Faculty uneasy about working at UW after cuts, tenure changes

[n2doc]

Mahesh Mahanthappa and Gray Jackson both grew up far away from Wisconsin but came here to pursue their passion for chemistry at UW-Madison, a national leader in the field.

Each moved here with a girlfriend originally from Wisconsin returning to be a doctor in her home state.

Soon, Mahanthappa and Jackson will leave Wisconsin, embarking for the University of Minnesota to do their research in plastics there instead. Mahanthappa’s now-fiance, a family practice doctor at UW Health, will leave with him for a new job in Minnesota. Jackson’s girlfriend will remain in Madison to finish medical school.

The big move is happening because Mahanthappa, a tenured professor who is 39 years old, decided he’d have a brighter future in his field in Minnesota, which ranks just above Wisconsin in chemical engineering in national rankings. He found the school’s courtship of him, which started last fall, too good to pass up.

Many factors, including dire financial times and a perceived unfriendly attitude by state lawmakers toward faculty in Wisconsin, forecast better times ahead there and leaner times here, he said.



Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/university/faculty-uneasy-about-working-at-uw-after-cuts-tenure-changes/article_79135697-7e0e-5a11-8b86-49eccf2cc909.html

The faculty with big research programs will leave. The ones who can't find work or don't care to will stay.

[shenmue]

1. Walker sucks

[Jackpine Radical]

2. University of Wisconsin 1848-2015 RIP

[sybylla]

4. No kidding.

It's so sad that such a fine institution can be torn apart with a single vote in the legislature.

[AllyCat]

3. I really hate the Teahadists.

Our state is quickly becoming a joke.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. They're like fundamentalists anywhere,

fearing and vandalizing whatever they don't understand. Unfortunately, there is so much they don't understand…

Why do we have to share a state, let alone a nation, with these gremlins?

[lutefisk]

6. Quite a legacy these Republicans are leaving

Do any of these Republicans even realize what they've done? Are they seriously that stupid, that ignorant, that blinded by this vicious crusade to destroy every law and institution that exists for the public good because they're told to do it by lobbyists, Walker, Vos, Fitzgerald, and ALEC?

They have set in motion the end of public education in Wisconsin as we know it, from pre-kindergarten through the highest levels of higher ed. All by slipping some statutes into the state budget when it was too late for anyone to mount any resistance to it.

I don't work at UW Madison, but I know there are many faculty members who fully expected to be at Madison for long and productive academic careers who are now actively searching for positions and working out the logistics of uprooting and moving somewhere else. I believe almost every faculty member at UW Madison would be able to find another tenured or tenure track position somewhere within the next 12-18 months if that's what they decided to do. Many will go. There is going to be a permanent pall over that place...