The University of Wisconsin saw a flashback to the 1990s Wednesday when previous Chancellor David Ward publicly accepted the interim chancellor position for the upcoming school year.
Ward, who served as UW’s chancellor from 1993 to 2000, will take leadership of UW System’s flagship university beginning July 18, a statement from System President Kevin Reilly said.
Reilly said at a press conference Wednesday the decision to bring Ward back to the university came after consultation with other members of the Board of Regents and a number of varied stakeholders.
“Through these conversations, it became apparent that my colleagues at [UW] and the institution’s network of supporters wanted an interim chancellor who is highly experienced and broadly respected,” Reilly said. “They wanted someone who knows the campus well, values its uniqueness and [someone] who could bring people together again after losing what was a tough budget battle.”
The announcement came just more than two weeks after Chancellor Biddy Martin declared she would leave UW in order to serve as president of Amherst College. Martin sent out a campus-wide email June 14 informing the community of her decision after spending the better half of the 2010-11 school year publicly fighting for her controversial New Badger Partnership proposal that would have split UW from the rest of the system.
Although Ward said he has not been a participant in the NBP debate or had a seat at the table during state budgetary negotiations, he said he looks forward to embracing the challenges and opening up campus-wide communication.
“I am now eager to listen to the reactions to the political challenges of the past six months both off and on campus, but my main focus will be to build on what I see as a substantial increase in fiscal […] responsibilities contained in the recently enacted budget,” Ward said. “It seems to me that great gains have been made and it will be incumbent of us […] to see whether these so-called flexibilities which we claim are enormously important to our advancement competitively and to the advancement of learning really work.”
Ward also said the university would face challenges in light of the staunch budgetary cuts UW is set to take in the upcoming academic year. The institution is slated to lose approximately $94 million in state funding under the 2011-2013 biennium budget.
Still, he said public flagship universities across the country are fighting against similar fiscal problems and said his experience on the American Council of Education has allowed him further insight into the pattern.
Reilly said a national search for UW’s next long-standing chancellor would begin in the coming weeks with the goal of having someone in place by next summer.
The first step in the process, Reilly said, is to appoint a search and screen committee made up of UW faculty, academic and classified staff, students and other community stakeholders. The initial committee will then recommend a slate of finalists for consideration by a special committee of regents.
