[media-credit name=’BRYAN FAUST/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]This is the first part of a series profiling members of the Board of Regents, the governing board for the University of Wisconsin System.

Mark Bradley sat quietly at the Board of Regents meetings in Madison last week, listening intently to university administrators, deans, professors, a state senator and a mayor express their concerns about a plethora of issues facing the state's public higher education system.

As vice president of the Board of Regents, Bradley is immersed in public education. Three of his children are enrolled in public universities and he himself benefited from a public education and a University of Wisconsin law degree.

"My family and also the firm that I work in [have] just always really stressed [if] you live in a community you've got to give back to the community," Bradley said.

The Wausau native is currently serving in the second year of a seven-year term after being appointed to the board by Gov. Jim Doyle in May 2003.

"Lee Dreyfus, when he was governor, used to say Wisconsin has never been a wealthy state and Wisconsin is never going to be a wealthy state, but where Wisconsin can compete with anybody is in education, and I firmly believe that," he said.

One of the underlying themes of the controversy surrounding the public health school discussion last week is what some regents perceived as a divide between Madison, Milwaukee and rural Wisconsin.

According to Bradley, it was appropriate for the regents to call the medical school in Madison what it is, and said the city of Milwaukee can only benefit from a public health school in Madison.

"We just want to name it consistent with what we're actually doing," Bradley said. "This is a reaction, a real heated reaction because [health] problems are so severe in Milwaukee."

Bradley said a lack of communication between regents, the UW System administration and state Legislature is a huge challenge for the board.

"I think it's incumbent on [UW System President] Kevin Reilly and I think he's been doing a very good job at it," Bradley said. "He's down at the Capitol frequently; he's got a personality and a philosophy of an open-door policy so that legislators don't ever think that he's not accessible to them."

David Glisch-Sanchez, spokesperson for the system-wide United Council of UW Students, described Bradley as a "thoughtful" regent and praised him for his handling of the tuition hike this summer.

"He voted for [the tuition hike but] I think he was really trying to engage students and to come to some kind of a solution in the short term," Glisch-Sanchez said. "Hopefully in the long term we can come up with a solution."

Bradley criticized some of his fellow regents for voting against tuition hikes, saying the university would suffer without raising tuition annually.

"If you look at the rules on how tuition is set, the regents really don't set tuition," Bradley said. "The Legislature and the governor set the tuition. The regents have the role of formally adopting the package that has been presented to them."

Former Regent President Toby Marcovich also gave Bradley his vote of confidence and said Bradley has performed well as a regent.

"He's extremely perceptive, understands the problems and usually comes up with excellent plans for solving them," Marcovich said.