Dispatches

The Other Side of the Budget

With all the cumulus darkening UW-Madison's state budget outlook, there may be one silver lining in the fact that Wisconsin tax revenues provide only one of every four dollars that come to the university. Much of the UW's reputation has been staked on its ability to garner outside funding, mostly in the form of gifts and grants from government agencies, private organizations, and donors.

The good news is that those revenue streams still appear strong and have not yet been challenged by tough budget times in the state.

Last year, the university received more than $472 million from the federal government, including some $421 million in research awards, an increase of nearly 48 percent from one decade ago. As a comparison, state general purpose revenue increased 25 percent over that same time.

Meanwhile, income from private gifts and endowment funds has more than doubled in the past ten years, even despite a weak national economy that has flattened philanthropy in recent years. Gifts to the UW Foundation, which had fallen off by 11 percent from 2001 to 2002, are running 8 percent ahead of last year and appear to reflect the recovery taking place in the U.S. stock market.

“We're in pretty good shape,” says Sandy Wilcox, president of the foundation. “The people we're talking with are very high on the university right now.” He says that Wisconsin's budget woes have had “little effect” on donors' willingness to support the university.

Federal revenues may be more likely affected down the road by a prolonged loss of state funding. The university's grant-getting ability is a function of the strength of its faculty, and state cuts could influence the federal picture if the university cannot afford to replace departing faculty. At the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, where the average professor brings in one-quarter of a million dollars annually in grants, budget cuts are expected to result in a net loss of fifteen faculty positions this year. That could mean giving up some $3.5 million in grant money, which could limit research and put more pressure on state revenues to pay for lab space and infrastructure.

With a looming federal budget deficit, neither is there assurance that agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services or the National Science Foundation — which together account for 70 percent of the UW's federal research awards — will be able to maintain such robust grant programs.

“We've been very fortunate in the past,” says Darrell Bazzell, vice chancellor for administration. “But as federal priorities shift and the economy continues to be stressed, we may inevitably see that funding level off.”

Given such uncertainty, Bazzell says it would be dangerous to expect those funding sources to offset cuts in other areas — which is why he finds little comfort in the state's less-prominent role. Honestly, my concern goes more toward the trend than the impact of these budget cuts,” he says. “The trend line is most alarming to me.”

— Michael Penn

Closing Doors

Few research centers on campus have as luminous a history as the Industrial Relations Research Institute. But these are days when a bright past offers no guarantee of a bright future.

During the summer, faculty affiliated with the institute, known as IRRI, got word that it would close as of this fall. The interdisciplinary unit, founded in 1947 to bring scholarship and leadership to the then-growing conflict between labor and management, is among the most visible casualties of the state budget cuts — a list that includes the research-oriented Land Tenure Center and the administrative Office of University-Industry Relations, among other units.

Enrollment in the institute's doctoral and master's programs in industrial relations has been halted, although current students will still be able to finish their degrees. Because the center shared faculty from several departments, no professors will be lost in the cut, which will save the university about $270,000 a year in administrative costs.

Darrell Bazzell '84, vice chancellor for administration, says the decisions to cut programs such as IRRI came down to effectiveness. “You have to be meeting the needs of the campus, both now and in the future,” he says. “We have to be strategic about identifying the things we need to protect, and unfortunately, in these times, if a program is not adding value, we have to take a serious look at it.”

IRRI graduated dozens of students who became leaders in labor relations in Wisconsin and elsewhere, but there was a sense that the good old days had passed. The applied economics at the heart of the institute's curriculum fell out of favor, and professors gravitated toward other subjects. In recent years, most of the courses listed under the program were taught by lecturers.

“There were strong institutional grounds for doing this,” says Charles Halaby, associate dean for the social sciences in the College of Letters and Science, who was interim director of the institute, which failed in three tries to hire a permanent leader. In better times, the institute may have been able to adapt or find a new home, he says. “But now, you have to make choices.”

— Michael Penn

Delayed Arrivals

It's shaping up to be a difficult fall for UW-Madison's international community. The university has long prided itself on having one of the largest contingents of international students and scholars, a group that numbers around 4,300 students, professors, and researchers from 105 countries. But new laws and procedures designed to combat terrorism, which have already aroused concern among international students, have now made it harder for some students to travel back to Madison in time to continue their studies.

In August, the U.S. State Department began requiring in-person interviews with substantial numbers of students and scholars before they could obtain visas to travel to the United States. UW-Madison administrators expected that some international students and scholars would not be able to schedule the interviews in time to arrive, and that others would be flagged for lengthy review.

Although it remains unclear how many have been affected, by late August, more than thirty students had reported difficulties or delays leaving their home countries.

UW officials hope to minimize the logistical difficulties that those students may find in arranging class schedules once they arrive. But they also fear that the delays may have a more lasting effect. If the snafus persist beyond this semester, administrators say there is a possibility that international students and scholars may opt to study closer to home, and that the university will have more trouble recruiting the brightest minds from around the world.

Meanwhile, the university continues to grapple with criticism and suspicion about the Department of Homeland Security's Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which tracks the dates on which international students enter and leave the United States, their addresses here, and what they are doing while in the country. Universities must keep this information current and accurate or else subject students to possible deportation. Many international students have been critical of how the university has dealt with the new initiatives, such as its initial decision, since revoked, to institute a $50 fee on international students to pay for the SEVIS tracking.

“The climate for international students had improved after 9/11,” says Chavameth “Jack” Vinijtrongjit, a junior from Bangkok, Thailand, “but it really flipped upside down in a negative way with the university's handling of the SEVIS issue.”

“It's an extremely difficult situation,” says Judy Brodd, director of International Student Services. “We didn't create these new rules, but we can't ignore them either — not if we want to continue welcoming international students and scholars to campus.”

— John Lucas

Q and A
Amadeu Sum

Somewhere between the faculty and research-minded graduate students falls the postdoctoral scholar, an intermediary career stage that has grown common in scientific fields. UW-Madison employs some six hundred postdocs, and, according to The Scientist, it's one of the twenty best places in the world to hold that title. We asked Amadeu Sum, a postdoc in chemical and biological engineering, just what the job entails.

Q: What do postdocs do?
A: It's basically 100 percent research. We don't take classes, and most of us don't teach. We're considered employees, just like staff. But in a way, postdocs are very fundamental to the research process. As a postdoc, you're at a stage between graduate students and professors, and you spend a lot of time as a middle ground for students to convey their ideas to the professor. Many professors rely on postdocs to tutor and counsel students.

Q: What's the advantage to being a postdoc?
A: For me, to gain experience by working with someone who is really well-known in my research area is extremely valuable. I get a broader perspective on what it is to work in an academic environment, and that helps prepare me for what I want to do. Also, it's a big plus to have this experience on your CV when you apply for jobs, especially in science and engineering. Most schools try to hire people who have experience beyond their doctorate.

Overheard

“I'm just a sausage, guys. It's not a big deal. I'm fine.”

— UW-Madison student Mandy Block x'06, on the sudden media frenzy that surrounded her after an incident at a June 9 Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. Block, an intern with the club, was struck by a baseball player as she ran around the field between innings, dressed in a giant Italian sausage costume.

The Garden Grows

To a botanist, not much could be better than a stroll through a luscious, newly renovated botanical garden.

Mohammad Fayyaz's dream garden becomes a reality this fall.

Already a favorite of casual shrub observers and seasoned plant researchers alike, UW-Madison's Botany Garden is slated to become even more pleasing. A $400,000 grant is fueling a major renovation that will nearly double the size of the garden, located along University Avenue behind Birge Hall. Opening this fall, the new 1.2-acre layout will feature five hundred plant species, many of them purchased or donated from regions around the world.

For botany students, the new space presents stalks and stalks of educational potential. Its arrangement will reflect the latest thinking among taxonomists about how plants should be classified, allowing students to make visual connections between related plant families and varieties.

Mohammad Fayyaz MS'73, PhD'77, director of the botany department's garden and greenhouses, says the garden will provide a real-life layout of the diagrams and charts that students learn in classes.

“By visualizing the garden, (students) can put similar types together mentally ... it's a tool, a device to help understand and remember families,” Fayyaz says. He expects that students of art, landscape design, horticulture, and plant geography also will use the new space.

But Fayyaz is just as excited about the transcendent possibilities of the renovated garden, which will feature such creature comforts as a small waterfall, a footbridge over a pond, and plenty of benches on which to ponder the view. “It's not only a place for education in the middle of campus, it is an oasis of beauty and tranquility,” he says.

For those seeking more depth, a Web site will map out the garden's current and future inventory, as well as specific information about each species, such as common name, Latin name, family, and native place.

— Josh Orton x'04

Flashback — After the Fall

It must have seemed like a curse. On March 16, 1951, Memorial Library came crashing down on a surprised — and embarrassed — university community. No one was injured when the building's steel frame collapsed after being struck by a boom, but the setback was just the most visible trial in the star-crossed birth of the UW's main library. For more than two decades, through Depression and war, the university had begged for money for the building, while its collection shared an increasingly cramped space with the State Historical Society. The legislature approved funding in 1949, but construction didn't begin until late 1950, and a steel shortage halted progress a few months later. Then came the collapse. It was July 1953 by the time the UW finally began moving more than 600,000 books into their new home. The library opened for business that September, fifty (relatively curse-free) years ago this month.

— John Allen

Dancing Machine

Student Bill Connor finds that Dance Dance Revolution is a moving experience.

Dance Dance Revolution, which was installed at Union South a year ago and made its debut at Memorial Union this summer, pits competitors in a digitized dance-off that resembles something like an Arthur Murray instruction tape on fast-forward. Players stand on a lighted footpad and follow on-screen cues that tell them where to move their feet. Advanced levels get them moving at a breakneck — or is it break-ankle? — pace.

“It's exhilarating,” says Bill Connor, a senior majoring in East Asian studies, who plays the game about an hour a day, five times a week. “After a really intense song, you're totally drained.”

All this runs counter to the stereotype of sedentary video culture. But students love the game. Lines form around the machine most weekend nights, and there's even a club for devotees.

The machine is already the most popular video game in the arcade, say Union officials, usually bringing in more than two thousand dollars in quarters each week. “People play it over and over,” says an employee of the Rathskeller who has a good view of the action.

But the more important change may not be what's left inside the game, but what happens to students who play it. Connor, for example, says he has lost fifty pounds in the eleven months he's played. “I tried running, but that was really boring,” he says. “This is perfect for me, because I love video games.”

— Michael Penn

Affirmative on Action

As news of two U.S. Supreme Court rulings that essentially upheld affirmative action in admissions swept through Bascom Hall in June, relief gave way to renewed commitment.

Administrators were delighted by the tenor of the opinions, which affirmed the spirit, if not all the mechanics, of two University of Michigan admissions policies. In separate judgments, the court held that a policy used by Michigan's law school, which gave some preference to minority applicants, was permissible under the Constitution, while the points-based system used to evaluate undergraduate applicants gave too much weight to race as a selection factor.

UW-Madison's admissions practices are substantially similar to those used by the Michigan Law School, and thus the rulings served to validate the university's efforts, says Provost Peter Spear. But he cautions that the court's decision doesn't necessarily move the university any closer to its goals of a diverse academic community.

“It gives us the confidence that the way we've been doing things is appropriate and legal,” Spear says. “But it doesn't allow us to sit on our laurels. We still have a long, long way to go with enhancing the diversity of our student body, and our faculty and staff. Admissions policies are only a part of that.”

He says the university also must continue to improve support programs and campus climate to achieve diversity gains.

— Michael Penn

By Land and Sea

UW-Madison engineering students are going places — and they're taking the most unusual rides to get there.

A twenty-two-foot canoe, carved by a team of thirty UW students from concrete, won top honors at the national concrete canoe championship, which combines a regatta with academic evaluations. UW's entry conquered bad weather and a field of rivals to win its first title.

Just days later, another group of students steered to first place in the annual Future Truck competition, in which students retool standard SUVs to improve gas mileage and reduce emissions. It's the second title for the UW vehicle, which beats the fuel economy of Detroit models by 35 percent.

— Staff

Catching Up

The admissions office announced a change that eventually will require prospective freshmen to submit scores from standardized writing tests. Both the SAT and ACT will soon include sections that evaluate students' writing skills, and, beginning with the Class of 2006, no one will be admitted without having submitted scores from one of those tests.

Campus and city police said that reports of Friday-night disorderly conduct were down 35 percent last year, which administrators attribute to voluntary efforts by campus-area bars to limit weekend alcohol specials. In the first six months after twenty-five bars agreed to forgo drink specials after 8:00 on weekend nights, violations of liquor laws dropped 16 percent on Friday nights. Violations and conduct problems were down on Saturday nights, as well, but by only 2 and 8 percent, respectively.

The College of Engineering's first new building in thirty years is a hit. The Wisconsin chapter of the American Institute of Architects conveyed one of its three 2003 honor awards on the new Engineering Centers building, which the organization praised for “great street presence” and “muscular ... machinelike approach in design.” The building, constructed in 2000, houses student engineering groups, project areas, and the biomedical engineering department.

Disptaches

• For more on men in American nursing and to keep involved with the UW-Madison School of Nursing, visit the Nurses' Alumni Organization Web site.
• Although it wasn't an Italian sausage, On Wisconsin Magazine's own Paula Wagner Apfelbach '83 knows what it's like to wear a giant costume — she put on a gorilla suit to experience what it's like to go to mascot camp.
  

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