Message from the chair

Posted on 14. Dec, 2011 by in ISyE News archive

Vicki Bier

Professor and Chair Vicki Bier

It is difficult to believe that by the time you are reading this letter, I will have been chair of the UW-Madison Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering for almost a year. It’s been quite a year, too, with all of the political and budget upheaval in the state of Wisconsin this year.

Unfortunately, though, Wisconsin is not unique. As with most other public universities, the future financial health of the department will be increasingly dependent on gift funding, since the share of state funding per student has been declining for a number of years. Thus, donations will be increasingly important to support everything from nice “extras” (like orientation meetings and scholarship receptions) to endowed professorships that enable us to remain a top 10 department.

People are not used to thinking of donations as being crucial to public universities the way they are to private universities. Still, it’s important for alumni of all ages and income brackets to start thinking about ways in which they can “give back” to their alma mater. Of course, large gifts like endowed professorships or major estate gifts are always nice.

However, small gifts count too! After all, our median donation amount has doubled over the last few years, and is now $100. If all donors gave the median amount, doubling the number of alumni who have ever donated to the department from 500 to 1,000 people would raise $50,000. If all of the alumni from the class of 2011 gave just $20, that would raise almost $2,500 for the department—enough to fund the department’s colloquium series for a semester!

Making a multi-year pledge further enhances the value of your gift.

Here are some examples to give you an idea of how much difference your donations can make to the department:

  • If you’re interested in enhancing the educational experiences of our students, think about the fact that $250 can provide a digital camcorder for use in design courses, $1,000 can pay for a graduate student to present research results at a major national conference, and $2,000 can provide audiovisual equipment for a teaching lab.
  • If you care about student recruitment, retention and recognition, you should know that $4,000 funds a semester of tuition for a student in economic hardship; $6,000 can supplement a research or teaching assistantship to help recruit a top student.
  • Finally, if you’re in the position to make a larger gift in support of faculty recruitment and retention, $75,000 can fund a start-up package for an exceptional new faculty member, and $100,000 can provide partial salary support plus flexible research funding for an outstanding professor for a year.

So, please keep the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in mind in your giving plans not only this year, but on into the future. In the meantime, I hope to hear from many of you to find out how you’re doing in your careers.

As you can see from this issue, we are starting to profile some of our alumni (and donors) in our newsletter. We would like to continue publicizing alumni achievements, so please do update us on how you’re doing in your careers.

The faculty and staff of the department join me in wishing you all a happy holiday season and a great year in 2012!

Vicki Bier
Professor and Chair

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