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Inauguration of UW-Stout Chancellor Robert Meyer
April 2, 2015
Remarks by Lopa Basu, Faculty Senate Representative
I am Lopa Basu, Associate Professor of English and Director of Honors College at
UW-Stout. I serve as Faculty Senator for the College of Arts Humanities and Social
Sciences and also as a member of the Strategic Planning Group of the university. I
am here to represent the faculty and welcome Chancellor Bob Meyer as the
seventh chancellor of UW-Stout, and to speak about the unique place of UWStout as Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University.
Chancellor Meyer, as you all know, is not a newcomer at Stout. He has had a
twenty five year old association with Stout. He earned two degrees from Stout
and worked here as a member of the faculty and as an academic dean before
becoming President of Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College. He emerged as
the top candidate in the national search conducted, and in his short tenure since
his arrival as Chancellor of UW-Stout, he has already inspired us with his vision,
dedication, and willingness to work together to solve problems.
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Chancellor Meyer’s inauguration is a moment to celebrate the achievements of
University of Wisconsin-Stout. From our humble origins as Stout Manual Training
School in 1891, we have evolved into Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University in 2007.
We are a career focused comprehensive polytechnic university, dedicated to
applied learning, scientific theory, humanistic understanding and creativity to
solve real life problems. We are the only higher education institution that was
honored with the Malcolm Baldridge award in 2001. UW-Stout offers more than
forty six undergraduate majors and twenty one graduate degrees. We offer
unique majors like packaging engineering, game design and development,
professional communication and digital humanities, environmental science,
career and technical education, to name a few.
Our university houses centers that work collaboratively across disciplinary
boundaries. The Center for Applied Ethics enables students to become ethical
leaders. The Discovery Center at UW-Stout expands our polytechnic focus by
fostering inter-disciplinary collaboration and innovation. We are one of only two
UW campuses that have an Honors College.
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Our Honors Program was re-designated Honors College in 2012 and is dedicated
to promoting academic excellence, stimulating intellectual curiosity and preparing
students to develop to their fullest potential.
We have a diverse, engaged and high achieving faculty. Our faculty members are
passionate about innovative teaching, a commitment expressed institutionally
through the Nakatani Teaching and Learning Center. Our faculty compete
successfully with Research 1 peers to win highly sought after NSF grants to study
topics like the Wisconsin Wetlands or to investigate ways to solve the algae
growth in Lake Menomin. Our faculty publish books on campus hate speech,
children’s fantasy, immigration and exclusion politics and Algebraic
Cryptoanalysis. Faculty mentor students in undergraduate research and prepare
students not only for a 97% placement rate but also acceptance in graduate and
professional degree programs.
We bring advanced degrees, research, industry experience and a rich multiplicity
of cultures to the university. Many among us were first generation college
attendees. Some like myself are new citizens of the US.
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Together, we identify with the aspirations of our students, for a better life made
possible by a life of the mind. We re-dedicate ourselves to the idea of a university
being a motor of economic and social change for our state.
On behalf of the faculty, we welcome you, Chancellor Meyer, and look forward to
working with you.