One year ago, in our annual report, I noted that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is connected by many voices, from students to staff, from researchers to teachers, from parents to alumni, to our partners in business and the community. During the past year, we have seen how powerful those voices can be when they are united.

We are witnessing, in a remarkably short time, great movement in the strategic direction of the university.

After a thorough process of self-study, the university last year unveiled its new strategic plan, a document that will guide our efforts and inform our decisions for the coming years. The plan is a community creation — one that involved the ideas and opinions of thousands of people connected to the university — and, as such, represents a shared articulation of what UW-Madison is and should be. At its core are five priorities that we believe lie at the heart of the university's past, present, and future success. These are: promote research, advance learning, accelerate internationalization, amplify the Wisconsin Idea, and nurture human resources.

The process of writing that plan has helped us understand that diligent attention to these values has built UW-Madison into one of the greatest public universities in the country, and that these same themes offer a path to continued excellence. I regard the strategic plan as integral to our ability to sustain and enhance the reputation of excellence at this university, especially during challenging times.

Effective planning, however, does not seek to dictate action, but rather to guide it. Thinking strategically involves careful analysis of our institution and the environmental conditions that influence our operation. The responsibility to use that knowledge remains with all of us who carry out the missions of the university. Thus, ultimately, the success of any strategic plan is not in what it says, but in how it affects the decisions made and actions taken once it is set in motion.

In the fall of 2002, I received reports from every school and college, which detail the headway they have made toward meeting the goals of the strategic plan. Each account cites multiple examples of programs that already have begun, ideas that are quickly being implemented, and projects that are showing immediate positive results.

These reports describe a campus in the midst of transformation, building on an established and proud tradition. I am pleased to share some of our recent advances with you.

We have dedicated this report to progress, and I believe you will see on the pages that follow many compelling examples of positive change in the way UW-Madison realizes its missions. Nearly all of these examples stem not from top-down directives, but from professors, students, staff members, and others who have been inspired to create new ways of achieving our goals.

That such progress has been realized so quickly validates my feeling that our planning process is a model, not just for institutions of higher education, but for any organization that must allocate limited resources to achieve great ends. Effective strategic planning is crucial to the ability of UW-Madison to stay at the top of our highly competitive field. It is not solely good business sense, but an invaluable tool for building consensus and setting priorities. Organizations that plan are able to survey, analyze, and plot their futures, rather than proceeding haphazardly toward them.

For a university to so fully embrace planning is somewhat remarkable. It was not long ago that many people, both within and outside of academia, considered strategic planning a bureaucratic hassle, or even antithetical to the open-ended nature of higher education. When leaders at UW-Madison began employing strategic planning nearly two decades ago, they had to win over many critics who questioned its relevance to the problems of academic work.

I know this because I was among the doubters. More than 15 years ago, when I was chair of the Materials Science Program, John Bollinger, then the dean of engineering, directed all of the college's department heads to write strategic plans. We were not convinced. We ignored his request — twice. On the third occasion, Bollinger didn't ask, but instead handed each of us a plan of his own construction. He instructed us that these were now the principles that would govern our units.

As Bollinger no doubt expected, when we received his "plans" for our units, we immediately began critiquing and rewriting them. His approach forced us to engage in a community dialogue about the missions and goals of our departments, which was, of course, what he wanted us to do all along.

Like most universities, UW-Madison conducts an exhaustive self-study once a decade as part of the process of earning reaccreditation. For each of the past two reaccreditation evaluations, in 1988 and 1998, we have used this required process as an opportunity to conduct a campuswide exercise in planning. The plan we announced last year is a direct outgrowth of the discussions surrounding our 1998 reaccreditation report.

In the years since, we have encouraged the planning process to continue, linking the university's overall vision to the individual missions of colleges, departments, and other campus units. The campuswide strategic plan, in fact, is merely the first transaction in an ongoing exchange of ideas and strategy. As was our intention, the university plan has led to the creation of complementary plans in every school and college, which in turn have fostered the development of plans for individual departments. In this way, planning becomes a truly community exercise, one that involves the participation of virtually everyone associated with the university.

None of these plans prescribes certain actions or dictates outcomes. The goal of our planning is to encourage directed creativity, to provide a framework in which the actions of many individuals can be seen to move toward a coordinated set of goals. It is the action that stems from a plan — rather than the action of writing one — that dictates its success. If people embrace it and make it relevant to their own goals, it thrives. If it fails to capture the imagination of the community it seeks to describe, it dies. This report demonstrates, beyond question, that our plan is flourishing.

In essence, UW-Madison represents a vast network of people, encompassing many unique talents, many divergent interests, and many different pressing concerns. I regard this breadth as a tremendous asset, but I am aware that size can be perceived as a threat. Large organizations that are pulled in many directions can be difficult to steer, especially in times that require flexibility and clear decision-making.

It does not require a visionary to know that the future for public universities holds many obstacles. Slowing economies, uncertain funding, and increased demand for our services will challenge our ability to meet expectations. These threats are real, and we have no choice but to confront them. In the past, the university has often faced the challenge of doing more with less, but soon, we may be asked to do the almost miraculous: to maintain and enhance the quality of our enterprise even as support for core services becomes scarce.

Maintaining UW-Madison's excellence given such conditions will require shrewd allocation of resources and creative management. But I believe we have already demonstrated that our strategic plan facilitates such decisive action. In recent years, thinking strategically has allowed us to move quickly to seize new opportunities, such as instructional technology and emerging areas of research. Our ability to foresee changing environmental conditions has allowed us to adapt without sacrificing our core strengths. Not all universities can say this. Our position is coveted, and we will be required to defend it.

I do not want to diminish the severity of this situation, because these times will no doubt try the university's ability to meet its goals. Yet I can assure you that I relish the challenge. I truly believe that this is the best possible time to be chancellor of this university. We have an outstanding leadership team, and our campus is unified by a shared vision. While we cannot always predict what will confront us in the future, I am certain that we will stay on course. We have an excellent map to guide our way.

John Wiley