Chancellor Rebecca Blank is looking to improve the university’s national rankings by raising faculty compensation and increasing the visibility of faculty research, she said in a blog post Tuesday.
Blank gave suggestions to boost rankings in response to the recently released US News & World Report college rankings, where the University of Wisconsin-Madison is rated 41st in the nation.
Although Blank called such rankings “a very incomplete measure of the undergraduate experience,” she said she realizes the importance of placing high.
“So long as these ratings are widely reported and used, we need to take them seriously if we want to attract top students to UW,” Blank wrote.
Blank said she asked a group of UW-Madison colleagues to look at areas for the university to improve its rankings.
Faculty and staff have not received pay increases for five years and Blank said it is one of her top priorities to increase pay levels to attract and retain top faculty.
She also said the group discovered a need for faculty to more consistently and accurately put the UW-Madison name on proposals, papers and presentations, saying ranking bodies often look at faculty publication rates and research.
