Falsehoods- Research Collaborations

One of the fears that I’ve heard revolving around the New Badger Partnership and the proposed split from UW System is that it will destroy research collaborations with other universities across the state, particularly our sister-doctoral university, UW-Milwaukee. In recent days, this fear has been expounded by average citizens, faculty, Board of Regent members, President Pruitt, and President Reilly. Since a large portion of our university is in the research area, this is definitely an issue that needs to be discussed in the context of Chapter 37.

The premise of this concern arises from the believed fact that have a centralized administration for UW-System facilitates these collaborations. I say believed fact because this claim is blatantly false. Research collaborations between Madison and her sister campuses do not stem from top-down coordination from system, but are created by campuses and faculty on an individual basis. One of the major examples of this is the Intercampus Research Incentive Grants Program. This program, which was created between UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin and former UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago, provides money for collaborations between faculty members at both universities to create “synergistic interactions between the two institutions.” Also, this fund, which is comprised of monies entirely provided for by private donors, is intended to focus in on

key project areas, including water/energy, health care, advanced manufacturing, biomedical engineering, K-12 education, social sciences and the humanities.

As a side note on this issue, to show a potential future for this program, it was renewed between Chancellor Martin and interim Chancellor Michael Lovell after Chancellor Martin knew that Governor Walker was proposing the split of UW-Madison.

Other areas of collaboration exist within the current model that were not administered from the system level as well. The UW-Consortium for Extension and Research in Agriculture and Natural Resources provides grants for cross collaborations in the areas of agriculture and natural resources for faculty members from UW-Madison, -Platteville, -River Falls, and -Stevens Point. Also in the area of CALS, the Center for Integrated Agriculture Systems collaborates with UW-River Falls, -Green Bay, -Eau Claire, -Oshkosh, -Fox Valley, -Marathon County, -Barron County, -Stevens Point, and -Whitewater in multiple areas of food science. Just last semester, as I stated in a post about Green Energy a while ago, the Wisconsin Energy Research Consortium was created between UW-Madion, -Milwaukee, Marquette University, and the Milwaukee School of Engineering to work on new “advanced energy, power, and control technologies.” A final example, of which there are many, is the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts which brings together researchers from 8 campuses and facilities to analyze potential impacts of climate change on the agriculture and natural resource industries in Wisconsin.

President Reilly seemed to side step everything I just laid out though when he said that this would change if UW-Madison would become an independent flagship institution. Using a false analogy to the University of Michigan model, Reilly posited that there would be no reason for Madison to continue research with other campuses. I’ve been accused of talking shit, by none other than Max Love, about President Reilly, and I guess I’m going to do it again. If the President had taken the 5 minutes that I had taken to do a Google search on the topic, he would have found that this was false. Partially established in 1999 as the Life Science Corridor, the University Research Corridor is a collaborative effort between UM, Michigan State, and Wayne State University. Their vision is

[t]o unite and lead, playing a key role in creating a vibrant Michigan economy that leverages the intellectual capital of its three public research universities, to work proactively to attract the knowledge economy businesses that can find the research activity that feeds new enterprise, educates the workforce and plants the seeds for the new industries of tomorrow.

To me that sounds like cooperation. In fact, it sounds very similar to the Wisconsin Idea, helping to improve the state and prepare it for the future.

But let’s look at a more realistic analogy, that of Virginia. Those self interested, independent universities, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virgina Commonwealth University, and the College of William and Mary, could never come together to work on research. In reality, these institutions have gone beyond that call of what Michigan does, they were all founding members of the MidAtlantic Terascale Partnership, a research group founded to work on projects requiring “next-generation high-performance network connectivity.” Sounds like a pretty close relationship to me.

So I’m sorry if I talk shit about President Reilly, but when falsehoods are presented time and time again, when they are easily researched, some shit needs to be talked. Do your research. So I ask, what would be keeping these relationships from continuing. More importantly, what would be stopping Madison from creating an omnibus research group with Milwaukee and a possible new research university if Milwaukee was to split from system as well. Imagine it, 3 differently tiered research universities, each individually working on different issues, but at the same time collaborating for the betterment of the state of Wisconsin. What’s stopping us?

An Inexperienced Leader~Samuel Seering