cc  >> Noel Radomski:  Good afternoon, everyone.  My name is Noel Radomski.  I'm the director of WISCAPE.  Thank you all for coming today.  If you haven't signed in, we do  have a sign-in sheet if you'd  like to get more information on  future programs.  We also have information on our  next program which is Thursday,  November 17th on innovative  ideas for need-based aid in  Wisconsin.  This is a forum at the request  of UW system and UW Madison  where we're going to bring in  folks, policymakers, faculty  members, business leaders from  across Wisconsin and discuss  possible new architecture for  need-based aid in Wisconsin as  relates to the emerging  demographics in Wisconsin, as  well as workforce development.  So November 17th at the Pyle  Center is our next program.  We also want to thank Wisconsin  Public Television for coming  today, for recording today's  lecture for the University Place  program.  How fitting it being the  Wisconsin idea and transmittal  of ideas across the state. 

 So thank you, very much.  After Dr. Trani's lecture we'll  be hosting a reception.  Especially for those of you who  recognize that it is homecoming  weekend, and there will be a  parade down State Street and  followed by a rally and  fireworks at Memorial Union.  There's also a Wind Ensemble  collage concert at 8:00 PM  at Mills Hall in the humanities  building.  So let me introduce our guest  speaker today.  Eugene Trani is President  Emeritus of Virginia  Commonwealth University.  After nearly 20 years, 19 years  of serving, as the fourth  president of Virginia  Commonwealth University,  Dr. Trani retired from the  presidency on June 30th of this  year.  During his tenure, Dr. Trani  greatly expanded the presence of  the university which became the  largest university in the  commonwealth in 2007.  So that VCU assumed a key role  in metropolitan and statewide  development.  Dr. Trani oversaw VCU's academic  and physical expansion  including, but not limited to,  the School of Engineering, the  School of Business, the Virginia  Biotechnology Research Park, VCU  Life Sciences and long-range  planning for the VCU Medical  Center which led to the  establishment of the VCU health  system in July of 2000. 

 Prior to Dr. Trani's VCU tenure,  he served at Assistant Vice  President for Academic Affairs  at the University of Nebraska  from 1976 to 1980 and Vice  Chancellor for Academic Affairs  and professor of history at the  University of Missouri Kansas  City from 1980 to 1986.  And, obviously immediately  before assuming the presidency  at VCU, Dr. Trani served for  four years as Vice President for  Academic Affairs of the  University Wisconsin System and  as professor of history at the  UW Madison.  Dr. Trani also is the graduate  of the University of Notre Dame,  and earned his Master's and  doctoral degrees in history from  Indiana university.  Dr. Trani and his wife and their  two children and five  grandchildren all reside in  Richmond, Virginia.  Today's lecture focuses on  Dr. Trani's argument that the  distinctiveness of land-grant  institutions has progressively  eroded during the last half of  the 20th century.  He will examine the manner in  which a major land-grant  university has redefined its  historic mission for the  challenges of the 21st century.  And also explore how UW Madison  has modernized the Wisconsin  idea to respond to the economic  challenges facing the state.  If you have any questions during  Dr. Trani's lecture, he will  take questions.  With that, please join me in  welcoming back Dr. Eugene Trani  to UW Madison.  (applause)  >> Euguene Trani: Thank you. 

 It's really great to be back  in Madison.  This is the first time I've been  here since I left June 25, 1990.  And it really is amazing to see  the changes, the physical  changes that have taken place.  And everybody is to be  congratulated.  As Noel said, I was here from  1986 to 1990 as Vice President  for Academic Affairs working  with Katharine and Buzz Shaw who  was then the president of the UW  system.  But I also taught in the history  department.  And among the toughest things I  had to do was turn in a  resignation letter as a tenured  professor of history at UW  Madison because when I was in  graduate school that's what I  aspired to do was to become a  tenured professor of history at  UW Madison.  The book that I am, it will be  in page proofs in two weeks, so  it's trundling along the  editorial process, is entitled  The Indispensable University:  Higher Education, Economic  Development and the Knowledge  Economy.  And it's a series of 17 case  studies of which one is UW  Madison.  Clearly, my history with the UW  system and with UW Madison was  an important part of my  development. 

 It was good preparation for VCU.  As Noel said, I had been at the  University of Nebraska as an  administrator and at the  University of Missouri Kansas  City and learned certain aspects  of the role there.  How do you deal with a board, as  in Nebraska, not very well.  The answer, and that continues  even today, depending upon which  the board is.  How do you deal with a state  capitol?  I learned something about that  in Lincoln, Nebraska.  In Kansas City I really looked  at what a university and a city  could do or not do.  And that was part of the  development.  All of those were replicated in  my years in Wisconsin, but there  were two distinctive things that  came out of the experience here  in Madison.  Number one was big science.  I never understood big science  until I came to UW Madison. 

 And this is big science.  With all of the good points of  big science and you ought to be  very proud of that.  And that has become particularly  important around the world  because there's a science war  among universities, among states  and among countries, in terms of  facilities, in terms of  attracting faculty members,  attracting graduate students and  it has become a dominate theme  and one anecdote to tell you the  theme is that I had a great gig  in Richmond.  I had, every four years, a three  month sabbatical leave.  So I went to the University of  London the first time.  I went twice to St.  Johns College in Cambridge.  I went to Lincoln College in  Oxford.  University College in Dublin.  The Kennedy School at Harvard. 

 When I was at Lincoln College at  Oxford, I work on my own work, I  work on American/Russian/Chinese  relations.  I just had a book come out in  May, a 500 page book, published  now in English and Russian and  about to be published in Chinese  entitled Distorted Mirrors:  Americans and their Relations  with Russia and China in the  Twentieth Century.  So I would work on that but I  would also go talk to people  about technology and about what  Oxford is doing or what  Cambridge is doing or what  Ireland is doing or what's  happening in Cambridge,  Massachusetts.  And one of the people I talked  to was the chair of the  chemistry department at Oxford.  Give me his name.  Largest chemistry department in  the western world.  They produce close  to a hundred PhDs a year  in that department alone.  And he said, this was 2005, he  said it's really interesting.  He said, when I arrived at  Cambridge, he was 62-63, as a  16-year-old, the most important  people at Oxford were the Regius  Professor of Classics, the  Regius Professor of History, the  Regius Professor of, and he said  I can't even tell you who they  are today, and I'm on university  councils, I'm on everything but  the whole infrastructures change  within universities that is the  dominance of science right now.  And you can say that's a bad  thing, it is a thing and it's  happening around the world, and  I never understood that and if I  had not had this experience at  UW Madison to watch a major  university deal with that issue  and how do they build new  facilities, how do they keep  eminent scientists, so that was  one of the distinctive things  that UW Madison and the UW  system, my four years here, did  for me. 

 And certainly prepared me in  terms of what I would try to do  at Virginia Commonwealth  University, such as set up a  School of engineering, such as  recapture a medical center that  had never really been part of a  university, such as set up VCU  Life Sciences whereby medical  school faculty are teaching  freshman in courses.  All of that kind of stuff comes.  The second thing that was  absolutely essential for my  development was to understand  the Wisconsin idea.  You take it for granted, you're  very cynical at times about the  Wisconsin idea.  There is real meat to that idea,  now more than a hundred years  old, of the relationship between  this university and Wisconsin  more generally.  So those were the two very  distinctive things that I  learned in my four years while  here.  I certainly learned more about  state capital.  I learned more about  relationships with a Board of  Regents, but in terms of the big  science preparation and the  Wisconsin idea, without any  question they are distinctive.  This book is being done with one  of our preeminent political  scientists who has just retired,  public administration figure Bob  Holsworth.  It will be published in February  by Rowman & Littlefield for the  American Council on Education. 

 I said it is 17 case studies.  And here are the case studies  that we studied.  We did three urban universities  in the United States.  They are the University of  Pennsylvania, the University of  Southern California and Virginia  Commonwealth University.  Evan Dobelle, the former head of  the New England Commission for  Higher Education, just did his  second annual, biannual, every  other year, Best University Good  Neighbor awards.  Tied for number one were USC and  the University of Pennsylvania.  There are a lot of lessons that  can be learned from those two  institutions.  30 years ago there was pressure  on the University of  Pennsylvania to move out of West  Philadelphia, go to valley  Forge, go out to suburban  Philadelphia.  And they had become extremely  insular.  They were building buildings  away from the streets with their  backs to the streets. 

 They had literally barbed wire  fence all the hell all over the  place, and Meyerson became  president, an urban planner,  succeeded by Judith Rodin, and  they just said this is nuts.  We're going to make this work in  West Philadelphia.  And it's a real case study of an  institution.  First of all, they're building  their buildings facing the  street now.  They've opened the campus up.  It's not to say they don't have  problems, but they've introduced  by West Philadelphia, hirer West  Philadelphia, a whole bunch of  different programs where they're  working with their community.  There's a lot to learn there.  Same thing with USC which from  my perspective has taken Los  Angeles away from UCLA.  It is so involved in its  community and it has gone from  being a bedraggled university on  the edge of Watts to now a main  player in a very vibrant area  and hasn't moved an inch.  It has just changed its  environment. 

 It has programs to subsidize  mortgages of faculty members if  they build in the neighborhood.  All manner of youth programs.  Scholarship programs for kids  around both of their campuses,  the University Park Campus, the  Medical Center Campus, to go to  college, to go to USC.  So those are two of the three  urban case studies, and  obviously the one I know best is  Virginia Commonwealth  University.  The second set of institutions  are land-grant universities.  There is a clear reinvention of  the land-grant university going  on.  The three I deal with,  interestingly enough, are all  upper Midwest land-grant  universities.  You can say, gee, why didn't you  pick away from it?  Because I think they're so  interesting.  And they are the University of  Wisconsin Madison, the  University of Minnesota and Ohio  State University.  Now I'm going to talk at some  length about UW Madison. 

 The other two are interesting  because they both have  discovered in the last 40 years  they're in cities.  They never understood that.  And those cities have descended  on their two campuses.  And they either had to forge  relationships with their  communities, their big cities  with all of their problems, or  they were going to become very,  very difficult places to be.  And under great presidential  leadership, they have done  exactly that.  Gordon Gee is now his second go  around as president of Ohio  State University.  >> He's going to keep on doing  it until he gets it right.  >> Trani: He's going to keep  on doing it.  But he got, the first time  through, it right that if you've  ever been to Columbus it was an  awful area.  That's where I began my teaching  career, around Ohio State  University, and he put Ohio  State money into community  development. 

 And Minnesota is doing much the  same thing.  Now interestingly enough all six  of those institutions I've  described so far have big  academic medical centers.  That's another hidden thing that  people don't talk about or don't  understand.  What are the statistics of our  own medical center where -- did  her residency in Internal  Medicine.  We have a 775 bed hospital.  We have 600 gunshot victims a  year coming into our hospital.  We have a thousand helicopters  who land on top of our hospital  a year.  We are a level one supreme  trauma center.  Two of the cases you no doubt  knew about or at least heard  about in the news.  The last of the Washington  sniper victims occurred in the  Richmond metropolitan area was  shot and was in our emergency  room 23 minutes after he was  shot even though it was 15 miles  away and is alive and well in  Florida. 

 And one of the techniques they  have pioneered in our trauma  center since they have become  semi-experts, sadly, on shooting  victims is they don't do the  heroic surgery all at once.  It will take three or four days  for them to do it.  And they'll do portions of it.  And that's a new technique that  trauma surgeons are starting to  do.  And the other thing with our  medical center was we have a big  NASCAR track in Richmond,  Richmond International Raceway,  which will forever have two  races because NASCAR owns the  track.  And the most important thing you  can get with NASCAR is a date.  So they buy a speedway in rural  North Carolina and they pay a  hundred million dollars for it  and shut the speedway down and  move the date to Los Angeles or  Kansas City or Dallas, but we're  forever going to have our two  dates because NASCAR owns  everything and gets every nickel  of every concession.  We had a driver hit the wall at  a higher speed with greater  force than killed Dale  Earnhardt, and he came in a coma  and was in a coma for five  weeks.  So we get a lot of that kind.  Economically, 50% of the  patients in our hospital are  either indigent patients or  Medicaid patients. 

 I don't know what Richmond would  do without our medical center.  I don't know what the Twin  Cities would do without the  University of Minnesota Medical  Center.  I don't know what Columbus would  do without Ohio State Medical  Center.  I don't know what Los Angeles  would do without USC because  it's their hospital and their  medical school that staffs LA  County General Hospital.  So one of the hidden things that  becomes obvious to me is the  importance of these medical  centers.  I did my tour, Noel drove me  around out to the research park,  and I can actually remember the  discussions that Katharine and  Buzz led early on as to whether  this was a good idea to build  the research park.  You've got 4,000 people on that  research park right now.  You've got 1. 5 million  square feet of  occupied space and plans now for  phase two.  So the medical centers are very  important.  And the first six case studies  all have medical centers. 

 The next three are community  colleges because they are  equally important in economic  development.  And the three we studied are  Miami Dade Community College,  Montgomery Community College in  suburban Washington and Maricopa  Community College in Phoenix.  And they all do different  things, but they all have become  major forces for economic  development.  So those are the nine American  case studies.  Then we do three in Britain and  Ireland.  We do Cambridge.  And it's the Cambridge  phenomenon that takes place  there.  We do Oxford.  And we do the Celtic Tiger  studying a number of the  different institutions.  A couple points about them. 

 One thing has happened in terms  of Cambridge and Oxford that  hasn't happened yet in Madison  but needs to happen.  And that is where young people  will come to study and stay  their whole life and have their  careers here in Madison, their  technology careers.  And that's what has happened in  Oxford and Cambridge.  People go fully expecting to  spend a life in Oxford and  Cambridge.  And they work in companies, they  work as postdocs in the  university.  A number of them will take  non-tenured positions at the  university just because they  like the lifestyle, they like  the amenities of a town like  Oxford, of a town like  Cambridge.  And you need to look at  everything about Madison, not  just UW Madison, that is going  to make this is a destination  place for young people to come,  as undergraduate or graduate  students, and then build a life  here.  What you have now is you have  you're one of the largest  producers of PhDs  and a lot of them leave and  have careers in other places.  Some of them may come back to  retire here.  Some of them may want their  remains buried here. 

 But you need them during those  working years.  And you need lots of them coming  and living.  And people like Richard Florida  are talking about building these  clusters all of time, and  Boston, the chamber of Commerce  in Boston, now is selling come  and be educated and lead your  life in Boston.  That is a major thrust that they  are selling Boston now because  they get very bright people  coming to Harvard and MIT,  Boston University, Boston  College, who leave.  So the community colleges are  important to that, but Oxford  and Cambridge are two examples  you should be looking at.  So there are those chapters.  Then there are two what we refer  to as oases in the desert.  One is Israel and one is Qatar.  Israel, it's amazing what has  happened in terms of Israel to  see the higher education network  explode and to see towns  competing, bring us higher  education.  It's not we don't want higher  education, all the problems, in  Israel they're begging for new  institutions to be put in their  towns because they have very  much come to understand that it  is an economic development  engine. 

 It brings young people, it  brings an educated workforce and  it makes a destination out of  those towns.  So we look at Israel, and that's  also interesting because you can  see some of the big science  spin-off of a country that will  never be second class in terms  of its military.  And how some of that has bled  over both in technology and the  life sciences, the nanosciences,  to companies concerned with  healthcare, not military.  But a very highly educated  workforce, and bluntly the best  thing that ever happened for  Israel was the collapse of the  Soviet Union because there are  now a million Jews from the  former Soviet Union who have  emigrated and live in Israel,  many of them scientists and many  of them at the core of this  development of nanotechnology  and life science technology in  terms of Israel.  And that turns out to be one of  the real hidden disasters for  Russia is this brain-drain that  has left Israel, and the  Russians are trying to figure  out what to do.  The other one is Qatar which is  an emirate in the Gulf.  You probably don't know anything  about Qatar.  They've got, I think they're  third largest country in terms  of natural gas reserves in the  world.  They have 6%, 7% of all natural  gas reserves.  At current usage, they're  natural gas is not going to be  depleted for a century or more. 

 But they're already thinking how  can we get a non-petro-based  economy.  So they have purchased American  universities to come into  something called Education City.  They just get out the US News  and World Report list and pick  who they want and then go see  them.  >> Checkbook in hand.  >> Trani: Checkbook in hand.  And it's really amazing, the  money they have committed to  this.  We have the highest rank public  university school of the arts in  the country, and it's fourth  ranked totally in US News and  World Report.  The only schools of art that are  higher ranked than us are --  School of Art and Design, Yale  and the Chicago Art Institute.  Our sculpture department is  ranked number one in the  country.  We have two or three departments  that are ranked ahead of --,  Chicago Art Institute and Yale,  something that they find hard to  believe. 

 And so they came to us and said  will you do art and design for  us.  This was 11 years ago, 12 years  ago.  And we said sure, we'll take a  look at it.  So we've been now with them for  11 years.  Following us has been Cornell  for medicine, Texas A&M for  engineering, Carnegie Mellon for  business and computer science,  Georgetown for international  relations and now Northwestern  for mass communication  journalism.  That's a pretty impressive list  of six, and it is the premier,  there are no dollar and sense  problems.  They pay all indirect costs and  they subsidize the students  heavily.  And was particularly interesting  because the genius behind all of  this is the wife of the Emir --,  she wanted something for women,  the women of Qatar, where they  could learn professions that  they could either practice out  in the business world or from  their home.  So we gave them interior design,  graphic design and fashion  design.  And for the first eight years  there were only women in the  school. 

 And that was an interesting, how  did we justify that in terms of  our legislature because our  legislature signed off on this  deal.  And we went coed three years  ago.  The other schools were coed from  day one.  So there is a Muslim country  that really is setting a tone,  and now a lot of people are  trying to follow in their foot  steps.  Dubai and Saudi Arabia but this  very small country where there  only 350,000 Qatarese and about  a million people living in this  country are creating this  behemoth, and oh, by the way,  given where Noel took me today,  a huge research park.  Because what they want to do is  they want to become the design  center for the Middle East.  They want to look beyond petro  dollars.  How can their economy become  balanced.  So those are the case studies,  the two oases in the desert.  And the final case studies are  three of the brick nations. 

 China, Russia and India.  And, boy, if you're not paying  attention to what is going on in  China, you need to pay  attention.  Go read last week's issue of the  chronicle of Higher Education  and you can see that China,  along with Singapore, along with  Korea, are enhancing the percent  of the gross national product in  those countries that is going  into higher education and have  set it as a goal to become  preeminent in higher education.  China has its urban policy  around universities as the  knowledge centers in those  cities.  So in old city, Shanghai, they  are pouring tons and tons of --  into Fudan University, which was  founded in 1905, and they're  building a great research park.  They incorporated the Shanghai  Medical College into Fudan  University.  All of the things that had  happening around the world, but  I mean the numbers in China are  just staggering in terms of how  many people are going to school,  their efforts to get overseas  students to come to China now.  So China's a really good  example.  Russia's a good case to look at  because they're focused on a  couple of elite universities.  One of the most interesting  experiences I ever had my life  was to be the senior lecturer at  Moscow University in the spring  of 1981. 

 I was there for four months  teaching American history, and  that was the height of --.  It was really hard stuff.  When you went out on the street  and somebody was following you,  that was a good thing.  (laughter)  Because you knew you  were protected.  You go to Moscow today and  somebody follows you, that's not  a good thing because your life  is potentially in danger.  But what Moscow, the government  in Moscow has decided to do is  really deal with the elite  universities, Moscow university,  St. Petersburg University,  maybe ten universities,  and forget everything else.  So I think they're making a  mistake.  I think it has to be a much  broader strategy, and it's  interesting that there's a  conference coming up in December  at the Kenan Center at the  Woodrow Wilson Center for  Scholars at the Smithsonian on  this very subject.  Half Russians, half Americans.  What should Russia be doing in  terms of universities and  economic development. 

 And in India lots of focus, not  a lot of dollars yet in their  university system.  So those are the 17 case studies  that we do.  And clearly UW Madison, we've  been blessed that a number of  people have read the whole book.  People like Nancy Zimpher, the  chancellor of the State  University of New York system;  John Casteen, president of the  University of Virginia; David  Perry, who's head of the great  city's great university  institute, the University of  Illinois Chicago; Paul Temple,  who runs the higher education  master MBA for the Institute of  Education at the University of  London.  And we've had people read the  case studies.  Katharine Lyall read the  land-grant case study.  Joe Cory and Howard Martin, both  retired associate vice  chancellors at UW Madison, also  read the case study.  So what do we deal with?  We make the point that  universities are more involved  in economic development and  community development than  they've ever been in the past.  And this is something that is  not temporary.  This is something that is going  to be enhanced because the  expectations are larger and  larger and larger. 

 There's not a political leader.  There is not a business leader  who doesn't wonder what the  universities can and should be  doing for them.  Now that's not to say they're  willing to put more money in.  That's what whole different  issue as to the systemic  disinvestment in American higher  education.  But the point we are making is  there used to be a -- mission  teaching research community  service, economic development  now as it's forepart mission for  the universities and that's only  going be enhanced in the future.  And that's not just happening in  major research universities,  it's happening all over our  country and indeed all over the  world.  In what kind of areas?  Certainly universities become  major developers of social  capital.  Working with our communities.  Just think of the things that  universities can do with their  communities in terms of the  development of social capital,  training programs for people.  Helping community groups  understand how to get grants,  how to work with governments. 

 It is really interesting how the  universities are viewed as  almost neutral brokers by both  sides, by the business side, the  governmental side, and people  who have grievances with society  and don't feel they are being  paid attention to.  So the development of social  capital is really a very, very  important thing.  The healthcare provision is only  going to become more and more  important as cities, towns and  indeed states look at the  hospitals.  Regional development, clearly UW  Madison is much more involved in  regional development and not  just Dane County and a  multi-county basis and indeed  statewide.  And that's happening.  This is all happening at the  same time the global university  is taking place.  More people want to come to  Madison to be involved with UW  Madison from outside the  country, and you have a whole  series of rich international  relationships that I think will  only be enhanced and I think  every undergraduate student  should feel that international  experience.  Now we, at Virginia Commonwealth  University, we have 32,400  students, 40% are the member of  the first generation of their  family to go to college.  Our economic profile is vastly  different than your economic  profile in terms of students who  come.  So I don't know what percent of  our students don't have  passports, but it's a very high  percent of our students who  don't have passports and never  thought of going overseas. 

 So what we have to do is we've  got to bring it to them.  We've got to put foreign  students in their classes  sitting right next door.  So now we have gone from 500  international students to  1600-1700 international  students.  And that's always been one of  the advantages that you've had  here, a lot of non-Americans.  And that is the first step for  many of these students to be  comfortable with a student from  Saudi Arabia or Israel or Russia  or China, and the university is  a global provider also.  Another phenomena that is  happening is the expanding  presidency.  Presidents are expected to do  more.  Me, I was chair of the Chamber  of Commerce.  When I did it that was very  unusual.  Now it's becoming very  commonplace for the university  president to become involved in  the Chamber of Commerce and  chair the Chamber of Commerce. 

 For three years I also headed  the big downtown improvement  organization called Richmond  Renaissance.  Very unusual but now that's  becoming increasingly more  important because your  president, president emeritus,  she was expected to participate.  Your chancellor expected to  participate.  So the presidency is expanding,  and the days when the president  was concerned with only the  undergraduate experience or  graduate programs, they have  long since passed and these  things are very, very important.  The modern university is not  without its critics.  Critics argue that we're  de-emphasizing liberal arts for  vocational.  They, critics, none of them in  this room, are concerned about  the growth of administrative  power.  And some critics think that  we're selling out to  corporations.  And there may be some truth in  all of that.  But I believe that this force is  going to be more and more  important in the future, not  less and less important. 

 So let me be very specific about  a number of issues.  How can the university catalyze  economic development?  Employment is one of the areas  that you can.  Hire locally, set up programs so  that you're not having national  searches for every position,  both academic and nonacademic  positions.  And build training programs that  are going to get residents of  Dane County ready to be  life-long employees of the  University of Wisconsin Madison.  So the whole employment issue  has become very, very important.  Purchasing, how much do you  purchase from local vendors.  How much do you purchase from  minority vendors.  What are your programs here at  UW Madison for minority  contracting and building the  buildings.  I'm going around and I'm seeing  scaffolding and cranes all the  hell all over the place.  I made the decision, I did in my  19 years as president of VCU  $2.2 billion of capital  construction for the university,  the health system and the  research park. 

 So I knew construction.  My father was in the  construction industry.  One of the first meetings I had,  widely unpopular, was with a  bunch of non-minority  contractors where I said this is  going to change.  We have to have diversity in  terms of our contractors.  And you can't set a quota, but I  set a guideline, 20% for  minority contractors.  We just opened a critical care  hospital.  I don't know whether your  daughter was gone before that  hospital opened.  $185 million hospital.  It's got 230 beds.  It has 120 ICU beds. 

 Brand new 40 bed NICU unit.  20 bed burn unit, the only major  burn unit in Virginia.  And we didn't get 20% but we got  19% in the most sophisticated  building we've ever built.  Because we've worked with these  contractors to develop skills.  That's something a university  can do and should do.  So how are you working with  local contractors.  It's nice to have major  international contractors come  to Madison, but they need to  partner with local people in  terms of both architecture and  in terms of building.  So the whole purchasing.  Developer, used to be that you  would want to build a new  building and the community would  go nuts about your building the  new building.  It's an intrusion. 

 And the classic case of this was  when Columbia in the 1960s  wanted to build a new gymnasium  in Morningside Heights.  They never got it done because  the community went nuts about  that.  Now communities are begging  would you please put this new  building in our direction  because it will reshape the  whole development in the  community.  And the classic case of this is  in Cambridge and Boston,  Massachusetts, Harvard.  Harvard is moving to move most  of their big science into  Boston, across the river, behind  the business school.  Now they've suspended a lot of  those capital construction  projects much to the concern of  Mayor Menino, but the plan is  clearly there.  That they cannot renovate  enough, the buildings that were  built a century ago or 50 years  ago for modern science so  they're just leapfrogging across  the river into Boston.  And the community loves it.  The community is trying to  figure out how to help them  because that will reform that  whole community.  Now you go and listen to the  community. 

 We were a land-locked campus.  I was appointed president the  day before St.  Patrick's Day, 1990, March 16th.  I walked into a room about this  size.  There were probably 100 people  in the room, and the first  two-thirds of them in the front  were allegedly happy there was a  new president and I was the new  president.  The third in the back were  holding picket signs.  VCU is a bad neighbor.  VCU should go north not south.  Because what VCU had done,  Virginia Commonwealth  University, was to devise a  master plan that was going to go  into a neighborhood and never  talk to the neighbors about it.  And this was a tough  neighborhood. 

 They weren't about to put up  with it.  So they got all the garden clubs  of Virginia and society of  Richmond and everybody started  pummeling the university and  nobody was defending the  university.  So I walked in and I said I've  got a problem.  So what we did was we pulled the  master plan back, that got us  some cheap points, and then sat  down with the community to  figure out where was the best  place.  Well, it turns out Oregon Hill,  this neighborhood, working class  neighborhood, was right.  We didn't need to go south we  needed to go north.  Well, go north and you hit the  main street in the city of the  Richmond, Broad Street, which  had become bedraggled over the  years.  Automobile dealerships had gone  to the suburbs.  There were vacant lots all over  the place.  And we said we're going to go up  to Broad Street, one block  beyond it, but not into the  African American neighborhood  called Carver, but we'll work  very closely with Carver. 

 So in the end we put $100  million into that neighborhood.  The community, we put in a new  Lowes in downtown Richmond.  They put a brand new Kroger's in  downtown Richmond.  They put about $140 million.  So in a six block area you have  $250 million of development,  changes a whole atmosphere.  But the point I'm saying about  working with your neighborhood  was the African American  community, Carver, thought the  back of our new field house  looked like it was a prison so  we had to open it up.  You got to listen to your  neighbors, but you are a major  developer and when you expand  your medical center, when you  consider building research park  squared, phase two, that's a  major development.  You need to work with your  neighbors, but they're delighted  to see the university grow and  move in that direction.  So you've got so far employment,  purchasing, developing.  You are clearly an incubator. 

 And this university has been an  incubator for a very long period  of time.  And that is becoming more and  more important.  And then the strategic presence  of the university.  As part of that strategic  presence you're back to the  whole healthcare, and I can't  emphasize how important that is  to this whole lexicon of  providing healthcare and  becoming, look at how many  people go to the Mayo Clinic.  How many people will go to the  Cleveland Clinic.  And it's not just from those  states.   People go from all over the  country.  I'm going to the Mayo Clinic.  Are they yet coming to Madison  from outside of Wisconsin?  Some.  More can come given the  specialists that you have here. 

 Now, with all that said, if you  look at UW Madison, you clearly  are evolving what the Wisconsin  idea is.  It's not frozen in time because  times are changing.  And I can think of at least two  advantages of the system for UW  Madison.  I know you blow hot and cold and  so does Katharine Lyall and so  do I even though we were part of  the system.  One is clearly enrollment  management.  You have been able to refocus UW  Madison because there's a system  and growing enrollments at  campuses other than the  University of Wisconsin Madison,  and that clearly has helped in  terms of UW Madison and it's  development.  So your land-grant mission is  evolving and sometimes the other  campuses of the University of  Wisconsin are helping you in  this.  I think they're also helping in  this whole idea of economic  development that Madison doesn't  have to put satellites out.  Economic development satellites,  those satellites are in fact UW  Eau Claire, UW Stevens Point.  And you can work with those  institutions. 

 The intellectual capital that  you've developed through WARF is  legendary.  And WARF is clearly the  granddaddy.  The technology transfer that  goes on.  I am just stunned physically  with the research park.  Going back to those  conversations with the Board of  Regents that you and Buzz were  leading in 1986, 1990.  I mean, the board was asking the  question is this actually going  to work.  Is there going to be anything  there there?  And you look at what you got  now.  4,000 people, 1. 5 million  square feet and phase two.  By god, the marching band ought  to go out there and play the  victory march.  And think of what Madison would  be without that component of  technology. 

 Workforce development, now is  another thing you are.  There are clearly tensions  between the university, and with  all universities and their  communities, and perhaps they  were epitomized by John Wiley's  much celebrated piece that  really made the rounds, I guess  before he got out, the article  he did in 2008 in Madison  Magazine.  But I want to tell you he was  voicing the frustration of a  whole bunch of university  presidents.  We are asked to do more and more  and more.  We're asked to be  internationally competitive  research universities and  essentially we're all being  privatized.  Right now 16% of this general  fund of the budget of Virginia  Commonwealth University is from  the commonwealth of Virginia.  We got a $2. 6 billion budget  and 16%.  And going down by $25 million  this year because of the state  cuts.  But I guess what I want to stop  with is this idea is not going  away.  There is something in it for the  university. 

 You can keep really good faculty  members who can balance teaching  and research and the development  of their intellectual properties  through the creative policies  that you have here, and you're  just part of a larger phenomena  that's going on across the  world.  But I do want to say my four  years here certainly helped me  understand, I'll go back to  those two issues, big science  and the Wisconsin idea, and for  that I'm very grateful.  Thank you, very much.  I'll be pleased to answer any  questions.  (applause)