The Daily Cardinal: What was your motivation behind applying for the chancellor position here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?
Rebecca Blank: A number of people must have nominated me. The search committee contacted me.
I admit I thought hard about this one. I love my job at the Department of Commerce. I’ve done a lot of interesting things, but I’ve always assumed at some point I’d go back to a university, and Wisconsin is just a great university. This was a wonderful leadership opportunity, so I’m honored to be invited back to campus.
DC: Why did you always assume you would go back to a position in a university?
Blank: I spent almost all my life as an academic, as a researcher or in academic leadership. I’m an economist, by background. I went to graduate school at MIT in economics. I went to Princeton and taught, moved from there to Northwestern University. I was in the Clinton Administration for two years and then went to be dean at the policy school at the University of Michigan. Then, I left from there back to come back to Washington.
DC: How would your current role as Acting Secretary of Commerce affect your leadership in a chancellor position?
Blank: I’ve really enjoyed being here at the Department of Commerce being both Deputy Secretary, which is the Chief Operating Officer position for a 45,000 person organization and a close to ten billion dollar organization has given me a lot of management experience, but I’ve also spent quite a bit of time in the Acting Secretary role as well.
That’s sort of the leadership role in which we’re really providing a vision for the organization and helping it move forward.
The Department of Commerce is a very large, very complex organization, and I think I’ve learned some skills about how to run such organizations, but my long term interest is really going back to a university setting and trying to use those skills in higher education.
DC: Do you have a vision for UW-Madison if you’re chosen as Chancellor?
Blank: UW-Madison is an absolutely first rate school, which is facing the challenges that all public universities are facing, some of which are funding challenges, some of which are competition from the top privates which are just raising gads of money therefore being harder to compete with.
So the real question at Madison is how do you continue to be the first rate institution that Madison has always been?
How do we put together the faculty, the interdisciplinary programs that really characterize Madison and the alumni support that you need to make this the type of institution ten or twenty years from now that you want it to be?
I think there are ways to do that. I think public institutions have enormous riches that we can draw upon including just being embedded in the community in a way the privates are not.
DC: How long would you see yourself in this job?
Blank: I would not want to make assumptions about whether I’m going to be chosen or not. Clearly this is a long term job. My expectations is that the search committee should want to hire a chancellor who’s going to be there for at least the next ten years if indeed everything works out well.
DC: Do you have any long-term plans for UW-Madison if elected as chancellor?
Blank: Again, I think you don’t want to say a lot of things until you’re actually on the ground and have a chance to talk to people and really get a sense of the culture and sort of what’s going on currently at the university.
Madison has a very good strategic plan that I think lays out a lot of the things we need to focus on if you were at the university.
The question is how do you do that effectively.
There are a number of key issues:
One is making sure that Madison becomes an even more global campus in educating students who are going to work in a global environment.
Two is using the resources of the new internet technologies and information technologies even more effectively both in teaching as well as being in the forefront of research around those technologies.
Obviously, I know Madison has done some really interesting things with the rest of the university system on trying to bring more students in through the use of online learning possibilities.
Then there’s all the question that every public university faces on how you keep costs down and how do you attract a really diverse and good group of students. At every institution the answer is slightly different, but the answer is always hard work and very good management and real leadership that communicates to people how you need to move forward and how you strategically position the university to be on the competitive edge.
DC: Do you have any plans for connecting with students?
Blank: If you don’t understand what the students are experiencing, it’s very hard to have a leadership vision for the university because students are quite a core part of the focus of the mission, right? [laughs]
I would hope that I would find ways to meet regularly with students, and I know there are students in student leadership organizations that you meet with, but you’ve still got to go beyond that. I would imagine you would want to do a regular lunch or dinner where students are invited to stop by or to sign up. I would hope, I don’t think you can do this in your first year, but I would hope that at some point I’d be able to do just a little bit of teaching, particularly for undergraduates to run a seminar or something that gives me a chance to really be with students in the classroom.
DC: If you had one thing you would like to tell students at UW-Madison, what would that be?
Blank: You are at a great university, would be my reaction. Take advantage of its enormously rich resources; That’s the advantage of these big publics. There’s so many different things going on campus. While you’re there, challenge yourself to do a few things beyond just your major or particular interests. That means both interacting with other people doing some outside curricular stuff serving in the community, and then when you’re alumni, come back and be active again
DC: Do you have any other final statements?
Blank: I’m very honored to be asked back to campus and I look forward to the visit.
