A UW-Madison Faculty Senate committee released a report Monday opposing any separation of graduate school education from research in response to a recent restructuring proposal from UW administrators.
Researched by 19 faculty members appointed by the Faculty Senate's University Committee, the report emphasized that ""the synergistic relationship between graduate education and research"" could be ""fractured"" under Chancellor Biddy Martin and provost Paul DeLuca's proposal, which would create a new Vice Chancellor of Research position. Currently, Martin Cadwallader, dean of the Graduate Education, also oversees research.
DeLuca said his original proposal would not have ""segregated the activities of research and graduate studies into unknown boxes where they never communicated.""
""My concern from the get-go was that we've gotten so big and so complex that forcing all of this to be dealt with by a single individual might be too challenging,"" DeLuca said.
The faculty committee recommended maintaining the joint position, but to reduce the workload by shifting compliance issues and grants management—particularly Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP)—from the Graduate School to the Vice Chancellor for Administration's Office.
DeLuca said he was concerned this might also cause a communication rift.
""We want to guard against moving compliance too far from research, because at some point you run the risk of failing to have sufficient research input into that.""
DeLuca said he was pleased, though, that the committee wanted to simplify compliance reporting into a more ""monolithic structure."" Steven Nadler, a committee member, said this would give department administrators control over both compliance enforcements (like hiring new researchers) and budgets.
""We hope to streamline and make more efficient the whole bureaucracy for safety, compliance and RSP,"" Nadler said.
The faculty committee also stressed Cadwallader's joint position should keep faculty informed about national grant organizations better, though DeLuca said he would prefer someone advocate to these organization for UW more directly. The committee also recommended creating an RSP oversight committee of faculty members.
DeLuca said he will listen to faculty input in the next several days and then meet with the University Committee to start negotiating an agreement.
Current Vice Chancellor of Administration Darrell Bazzell could not be reached for comment.
