Chancellor’s remarks to Chamber of Commerce

Here are excerpts from Chancellor John Wiley’s address to the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce 50th Annual Dinner April 23, 2002:

Fifty years ago, at the University of Wisconsin, E.B. Fred was President of the University, tuition was $75 a semester, the faculty numbered about 1,026 and student enrollment had swollen to just over 15,000 in the post-World War II era. The university budget was $31.5 million, 41 percent of which came from state appropriations. Research spending totaled $3.5 million. The western edge of campus was farmland. The big research news of the day was the discovery of the blood-thinning anticoagulant Dicumerol and one of the earliest patients to benefit from it was President Eisenhower. And from the archives of the Daily Cardinal in 1952, headlines like these: “No educational TV seen in near future” and “Faculty seeks pay increase.” Sound familiar? Some things never change.

The 1952 graduates included Lee Sherman Dreyfus, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Bob Kastenmeier, among many other leaders known to you, or, in this room tonight.

This evening, we are focusing on our shared interest in the importance of research as an intellectual asset, as a stimulus to economic vitality, not only in the Madison area but also across the whole state of Wisconsin, and as a source of enrichment to all of our lives.

Before I get into some examples of the cutting edge research in the sciences at UW–Madison, I want to remind everyone that we are a comprehensive university with four major divisions: the biological sciences, the arts and humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences.

Tonight, we celebrate – enthusiastically and quite properly – those activities that lead most directly and most obviously to state and local economic development, job creation, and improved quality of life.

But we should not forget the important contributions of other scholarly activities, especially in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Numerous individuals and projects in these areas have enormous impacts on society. I’m thinking of examples like:

Professors Larry Meiller and Emily Auerbach and others on Wisconsin Public Radio, reaching thousands of listeners daily.
The world-renowned real estate program in our Business School, pioneered by Jim Graaskamp and being carried on by Professor Kerry Vandell and his colleagues.
Professor Antonia Schleicher of African Languages and Literature, who is on the leading edge of instructional technology with her CD-based interactive courseware on the Yoruba language.
Professor John Rieben of the Art Department, who produced a stunning book celebrating outstanding designs of Wisconsin-made products.
Education professors Gloria Ladson-Billings and Mary Louise Gomez, who (with funding from the Evjue Foundation and Madison Public School District) are working in the local schools to close the achievement gap between majority and minority students.
The Wisconsin Center for Education Research has long been a leader in establishing national standards in science and mathematics education, and that center is, today, the largest (in terms of research funding) research center on campus.
When he was nominated for a professorship in Philosophy, the letters of support for Professor Elliot Sober came mostly from prominent scientists, including Nobel Prize-winners who told how his writing had changed the way they think about and approach their work.
Communication Arts professor Zhondang Pan is studying the role of the media in fostering democracy in China.

And, don’t take my word for it. Attend a performance of the Madison Symphony or the Chamber Orchestra, or ask John DeMain or Andrew Sewell about the quality of our music school and the many faculty and students who populate those outstanding local cultural gems.

Challenging entrenched notions

Some of the work done here, particularly work in the social sciences, results in conclusions that challenge popular beliefs or entrenched positions, and are controversial. This is the institution where much of the groundwork was laid for the New Deal programs, including social security and workmen’s compensation. Today, I would cite as examples:

Professor Jane Collins on the economics of sweatshop labor.
Professor Pam Oliver on the disparate incarceration of blacks in Wisconsin.
Any number of studies and reports produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty and the LaFollette School of Public Affairs.
A series of reports issued by professor Joel Rogers and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, the most recent of which shows continued growth in the magnitude of the gap between the lowest and highest income families in Wisconsin.
Finally, I’ll mention work by history professor Al McCoy on the opium trade in Southeast Asia.

At any given time, there are about 8,000 active research projects on campus, and there is no effective way I can summarize for you what all these projects involve, nor what the many potential consequences may be. If I were to give you a one-minute summary of each project, for example, we would be here 133 hours, or 24 hours per day until about 9 a.m. next Monday, and by that time, the list would be outdated.

I’ve been here on the faculty for 27 years. I think I know the campus about as well as anyone, and there isn’t a single day in which I don’t learn something new and interesting about what’s going on here.

What I can tell you is that what’s going on is truly remarkable. It’s remarkable that a state that is about 20th in population and 25th in per capita income has a university that is consistently in the top few by every measure. Last year, we were number two in the nation in both research volume and Ph.D. production, for example.

One of our future Ph.Ds, graduate student Emilie Porter, is helping pioneer a novel approach to fighting bacterial infections. Working with chemistry professor Samuel Gellman and pharmacology professor Bernard Weisblum, she took top honors – and a $20,000 prize – in the Collegiate Inventors Competition, and was cited in competition sponsored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Emilie was one of our exhibitors here this evening.

Professor James Thomson is doing such far-reaching research that he has become that most unlikely of scientists, an international celebrity. His work, with other leading researchers on campus, has made the phrase ‘stem cell’ part of our vocabulary. This breakthrough research in human embryonic stem cells holds the promise of alleviating or curing some of our oldest and most dreaded ailments.

Clear economic impact

All research is meant, sooner or later, one way or another, to lead to something else. It is a process with many possible outcomes. One outcome can be measured in terms of economic impact, a subject of great interest to all of us with a stake in the future of this community.

Let me give you a sense of just how powerful the UW–Madison is as an economic partner in our community and state:

The university’s annual gross payroll is $696 million.
Our annual local expenditures come to about $520 million.
We estimate that the ripple effect of our presence in the Madison community is another 67,000 jobs.
It has been estimated that the impact of the university on the state’s economy is in the area of $4.7 billion.

Also, UW–Madison has been named one of the top 12 research universities in the country cited for fostering state and regional economic development. The ranking is in a new report by the Southern Growth Policies Board, and was funded by the National Science Foundation. What is really relevant about this report is that it ranks universities on the basis of invigorating state economies through technology transfer and the development of companies born of university research.

This is why the greater Madison metropolitan area is emerging as a major technology center in the world today, a point that is cited in the introduction of Madison Gas and Electric’s 2002 directory of high tech companies in the greater Madison area.

By the way, complimentary copies of this excellent report, which MG&E produced in partnership with the City of Madison, are available this evening at a table near the registration table.

A critical partnership

You, the Madison business community, and we, the academic community, have a real partnership going on. Together, we are creating an economic engine that has two critical components, each in support of the other. Your ability to create the business climate, infrastructure and support network that allows entrepreneurs and researchers the opportunity to bring their knowledge to the marketplace. And our ability as a major public research university to attract, nurture and support world-class scientists, teachers and researchers.

The three great arms of the university enabling the transfer of intellectual assets into products and services for the marketplace are:

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, better known as WARF, founded in 1925 and now the world’s oldest and best established university intellectual property organization.

The Office of University-Industry Relations, established in the early 1960s, was also one of the first of its kind, and has played an instrumental role in organizing industrial research consortia and administering programs designed to facilitate connections between UW–Madison research and business and industry.

And the University Research Park, whose roots can be traced back at least 20 years to then-Chancellor Irving Shain who promoted the development of the park.

Today, under the expert and visionary leadership of our friend and colleague, Mark Bugher, University Research Park attracts attention and envy from across America and around the world.

I could do a whole presentation just on how these three agencies of the university operate. All three of these organizations are on a roll. Last year was the best year ever for each of them by all relevant measures.

Outcomes with broad impact

Rather than discuss processes, however, I’d much prefer to focus on outcomes. So here are some more facts about how UW–Madison research is having an effect on us all:

As of the end of 2001, a total of 218 firms had been identified as start-up or spin-off firms in Wisconsin having close ties to UW–Madison, and of those 114 were spin-offs created specifically to commercialize technologies arising from UW–Madison research, and 104 were start-ups created to commercialize technologies not related directly to campus research projects.
In the last five years, 1997 through 2001, an average of 13 new firms per year has been created.
Since 1993 with its first spin -off equity investment in Third Wave Technologies, WARF has completed 24 “licensing with equity” spin-offs with several more in the 2002 pipeline. Nearly all of these are Wisconsin firms.
Of 147 companies reporting revenues in a 2000 survey, their aggregate gross revenues came to just over $1 billion.
As of 2000, these firms employed an estimated 6,700 people, mostly professionals and highly skilled support staff, many of whom were UW–Madison graduates.

Solving the budget problem

Let me close by sharing these thoughts with you. This state, like most others, is facing a budget crisis that is partly structural and partly temporary. The part that is structural needs to be dealt with. It’s a small fraction of the overall state budget, and should not require Draconian or destructive measures to solve.

But neither the structural nor the temporary portions of the deficit can be “solved” by eliminating vital investments in the state’s economic future. Most people would include among those vital investments all levels of education: pre-Kindergarten through Graduate and Professional school, as well as Technical school training.

There’s no way to “budget cut” our way out of the present deficit, and there’s no way to “tax” our way out of it. The only lasting solution is to raise the per-capita income — at least to the national average — through healthy growth of the state economy.

That’s going to require more and better-prepared high school graduates, more college and technical school graduates, and more people educated to postgraduate levels. There’s no doubt at all that the economy of the future requires more education, not less.

Aside from that abstract argument, and speaking once again just for UW–Madison, the 8:1 annual direct return on investment the state realizes for every dollar it invests in our base budget is a return few businesses would turn down or endanger.

The economy of this state — and this community – can continue to flourish and continue to grow by investing in higher education. I believe it is the only investment strategy that makes sense for us all.

I’d like to thank Bob, the Board of Directors of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, and all of you for helping us make that case in the past, and ask you to continue doing it in the critical days and weeks ahead. This is a crucial biennium for us, and we’ve never been better positioned to help vault the region and the state to a new level of economic prosperity. If the state does its part, we’ll continue to do ours.

Thank you.