Thoughts on Biddy Martin

Edit – Please view this post at its new location

After seeing and hearing Cornell University provost Biddy Martin at both the press conference and for the first half of today’s forum in the Red Gym, I have to say I was thoroughly impressed. I liked her speaking style more than that of L&S Dean Gary Sandefur. I think she would definitely be a much better salesperson for the university than he would, to both the state legislature and when fund raising from private donors.

She also had several answers that impressed me with their content. Another student, and commenter on this blog, who had been to both the forum today with her and yesterday’s with Dean Sandefur weights in:

She was able to answer questions quantitatively and qualitatively, and provide thoughtful insights on a number of topics, ranging from professor salaries to diversity issues on campus. It was a refreshing alternative from Dean Sandefur, current Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences, who seemed to be more interested in reiterating the current administrations policies than putting forth his own ideas about what could change to benefit this University. Not being an insider to the campus system, I feel that she would bring a fresh set of policies, as well as her own point of view on how to solve some of our campus’ problems.

I thought she had a very impressive response to questions about raising professors’ salaries. She was able to highlight a 5-year initiative with a similar goal that she helped oversee at Cornell. They had a remarkably similar situation with their faculty salaries in relation to their peer institutions. Granted the schools poaching their faculty were Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but still to have overseen a successful effort to bring faculty salaries up the median of a schools peer institutions is exactly the experience I feel that we need. She also was able to highlight an approach to retaining faculty that differs from the one currently practiced here. As a article previously mentioned on this blog put it

One sure way to get a raise, say Madison professors, is to go out and get another job offer and ask the university to match it. That is a common practice in higher education, but at Madison it has damaged morale because it is often the only way professors feel they can get rewarded.

…

The practice of professors at Madison flashing outside offers in order to get raises has set the university up to lose some of its very best faculty members. Professors may go out on the market without necessarily intending to leave, but then find themselves bowled over by the possibilities.

“You get courted, and at a certain point you start to fall in love with the institution courting you,” says Michael Bernard-Donals, chairman of the English department. Five professors left there last year, including three who went to Rutgers, and the department is down at least 10 faculty members from a high of 54 in the 2005-6 academic year.

Provost Martin talked about this explicitly and as a solution she helped implement a policy at Cornell that had the deans and other administrators figure out which faculty were at risk of being targeted by other institutions and improve their salaries before they received offers from other institutions. She said it helped keep them from even thinking about leaving and therefore made them more likely to stay, even if the salary increase was the same, the timing made a difference. The same student as before weighs in:

In addressing the issue of the “hemorrhaging of professors,” her ideas of providing salary increases to those professors most likely to be targeted for outside offers caught my attention. She made the point that once a professor has been offered other jobs, it is often too late, as they become emotionally invested.

I had to leave before she talked about this, but this was something that was good to hear:

When question on the subject of office hours, she expressed a desire to be more accessible to students. This would be a major improvement over the current administration’s closed-door policies. Overall, I found Biddy to be a bright and engaging candidate. If selected chancellor, it seems that she would be involved in campus life and available for students concerns.

Overall, I was impressed. I think she would make an excellent chancellor.

Links to the Badger Herald and Capital Times versions of the story.

[Edit] The DC story

[Edit] Smathers on the BH blog