University of Wisconsin chancellor served on Obama’s commerce team
Rebecca Blank, an economist who served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and was acting commerce secretary under President Barack Obama, died Feb. 17. She was 67.
The death was announced in a statement by the University of Wisconsin, which gave no other details. In July, Ms. Blank announced that she had an aggressive form of cancer.
The illness forced her to step aside from a new job as president of Northwestern University.
“Becky was a transformational leader for Uw-madison, serving during challenging times,” said Provost Karl Scholz, the school’s chief academic officer. “Early in her tenure, she helped navigate difficult budget cuts; late in her tenure, the covid pandemic. She was wise and decisive.”
She was chancellor in Madison from 2013 to 2022. Ms. Blank was credited with creating Bucky’s Tuition Promise — named after the school’s Badger mascot — which guarantees scholarships and grants for students from households with an income of $65,000 or less.
She announced her cancer diagnosis just weeks after leaving her post at the University of Wisconsin.
She had been an economics professor at Northwestern earlier in her career.
Rebecca Margaret Blank was born Sept. 19, 1955, in Columbia, Mo. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota in 1976 and her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983.
She taught from 1989 to 1999 at Northwestern University, including a stint as director of its Joint Center for Poverty Research. She was the dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan from 1999 to 2007. In the late 1990s, she served on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton.
Her academic work has focused heavily on poverty and government assistance to the poor.