Faculty and students had the opportunity Wednesday to get a feel for what one of the four candidates to fill the chancellor position in the fall would like to achieve were he to receive the position.

A faculty member at University of Wisconsin from 1985 to 2005, R. Timothy Mulcahy, vice president for research at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview with The Badger Herald “the ability to come home to UW is the fulfillment of a long time dream.”

Mulcahy said were he to become chancellor he would like to see a culture change on campus to include a sense of accountability. He said the idea is the university would be able to show that they have held to the promises they made.

“[Accountability is] basically to be able to articulate the value proposition that the university offers people of the nation and state and to identify what it is we think we are uniquely qualified and best at delivering and then provide measurable endpoints and benchmarks to demonstrate that we are delivering on that promise,” Mulcahy said.

He added UW needs to do this to stay competitive in the world of higher education, where it is “becoming harder and harder to garner the kind of support” large public institutions like UW need to operate. He also said many universities are becoming more and more creative and deliberate in their pursuit of funding and UW needs to do the same to hold onto the position it is currently in.

“We are in an enviable position as a university but we won’t hold that position if we aren’t as deliberate, and I would suggest more deliberate, than our competition,” Mulcahy said. “If we sit still they are going to eat our lunch, and we can’t afford to do that.”

As chancellor, Mulcahy said finding strategies for improving faculty compensation is one of the most important things that need to be done. He said compensation is very important to UW because once the university loses the experience and talent of the faculty that is being recruited away, it is “virtually impossible to get back.”

“I think we are probably seven or eight in the Big Ten as far as faculty compensation, yet if you look at our programs across the board we’re easily in the top three in most of them,” Mulcahy said. “The question is we’ve got to close that disparity between quality and the compensation we provide or we will see greater migration away from the campuses.”

Mulcahy also addressed UW’s relationship with legislators at the Capitol and said the university has “to be able to show value added to ask for additional resources.”

“I think the university needs to be more persuasive and effective in getting its piece of the pie and to do that I think we also have to be willing to put some ideas on the table that change how we utilize our existing resources,” Mulcahy said.

Former dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Rebecca Blank will be on campus tomorrow for a public forum from 1:30-3 at the Main Lounge in Memorial Union and a student forum from 4-5:30 in the On Wisconsin room in the Red Gym.