[media-credit name=’BRYAN FAUST/Herald Photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]New University of Wisconsin provost Patrick Farrell assumed his duties on campus for the first time Monday, meeting with faculty and other fellow administrators.

Farrell, who grew up in Detroit, formerly served as UW executive associate dean of the College of Engineering prior to his acceptance of the provost position.

"I'm learning and hearing about parts of the campus that maybe I vaguely knew …but didn't know a whole lot about, and that's really fun," Farrell said.

Former provost Peter Spear, who retired last December, said Farrell will have to be ready to handle issues related to continual state budget cuts to the UW System and subsequent morale problems.

Spear said the biggest issue UW faced was maintaining the excellence of faculty and staff.

"When I left, there had been an increase for the previous two years in the number of outside offers our faculty were getting and a decrease in our ability to retain faculty who got outside offers," Spear said.

With contribution from the state declining, Farrell and many other UW administrators have made an effort to address a sudden lack of resources to maintain the university.

Farrell said the university has faced budget cuts from the state for three biennia in a row at the cost of raising tuition significantly.

"And then [some] say, what does that mean for our ability to deliver the quality of education we want to?" Farrell asked. "Or, conversely, if this is the level of resources [we have to work with], how do we find other resources to be able to deliver the quality of education we want to?"

Still, while taxpayer support continues to decline, others have shown they are willing to contribute to the university and its mission. Yesterday, private donors donated $50 million to aid in the construction of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery.

"Here's a private donor who has such confidence in this university that he and his wife are willing to put up $50 million of their own money," Farrell said. "It's beyond the gift. It says something about the level of confidence in what this institution is able to do."

This comes at a time when UW administrators and others around the country fear continual reductions in state support will force universities to privatize. Farrell said it has become "more and more of a threat."

"In some sense, there is a perception that a university degree in the past was considered a public good," Farrell said. "I think there's been an effort to shift that in that the public doesn't benefit … but I don't think it's true."

Despite Farrell's heavy science background, he said he has no plans to downgrade the importance of the humanities on campus. He said UW "wouldn't be the place it is" if it only relied on hard science.

However, the task of provost will not be easy. Spear said Farrell has been at the university a long time and understands the campus and its issues.

"Spending time listening and learning so that you can best represent the interests of the university externally and articulate them for the faculty and staff and students [is crucial]," Spear said.