University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly announced the finalists for the position of chancellor at UW-Madison on Thursday after a 25-member search and screen committee winnowed the field of candidates.
In addition to Blank, the finalists are: Nicholas P. Jones, dean of the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; Michael H. Schill, dean and law professor at the University of Chicago Law School; and Kim A. Wilcox, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Michigan State University.
The university is seeking a successor to UW-Madison Interim Chancellor David Ward, who has served in the role since July 2011, when former Chancellor Carolyn "Biddy" Martin left to become president of Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Ward's successor is expected to be named in April during a UW System Board of Regents meeting in La Crosse and to begin work this summer.
The four finalists will participate in a series of public forums from March 5 to March 13, offering opportunities for faculty, staff, students and community members to interact directly with them. The campus search and screen committee will post a schedule for those public conversations on its website,www.chancellorsearch.wisc.edu .
Reilly and a regent committee will then interview the finalists on March 15. Regent Charles Pruitt of Milwaukee chairs the committee. Other committee members are Regent Regina Millner of Madison, Regents President Brent Smith of La Crosse, Regent David Walsh of Madison and student Regent Katherine Pointer of UW-Madison.
The committee and Reilly will choose a finalist to bring before the Board of Regents for approval.
The salary range for the position was increased in December to bring it in line with the current market.
The new range of $426,500 to $522,500 is based on a UW System survey of comparable research universities. The previous range was $369,907 to $452,109.
At the time Martin left - after three years on the job - her salary was $437,000, not including benefits, which added about 25% to her total compensation. The perks of the job included Olin House - an 11,000-square-foot home with a full staff - and a personal skybox at Badgers football games.
Ward earns $437,000 as interim chancellor.
Martin resigned from the chancellor's post in June 2011 after leading a contentious and unsuccessful effort to split UW-Madison from the rest of the UW System, leaving a politically charged climate and questions about funding one of the nation's top research universities.
Gov. Scott Walker this week released a proposed budget for the 2013-'15 biennium that would restore more than half of the funding lost in the last two-year budget.
UW-Madison, the oldest and largest campus in the UW System, enrolls more than 42,000 students in 157 undergraduate majors, and conducts more than $1 billion worth of research annually.
About the finalists
Rebecca M. Blank: Blank has been with the U.S. Department of Commerce since 2009, serving first as undersecretary for economic affairs, then deputy secretary and acting secretary. She previously served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and from 1999-2008, was dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she also worked as a professor of public policy and economics. Before Michigan, she was a faculty member at Northwestern University and served as a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-'99.
Nicholas P. Jones: Jones has served as dean of the Whiting School of Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University since 2004. He joined the school in 1986 as a faculty member in the Department of Civil Engineering and was appointed chair of the department in 1999. Jones left Johns Hopkins in 2002 to head the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Michael H. Schill: Schill has been dean and a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School since 2010. He previously was dean and professor of law at the University of California-Los Angeles Law School. He's been a tenured professor at the New York University School of Law and Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Wharton School. He was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He's considered a national expert on real estate and housing policy and has written more than 40 books and articles on the subject.
Kim A. Wilcox: Wilcox has been provost and vice president for academic affairs at Michigan State University since 2005. At Michigan State, he's been a professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Before joining MSU, Wilcox was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and vice provost for general education coordination at the University of Kansas from 2002-'05. Wilcox has announced he will step down as provost at MSU on June 30. For the spring semester, he is on assignment with the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, in Washington, D.C.
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