diversity, singled out administrative leadership in strategic planning, and celebrated the UW-Madison's success in attracting private support and its fostering of collaborative work with industry. They determined, in other words, that strategic planning had made a difference in areas of need that had been defined in Future Directions and refined in A Vision for the Future.

But the site-visit team found items of concern too. They were particularly troubled not only that the level of state funding for the university had dropped from 1990 to 1999, but also that the level of policy-related regulations and bureaucratic constraints continued to limit the flexibility of administrators in dealing with rapid changes in higher education. They also worried that a tradition of "faculty-centered culture that prizes intellectual independence, creativity, and quality"--a tradition, unarguably, that gives the UW-Madison a unique place in American higher education--might "come at the price of greater institutional risk in today's climate of fast-paced change in higher education."¹³

In recognition of the first concern, the Governor and Legislators, in the state budget for 1999-2001, have begun to respond to the Madison Initiative to raise an endowment of $200 million dollars in private funds over a four-year period if, during the same period, the state increases its funding of the university by some $57 million. The new state budget, consequently, is the best that the UW-Madison has seen in a decade. But significant problems stemming from state regulations and bureaucracy still need similarly and imaginatively to be addressed.

With faculty governance a distinctive mark of the Madison campus, few want to see it disappear because it has insured continuity even as administrators have come and gone. But A Vision for the Future took problems related to faculty governance into account when the Chancellor wrote to faculty and staff that "while you may devote loyalty and creativity to your profession, your department, your unit or your service, you also must be loyal to the institution and collaborate in moving toward an institutional mission."¹⁴ In the same spirit, the University Committee, the executive arm of the Faculty Senate, has begun to examine the committee structure of the university and to implement changes in view of eliminating redundancy, saving faculty time, and implementing the university's mission more efficiently.

TOMORROW

1. Promote research.

2. Advance learning.

3. Nurture human resources.

4. Amplify the Wisconsin Idea.

5. Accelerate globalization.

1. Promote Research

As we look back over 150 years of research at the UW-Madison, we find again and again discoveries that have led to things that we simply take for granted today. In 1890, for example, Stephen Babcock developed a butterfat test, replacing a weight test, that gave the dairy industry its first standard for controlling the quality of milk and ended the days of watered-down milk. Indeed, according to former governor W. D. Hoard, Babcock "made more dairymen honest than the Bible" did. His research changed the nature of dairy farming as a cash-crop in the 20^th century.

In 1914 biochemist E. V. McCollum introduced vitamin A to the world, discovering the first of the vitamins during a simple dietary experiment on rats. Two years later, the vitamin alphabet grew when McCollum and colleague Margaret Davis discovered vitamin B, which helps prevent beriberi. In 1937 another of the B vitamins, niacin, was discovered by scientist Conrad Elvehjem to cure pellagra. With the revelation of the role that vitamins play in human and animal health, those chronic and debilitating ailments--affecting tens of millions of people--were erased in an instant.

The frontiers of pharmacological research suggest the frontier itself. In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner demonstrated how the Western frontier defined the American experience. His "frontier thesis" became one of the most influential theories ever posed about what makes us Americans. Turner believed the American character of pragmatism, grass-roots government, and individualism grew from the gritty realities of relentlessly conquering the West. His thesis remains a vital, if controversial, view of American history to this day.

Aldo Leopold, the first research director of the Arboretum, joined the UW faculty in 1933. As the country's first professor of wildlife management, he helped to found the study of wildlife ecology. Few scientists have captured the emotional and aesthetic nature of their work as well as he did. His 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac, became the wellspring for modern efforts to preserve our environment. It chronicles his painstaking work, done on weekends away from his desk, to breathe life into the tired soil of his farm near Portage.

Anyone who admires the work of the world-renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly--it is his strikingly colorful sculpture that hangs in the Kohl Center--needs to know that he studied with Harvey Littleton. Where many saw windows and bottles, Littleton saw the raw materials of a new art form. In 1962, as professor of art at the UW-Madison, Littleton forged the world's first glass-art movement by creating a studio-scale furnace hot enough to mold glass into art works. He and his students produced glass that demanded to be looked at, not looked through, with brilliant, gem-like colors and remarkable shapes.

Howard Temin, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1974, offers one more example. As a cancer researcher, Temin's discoveries allowed us to understand the virus that causes AIDS and led to major advances in the biotechnology industry. His work was crucial to the development of life-saving drugs such as human insulin and clot-dissolving agents. His influence is still felt in laboratories and homes around the world.¹⁶

Basic research of the kind that Babcock, McCollum, Davis, Elvehjem, Turner, Leopold, Littleton, and Temin pioneered explored fundamental mysteries of the human, natural, and artistic worlds and made possible useful and important applications that have benefitted people around the globe.¹⁷ At present on the Madison campus there are more than 9,000 research projects underway, some of which will dramatically push back intellectual boundaries to the benefit the state, the nation, and the world; almost all of which will find their way into the classroom to renew, constantly, the content of courses and the way they are taught.

To continue to advance the university's research preeminence in the 21^st century, three things, at a minimum, must happen:

• first, we need to increase resources and improve the infrastructure for research;

• second, we need to bring the discoveries of research into the classroom and provide experience in research for students;

• third, we need to apply research to promote the economic development and the general well-being of society.

Review and consolidation of programs, generally--in microbiology, pharmacy, and human ecology, particularly--have strengthened targeted research programs and are the beginning of a continuing effort to make research and teaching more telling and efficient. An integral part of efficiency is the modernization of research and educational facilities. New and remodeled buildings and work spaces for research in Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Genetics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy, to mention just a few, as well as for the Hiram Smith Research Greenhouses and the Waisman Center¹⁸ are either recently completed or already underway. These new facilities, already fitted out with the latest technology, will constantly need to be upgraded to insure that research and teaching proceed in the most efficient way.

The Graduate School must be integral to the progress of research in the 21^st century. It has a proud tradition to build on, having in the past recruited and graduated some of the country's most eminent scholars; like John Bardeen, for instance, who invented the transistor and won two Nobel prizes (1956, 1972) for work that led the world into the Information Age. To the end of recruiting the best graduate students, the Graduate School, in cooperation with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Foundation, will seek to raise $200 million to support 400 fellows with $24,000 stipends in order to attract the best students to pursue graduate study and research at the Madison campus. Given that the competition for the brightest students among major universities is growing keener day by day, this initiative and others like it will demand the constant attention of the administration.

Undergraduate education also needs to do its part to interest students in research. A few programs are already underway. Two such that provide for cooperative research between undergraduates and faculty members are the Wisconsin/Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowships and the Holstrom Environmental Scholarships. Students who complete independent research in the form of senior theses and creative writing projects can compete for Academic Excellence Awards provided by the University Book Store with the cooperation of faculty who serve on the committee of judges. And Wisconsin Idea Undergraduate Fellowships are awarded for research-service projects involving community organizations; they are sponsored by the Provost's Office and the Morgridge Center for Public Service. Relatively new, save for the Academic Excellence Awards, whose number has recently increased, these programs are designed to encourage and recognize excellence in research. They introduce undergraduates to the goals and methods of research and prepare them to take what they have learned into graduate schools of their choice. Consequently, to advance research from the earliest days of higher education these and similar programs need to be promoted and funded. They are the most substantial way of challenging young minds, tangibly, to advance creative work in the arts and sciences.

The university, finally, needs to find ways of communicating with the public. Too often, it seems, the notion abroad is that research is esoteric and unrelated to "the real job" of faculty teaching undergraduates "the basics." The university must take it upon itself to show that what, in the laboratory or the library, may seem esoteric is directly related to the public's welfare, as we've seen with vitamins and transistors. And the university must also make clear that when it does its job of creating knowledge, that is inextricable from its job of getting that new knowledge into the classroom. Research/Teaching must been shown to be a university matrix, not unrelated items in a multiversity. Charles Lindberg was in engineering classes at the UW-Madison (1920-22) before he flew across the Atlantic in 1927; the one was connected to the other: he had to know how to get the plane off the ground before he could land it. Lindberg learned his lessons so spectacularly well that he was awarded an honorary degree in 1928.

2. Advance Learning

Undergraduate Education

Undergraduates appreciate all efforts to connect learning within the classroom to facilitating learning outside it. But they tend to see the university as "resource rich and connection poor."²² Because the UW-Madison is large and complex, they feel the need for inaugurating as well as strengthening offices and programs that help them navigate the campus easily and efficiently. To this end orientation programs need to be thorough enough that students are not left to fend for themselves once Welcome Week is over. And now that student services are in the Red Gym, undergraduates need space for a variety of registered student organizations that help accommodate them to the campus and the city. And University Health Services, an indispensable student resource, badly needs to be relocated more centrally along the student services corridor.

Today's students are technologically sophisticated. On the average they use computers more than eight hours a week. They register for classes through the internet; they communicate with their instructors through e-mail; they browse the web to learn about campus and local resources, to visit national and international sites. They communicate with fellow students and faculty electronically, asking and answering questions. They see their education being enhanced or redefined and know that they can learn, if they choose, every hour of the day and every day of the week. To be successful in the 21^st century they need to enhance their skills to use technology wisely. The job of the university, then, is to attend to this developing sophistication on the part of students and devise ways and means to call on it to make undergraduate education rich and inviting.²³

Graduate Education

To deal with declining enrollments the Graduate School must seek to identify, recruit, and educate the very best students in order to maintain the UW-Madison's preeminence as a research institution. It has taken a giant step in this direction by creating the Wisconsin Distinguished Scholarship Program to fund 400 graduate fellowships, ensuring both added incentive and opportunity for graduate study.

As new programs are created to meet the needs of the times, the university must continue to advance knowledge by way of basic research. Graduate students are the scholars and researchers of the future. They need to be prepared for a wide range of career options as research becomes more interdisciplinary, as it inevitably will. For, for example, "sorting out life's complex mysteries," we are told, "will require that the tentacles of biology reach out to, penetrate, and draw upon physical sciences such as chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer sciences, geology, and meteorology; social sciences such as psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology; and humanist disciplines such as philosophy and ethics."²⁴ And "interdisciplinary fields such as biomedical engineering, nanotechnology and atomic-level engineering will play a dramatic role in the future of medicine, genetic research, drug development and electronics."²⁵ That there is a fundamental altruism in basic research of this kind cannot be gainsaid. The university must cherish and foster it, therefore, even as it promotes more entrepreneurial kinds of programs in Master's degrees and Capstone certificates.

Whereas Ph. D. degrees have traditionally been specific to a discipline, the university has already begun to explore multidisciplinary research and educational programs at the Master's as well as at the doctoral level. Such degrees, with internships and on-site mentoring, which both fit a need and satisfy standards, should evolve into established Master's programs. There is, for instance, a need for universities to take the lead in developing programs to train a cadre of professionals with proficiency in science whose jobs encompass the kind of problem-solving that demands a knowledge of science and technology; as well as people conversant with science and technology who are destined to work in allied fields like patenting, technology management, policy, or education. Master's programs, satisfying these and other such demands, could be used to recruit a diverse group of students, including many with valuable job-experience, and prepare them for a variety of careers.

This does not mean, however, that there should be a general expansion of Master's degree programs. Rather there should be targeted programs specifically designed to support the development of a technically trained workforce in the state and nation.²⁶ And what is done at the Master's level can be done with equal selectivity for Capstone degrees too. These, by definition, do not require the breadth and intensity of a Master's program, but allow students to learn some basic things that enhance the degrees they have already in hand and make them additionally attractive to business and industry on the basis of their newly acquired knowledge and skills.

New degrees, certificates, and classes which target a definite audience of students will profit from an imaginative use of technology. "Technology helps us cut through obstacles to exchanging ideas, such as inertia, tradition and travel problems."²⁷ One such course on International Business links UW-Madison with universities in Milan, Italy; Santiago, Chile; and Hong Kong, China, through a web site that includes a chat room that allows students to share different perspectives that together create a clearer picture of international business. Another innovative program awards the degree of Master in Engineering in Professional Practice totally through distance education. It is designed to help engineers succeed in today's work environment and focuses on developing competency in project management, international engineering strategies, statistics, problem-solving, communication, and economic analysis.

Whether in helping teach a course or in getting a degree, technology has taken a significant place in graduate education. Self-paced learning, interactive video, and other new technologies are developing to help us redefine educational practices and supplement learning in the classroom and laboratory. One challenge is to make sure that graduate programs make available to faculty, staff, and students not only the hardware and software of the information revolution but also the training appropriate to use them successfully.

Continuing and Outreach Education

At the other end of the age spectrum are Children & Youth Programs. These provide opportunities for pre-kindergarten through high school students. At present more than 11,000 young people participate in them each year. They offer a wide variety of academic, arts, sports, and learning-orientation opportunities and are offered by departments, schools, colleges, and other units on the campus. Given the need for a highly educated population in the 21^st century, the UW-Madison needs to promote and expand these programs even as it seeks to create new ones to serve those who will shape our future.

The university will also need to continue to provide a variety of continuing and outreach education programs for people of all ages, extending the boundaries of the campus to those of the state and beyond in the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea. The Summer Sessions Program, which now offers more than 1,600 university credit classes and special programs, is one venue where audiences are eager and growth is possible even as, throughout the academic year, departments, schools, and colleges carry on revising and devising a variety of credit and non-credit courses and programs.²⁹

3. Nurture Human Resources

This sense of citizenship was implicit in the "Comprehensive Action Plan for Maximizing our Human Resources: Faculty and Staff" (1 May 1997) that the administration developed subsequent to the publication of A Vision for the Future (April 1995). This document called for the UW-Madison

• to improve Climate and Institutional Culture for all employees;

• to promote Professional Development and career advancement opportunities for all employees;

• to increase Diversity in faculty, academic staff, and classified staff;

• to use Planning and Improvement approaches to help employees to advance the mission of the university.³⁰

Citizenship

The concept of citizenship emerged as critical in the Self-Study, which indicates that the university faces the challenge of preparing students and employees to be both academically productive and socially engaged. As the world grows more complex and demanding, the university must enable its people and those who call on them for services to face new demands with competence, assurance, and resolve. The Self-Study calls for a "professional culture" that values and enhances this work.

The UW-Madison can point to notable achievements in this area in the last decade. A variety of programs has promoted professional development and career advancement. Academic and Administrative Leadership programs have included workshops on administrative issues for chairs of departments and directors of centers. The Administrative Development Seminar was begun to facilitate the development of faculty and academic staff. Likewise, a Leadership Institute was set up to advance their skills as well as those of the classified staff in new areas. Workshops on grants-writing, tenure issues, teaching and learning strategies for new faculty were inaugurated. There are also workshops to assess as well as promote departmental effectiveness for administrators and support staff. For the past ten years, an annual conference for campus office professionals has been held, growing in size and scope each year. There are on-going diversity awareness seminars. Managers and supervisors have training programs to prepare them for their work. Mentoring programs for women on the faculty and academic staff are held regularly. And 1999 saw the beginning of an orientation program for new employees. These and other such programs give us reason to think that the university has embraced the concept of citizenship wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, there is more to be done.

Equity

The NCA's consultant-evaluators noted in their report to Chancellor Ward that the Classified Civil Service System (managed by the state's Department of Employee Relations) was burdened by excessive bureaucracy and, consequently, inhibited its employees from either getting jobs they were qualified for or performing to their fullest in the jobs they had. Urging "surgical removal" of Classified Civil Service from the state and, at the same time, realizing the chances against that happening, the NCA team suggested the university develop mechanisms to foster and reward creativity and excellence in this group.³¹ One way of doing that would be to promote the professional and career development of classified staff through new or existing Continuing and Outreach Education programs or through Leadership Institutes that would enrich their lives and improve their qualifications for better jobs within the system as well as for jobs outside it directly under university management. Meanwhile, the university might fund or seek funding for, say, a three-year study by appropriate faculty in the School of Business to suggest a way of redesigning the Civil Service System for the 21^st century; the current System, after all, was put in place prior to 1950 and has been only tinkered with since then. At a minimum deans of schools and colleges, directors of units, and chairs of departments should foster respect for the classified employees among their faculty and academic staff by indicating how much they contribute to the welfare of their particular areas and to the university generally.

The Instructional Academic Staff of the UW-Madison number 1,247 FTE, and Other Limited and Academic Staff number 3,811 as of Fall 1998.³² Wisconsin Statutes (36.09) provides members of the academic staff participation in governance, giving them participatory rights in the formulation and review of policies and procedures relating to themselves. But the NCA consultant-evaluators report that while the academic staff "praise the executive leadership of the campus for seeking and giving attention to their advice and views, they do not feel they have been fully engaged in strategic planning. Many feel they could and should be more involved in planning and development activities at their own departmental and office levels."³³ Insofar as members of the academic staff are deeply committed to the continuing vitality of the university, the administration needs to consider how to broaden shared governance by finding appropriate ways of integrating them into departments and units. A proposal to allow academic staff to participate in ballots advisory to departmental executive committees may be a worthwhile beginning. Citizens with a voice and a vote are citizens who contribute more completely to the common good.

Faculty have been traditionally charged with the mission of teaching, research, and service. Each of these became more complex in the decade of the '90s. The dramatic reduction of faculty brought about by insufficient state funding of the university and a drop in federal funding saw fewer people doing more work altogether. Upper-level courses had to be eliminated from some curricula so that larger lower-level courses could be adequately staffed. Class-size increased with fewer people to teach, and lecturing had frequently to replace discussion as a mode of instruction. Research grants, always competitive within and without the university, became more difficult to attain as moneys for research diminished in the federal government and private agencies. This was evident in the physical and social sciences and dramatic in the arts and humanities. The burgeoning of interdisciplinary programs complicated both teaching and research and, for some faculty members, confused the issue of merit increases. Were faculty within established disciplines to be treated differently from faculty in new interdisciplinary areas? Ferment, in a word, produced clarity only gradually, not immediately, in an area traditionally problematic at the UW-Madison where the pay-scale for associate and full professors has been consistently below the average of peer institutions nationally.³⁴

The administration has tried to address these problems by a variety of initiatives:

• A strategic plan of Cluster Hires was put in place to define clearly new areas of interdisciplinary study and to hire faculty specifically to staff and implement these new programs.

• The Regents proposed a 5.2% merit increase for faculty and staff for each year of the 1999-2001 biennium with additional incentives for extraordinary performance.

• The administration has put in place a Faculty Gender Pay Equity Plan, and Provost John Wiley has stipulated that ongoing equity in faculty pay is a key responsibility of each school and college.³⁵

• The Women in Science and Engineering Residential Program was instituted to reduce the disproportionate loss of women in these fields and has already registered marked success.

• The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching was put in place in February 2000. It makes awards to departments, not individuals. Those awards can be either one-time ($50,000) or continuous ($25,000) to improve teaching in a variety of ways.

• Addressing service, the University Committee has begun to study the committee structure of the campus to reduce redundancy and to promote better articulation among committees so they can keep each other informed about decisions and avoid duplicating tasks.

Diversity

Diversity of viewpoints, diversity of backgrounds, including gender and ethnic differences, as well as variety within academic specialties, are all vital components of the intellectual life of this great university. This not only contributes to the academic vitality of the campus, but also makes us more competitive among our peer institutions. While parts of the campus have made significant gains, our progress in reaching greater gender and ethnic diversity overall has been too modest. If we are to be successful in the future, we must tap the rich potential of all our citizens by incorporating them into our faculty, staff, and student body.³⁸

This statement anticipated, eloquently, that of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in its document "American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning," which said:

Diversity broadly includes not only race and gender but the connections between these and other sources of identity such as religion, ethnicity, age, sexual [orientation], class and ability. It encourages forms of learning that deepen and enrich the ways we connect across our difference.³⁹

The ramifications of heeding any call to diversity are obviously many because the benefits of education extend far beyond the individual, providing better prospects for life and better chances for educational achievement in generations to come. A diverse student body with faculty and staff to train it will yield a more educated population generally and will promote, specifically, an integrated society in which higher incomes for women and minorities are a reasonable expectation. As we enter the 21^st century our society can either divide along lines of race, gender, ethnicity, and other kinds of difference or it can embrace diversity as an undisputed value. To achieve diversity, however, requires a sustained and wide-ranging effort. To that end the Madison campus has embraced the UW-System's Plan 2000: Educational Quality through Racial and Ethnic Diversity.⁴⁰

This plan focuses on hiring, precollege recruitment, retention and graduation. The plan targets African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American (with emphasis on Southeast Asian), and American Indian faculty, staff, and economically disadvantaged students.⁴¹

The UW-Madison Plan 2008 affirms the goals of the System plan. Those goals are these:

1. To increase the number of Wisconsin high school graduates of color who apply, are accepted, and enroll at UW System institutions.

2. To encourage partnerships that build the educational pipeline by reaching children and their parents at an earlier age.

3. To close the gaps in educational achievement by bringing retention and graduation rates for students of color in line with those of the student body as a whole.

4. To increase the amount of financial aid available to needy students and reduce their reliance on loans.

5. To increase the number of faculty, academic staff, classified staff and administrators of color, so that they are represented in the UW System workforce in proportion to their current availability in relevant job pools. In addition, work to increase their future availability as potential employees.

6. To foster institutional environments and course development that enhance learning and a respect for racial and ethnic diversity.

7. To improve accountability to the UW System and its institutions.

4. Amplify the Wisconsin Idea

From criminal justice to health care delivery, from arts development to technology transfer, from global competition to welfare reform, we are partners in building for the 21^st century. Knowledge is being shaped and shared globally through innovative partnerships with public and private institutions. Partnerships with K-12 schools include more than 100 initiatives in the Madison area alone, as well as national leadership provided by our faculty in the development of math and science education in the primary and secondary classrooms.⁴⁵

To amplify the Wisconsin Idea is not only to broadcast and widen it, but also to extend and deepen it altogether, as these new and continuing initiatives show can be done.

An educated population has the longest-lasting and most far-reaching influence in any community. The most important consequence of the Wisconsin Idea is that the UW-Madison has helped to populate the state with a highly educated citizenry. Katharine C. Lyall, President of the University of Wisconsin System, has demonstrated that "each dollar invested in public higher education repays the State of Wisconsin and its people many times over."⁴⁶ Or, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "Increased spending on education and research . . . give[s] the biggest bang for the buck. Nothing else comes close."⁴⁷ In the process of carrying on its mission during 1995-96, for instance, the UW-Madison generated "approximately $3.9 billion in total impact upon the state" during this two-year period.⁴⁸ Clearly, the recent observation that "the only thing more expensive than going to college is not going to college" is here proved precisely in dollars and cents. Moreover, the late Lawrence Weinstein, former President of the Board of Regents, saw an even richer set of proofs:

The UW System is the state's most important asset. What would the cultural life of our citizens be without the presence of UW System institutions in our communities? Where would small business go for expertise? Where would farmers go for the latest in technology? Where would the critically ill turn for the most advanced medical care?⁴⁹

If in terms of finance, health, and culture, the university is the state's most important asset, it follows, then, that the first and most important way to amplify the Wisconsin Idea is make the education it provides available to more of the state's citizens. To that end university education needs to be a state-budget priority throughout the first decade of this century because it will pay dividends beyond what anyone can easily imagine.⁵⁰ To invest in the university, then, is to invest in the most vital part of the state's economy.

If the Wisconsin Idea is to thrive in the 21^st century, however, we must recognize that some things will influence it dramatically: the need for life-long learning, the increasing importance of technology, the need for multidisciplinary solutions to complex problems, and the integration of the state's economy into a global economy.⁵¹

Life-long learning. Both those who have a university education and those who have not contribute to the state's economy. The former are more likely to see the benefits of life-long education than the latter, and the challenge to the university is to coordinate its efforts with public and private partners to see to it that both segments of the population profit from programs that will be absolutely essential to success as the landscape of business and industry becomes ever more challenging to negotiate. The recent legislative initiative, supported by the University of Wisconsin System, to allow residents over 60 years of age to audit courses at no charge as space allows both reinstates a former policy and makes an appropriate response to the need for life-long learning.

Technology. The Internet is the most dramatic form of technological change in the Information Age. It is quickly becoming an indispensable mode for learning both on and off campus. Wisconsinites will depend on the technical savvy of the university to make such startling changes in communication an everyday factor in their lives because "it is apparent that with the technological tools already available, distance is diminishing daily as a barrier to interaction among teachers and students and, most importantly, among partners in any given enterprise."⁵² The UW-Madison has already begun to respond to this need with its participation in the Partnership for Advanced Computer Infrastructure, which focuses on developing ways to extend state of the art computing to K-12 schools, undergraduate institutions, under-represented groups, and new communities of users in the social sciences and humanities.

Multidisciplinary solutions. As we noted in discussing Graduate Education, learning is becoming ever more interdisciplinary because problems are becoming ever more complex. "Most societal issues are now so complex that they extend well beyond any one academic specialty or department--whether economics, social work, or medicine."⁵³ Neither one discipline nor one agency is likely to solve them. Higher education, then, must seek to meet the problems with interdisciplinary flexibility and partnerships of various kinds; otherwise, conventional patterns of organization will become stumbling blocks on the road to the Wisconsin Idea's future success.

Global economy. The boundaries of the university are no longer the boundaries of the state because the boundaries of the state itself have become national and international when it comes to culture, business, and industry. Consequently, the university must think more globally to serve the state as effectively in the future as it has done in the past.

To amplify the Wisconsin Idea to address global problems that require multidisciplinary solutions the university has formed partnerships of various kinds. The Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Policy⁵⁴ organizes orientation seminars for legislators, pairs faculty expertise with legislative need, and holds policy forums to address critical issues that face the state today.⁵⁵ Thus from criminal justice to health care delivery, from arts development to technology transfer, from world-wide competition to welfare reform, the university is an active partner in building for the future. It will shape and share knowledge globally, working innovatively with public and private institutions. UW-Madison has made a good beginning by developing Distance Learning Courses to reach targeted audiences around the world. Pharmacy, for instance, provides courses statewide, nationwide, and in Thailand. Nursing collaborates with three other schools across the state so that the same degree can be awarded on four campuses. The Medical School uses telemedicine in the diagnosis and treatment for incarcerated individuals and in clinics across the state. The Wisconsin Food Systems Partnership supports research efforts related to community issues dealing with the food systems chain. And the Chancellor's Technology Transfer Council suggests ways that the university can help researchers take their discoveries into commercial venues. All of these are ways that the UW-Madison has begun to amplify the Wisconsin Idea to include the state, the nation, and the world at large.

The fate of the Wisconsin Idea in the changed climate of the 21^st century will principally depend on visionary leadership both in the university and in the state government. The university has already begun subtly to refine its threefold mission of teaching, research, and service in the four interrelated functions of creating, integrating, sharing, and applying knowledge. It is by sharing the knowledge that has been created and integrating it into effective applications that "the daily problems associated with family life, health, environment, energy, aging, subcultures, science, computer literacy, cultural activities and urban/rural relations"⁵⁶ can be addressed. The state government will have to provide adequate funding to attack these problems and help the university to create appropriate partnerships with public and private entities to begin to solve them. Together, in this manner, the state and university can amplify the Wisconsin Idea and make it work in the 21^st century.

5. Accelerate Globalization

To prepare its students to join the global community the university has strengthened all its programs dealing with global cultures. It has created the International Institute to integrate research and teaching in area and global studies. The World Affairs and Global Economy (WAGE) center now collaborates with the Center for International Business Education and Research to respond to private and public business needs as they are affected by global economics. The Office of International Studies and Programs increased the number of its overseas partners, and the number of students studying abroad has grown dramatically. New international studies majors for undergraduate and graduate students have been initiated. And an electronic Global Gateway has come online to improve advising for international studies. The International Assembly, the International Institute, area and global studies centers, and other specialized units cut across college and disciplinary boundaries to serve constituencies on campus and beyond Madison. In short, the university is making every effort to quicken globalization.

The last decade has been a period of heated debate and creative ferment among international scholars. There have been struggles between those who felt that their first priority was to preserve existing programs and those who emphasized the need for innovation. During this process the UW-Madison has emerged as a leader in the national effort to develop a new vision of international education that accepts the need to conserve core assets while developing new modes of knowledge and practice. To do that we must refocus on the new needs of our students, re-imagine international education, restructure the alliances on which the interdisciplinary complex is built.

The biggest challenge, therefore, is simultaneously to preserve knowledge and develop new ideas. The new context for international education challenges the university to find a balance between preserving the learning of the past and preparing students and others for the future of a changing world. To accelerate globalization, then, we must

• ensure that our students understand other cultures and societies;

• refine our understandings of how a global society operates at present;

• seek new insights about the great civilizations of the past;

• develop new models for a global economy;

• rethink how interdependent nations can agree on governance;

• listen to new voices in art and literature from around the world;

• maintain excellence in research and teaching on global matters.

Very little of what seems necessary for the future can be done without a strong supporting system of technology. Intensive efforts, therefore, must be made to implement computer-based outreach programs and other distance-oriented learning technologies. To that end the UW-Madison must train a technically prepared workforce for the state and nation. There must be improved technological infrastructure, including high-speed communication technologies and distance learning facilities. In addition, learning through service must be encouraged and facilitated by technology. And, whenever possible, students should be involved in multimedia productions and the development of software for global communications.

Electronic distance education will provide opportunities to share scarce resources and meet unique educational needs through courses conducted with partners in the United States and abroad. Electronic communications will make it possible for faculty and staff to participate in communities of researchers and teachers based on all continents. These same technologies will allow students to access previously unavailable research materials, media, and other resources from almost any country. Technology will in this way become an instrument of a no less cohesive but of a strikingly more interactive and far-reaching university.

If technology is to contribute to building what is at once a more intensely communal and globally interactive university, the UW-Madison will have to create more informed users to meet the needs of more diverse partners here and abroad. Because of its global role the university is ideally positioned to help Wisconsin align itself with the world community. To realize that possibility the campus must continue to develop and deepen its alliances in-state to foster alliances out of state. Particular attention should be given to Wisconsin's business community, the state government, and educational institutions from kindergarten to college. And given the variety of its programs that have, generation after generation, attracted students from around the world, the university needs to foster interaction with all its international alumni who form its far-flung virtual campus.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the university presents a strong record of coordinated and stable leadership. Strategic planning, centrally and locally, takes into account present and future academic and professional needs and projects ways to meet those needs in light of available financial, human, and physical resources. This responsible stewardship of the university's primary mission has enabled the UW-Madison to maintain its educational effectiveness and strengthen its current range of programs in face of daunting financial challenges.

Strategic planning has encouraged campus units to develop missions that implement the university's overall goals. And many academic departments have improved administrative processes and used data collected and analyzed by the Office of Budget, Planning and Analysis and applied by the Office of Quality Improvement to understand the needs of the public who use the university.

Schools and colleges actively plan for the future and review each of their academic programs on a regular schedule. Deans themselves are reviewed every five years for their leadership, efficacy, and quality of administration. External advisory councils provide deans and their councils with insights from the private and public sector on quality of programs, on changes in curriculum, on the means for improving education, and on other subjects of mutual interest.

The creation of such advisory councils is one more indicator that reflects the campus' commitment to assessment. They discuss goals and quality of programs and complement the role of the University Academic Planning Council and similar local councils within each school and college and thereby promote campus-wide assessment. Long an implicit component of strategic planning, assessment is now a routine institutional practice.

In a word, the UW-Madison, as it enters the new millennium, has in place the leadership, the commitment to quality, the tools of program review and educational assessment that are needed to make Targeting Tomorrow the basis of a strategic plan that will hit the mark.

Participants

New Directions: the Reaccreditation Project

Subcommittee on Arts and Humanities

Subcommittee on Biological Sciences

Subcommittee on Physical Sciences

Subcommittee on Social and Behavioral Sciences (Social Studies)

Subcommittee on Human Resources and Diversity Issues

Subcommittee on Student Issues

Administrative and Other Support

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