Letter from Chancellor Biddy Martin
![[photo] Chancellor Martin](images/biddy_head_large.jpg)
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Supporters of UW–Madison,
We are living through extraordinary times. We face the most serious economic downturn since the Second World War. The global nature of the economic crisis and the need for new sources of economic growth have focused attention on the importance of higher education and our responsibility as educators and scholars to serve the public good. At this moment, our challenge is not only to think about economic necessities, but also to consider opportunities for change in a broad sense.
Before the current global economic crisis was evident, our faculty, staff, students, and alumni had met in preparation for our reaccreditation review to discuss the role of public universities in the 21st century. Their work led them to the conclusion that we should rededicate ourselves to the Wisconsin Idea — the focused commitment of the university to serving the public good. That vision is not only appropriate for this historical moment; it is crucial. The question for us is what it might mean intentionally to serve the state, the nation, and the world at this particular juncture. We will spend the next several months and years figuring that out together.
We know that higher education has never been more important than it is today, when global economic shifts have changed the nature of work and the skills required of our workforce. Demographic, political, and cultural changes have redefined our relationships with one another, across a variety of traditional boundaries. The world’s great research universities, of which the University of Wisconsin–Madison is one, have a responsibility to prepare our graduates for economies that demand increased numbers of highly educated people, particularly in the sciences and math; to prepare them for social, political, and cultural changes that require greater knowledge and understanding of the worlds many languages, cultures, and social forms; to ensure that they can communicate using a variety of different media and technologies; and to enable them to generate new ideas and technologies that serve genuinely human ends and protect the planet.
What has not changed is the need for citizens who are broadly and deeply educated, who can think critically and integrate the knowledge they acquire, who can communicate and build relationships with people from different backgrounds, who can sustain their capacity for wonder, and who can use their creativity to define more expansively what it means to be human.
UW–Madison is one of the highest-quality providers of the education and research on which future economic, social, and cultural progress depends. It is also one of the best values among world-class research universities. In order to enhance our contributions to the greater good, we have to preserve the high quality of our research and teaching, remain accessible and affordable, provide the best possible education to our students, and increase the diversity of our community so that we reflect and model the diversity in the world around us. In order to meet the needs of the state and those of our students, we must keep pace with developments in scholarship and science, and continually transform curriculum and pedagogy and extend their reach. With improved communications and stronger partnerships, we can work with elected officials, policy-makers, business leaders, and the broader public to address the serious challenges that confront us all. Finally, we can become even more effective and efficient in our operations and expand collaboration with other universities so that excessive competitiveness does not prevent appropriate forms of differentiation and cooperation.
The Strategic Framework that follows reflects the thought and work of a wide range of people — faculty, staff, students, administrators, and alumni. It shows what it might mean to make good on our commitment to serving the public good.
I look forward to working with every one of you to make UW–Madison the standard-bearer for academic quality and social contribution: the Wisconsin Idea.
Sincerely,
Biddy Martin, Chancellor