Support UW System

I find it disturbing to read President Emeritus Katharine Lyall’s comments about the slide in the University of Wisconsin Madison’s national standing (“Stop UW’s slide,” Letters, Dec. 11).

I came to Wisconsin as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Enzyme Research many years ago because of its reputation and the strength of biochemical research on campus. I stayed on in Wisconsin as an academician at another university.

I think that most people do not have a sense of the worth of a great university and what is required to sustain it. I know from my experience as a dean just how difficult it is to build and maintain outstanding programs. Stable financial support, excellent colleagues and a secure research environment are absolutely essential. Without these elements, excellence slips away quickly and it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild when you start losing great faculty.

We cannot expect to keep a flagship university of Madison’s caliber, or the University of WisconsinMilwaukee for that matter, if we keep taking huge amounts of financial support from the system. Soon, other universities start poaching the most successful faculty and you see an accelerated slide in reputation and funding with the resultant damage to its contribution to our state.

If we continue to let this happen, it is going to be both difficult and extremely expensive to repair the damage, if our politicians even recognize the value in doing so.

Jack Brooks New Berlin