Ian Robertson on Goals of UW-Madison Engineering Education

Frederica Freyberg:
Also in campus news, the dean of the UW-Madison School of Engineering has announced he is stepping down after 11 years in the role. The school has been at the center of a political storm over the last year, as Republican legislators held up approval of the new engineering building in a fight over diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the university. “Here & Now” senior political reporter Zac Schultz sat down with Ian Robertson to talk about why he’s stepping down now and what the new building means for students and the state.

Ian Robertson:
I thought this was a good time because things at the moment are very positive in the college. The trajectories are all in the right direction. So this is a good time.

Zac Schultz:
Your school has obviously been in the news a lot in the last year, having to do with the new building and some of the political controversy. Let’s talk about the building itself first and what it will mean for the ability to evolve into the future. What the education and the research does?

Ian Robertson:
Yes. So the new building did take a little bit longer than we were expecting to get approved. But the good thing is that it did get approved. What’s it going to do for the state of Wisconsin? We’re going to be able to take more students, right? There is a high demand at the moment from students to get an engineering degree from UW-Madison. We currently have 4800 undergraduates. We’re going to grow to at least 5500. That’s going to meet some of the student demand. It’s also going to help us meet demand from industries in the state of Wisconsin for more engineers. As I talked to the companies, they’re saying, when will you produce more engineers because we want to hire them and they have jobs for them. So the new building will enable that part. It’s also going to allow us to actually expand our research, right? We will be able to attract new faculty with the building. They will bring in new areas and environmental sustainability, AI machine learning, autonomous vehicles, robotics, all the areas that are important to Wisconsin-based industries and to the nation. So change our research portfolio. It’s going to allow us to do the growth that’s actually needed. I think these are good things happening. It’ll be good for the state.

Zac Schultz:
On the political side, were you surprised when the building became kind of a political football in the budget?

Ian Robertson:
Yes. I mean, it took — it did take longer, right? And so it was a surprise. But if we look at what really happened during that whole period, the support we got from companies in Wisconsin, from the people of Wisconsin, was actually just amazing, right? These weren’t all engineering companies. They weren’t all our engineering alum. It was people, companies, saying we need more engineers. UW-Madison has a plan to attract more engineering students that will meet demand. And they actually voiced their support for the building. So I’d like to just take this opportunity to thank all of them because I can’t thank them all in person. So this is a great opportunity for me to say thank you for all of the support that you gave us to get this new building. We won’t disappoint. We will live up to our end of the bargain. We will produce more engineers and we’ll develop great research.

Zac Schultz:
Some of the things that the UW was asked to give up or to change had to do with DEI. You have a vice chancellor for DEI. You have a very diverse student body within the engineering school. How do those all factor in together in terms of what the students felt about some of those sacrifices?

Ian Robertson:
Our commitment, the campus commitment to providing an environment that’s inclusive and welcoming for all continues. That’s not going to change, right? All of us want to work in an environment that’s — that we enjoy working in, that we enjoy learning in, and it’s absolutely essential that we do that here in the College of Engineering. When I talked to industries, they tell me that it’s important that they hire a diverse workforce, right? They say that the products that they get at the end are better if they bring in different perspectives. And so we need to do the same. The other part, I think that’s important is that engineering is facing a challenge in attracting more people. We currently have shortages in the number of engineers that we produce. If I think what’s coming with the CHIPS Act or semiconductors coming back in, the manufacturing come back to the U.S., the advances in clean energy sustainability, we’re going to need more and more engineers than we can produce, not only here in Wisconsin, but nationwide. So one of the challenges I see, and one of the hopes is that we can get more people excited about being in engineering and saying this is a great career path, because I can have an impact on society if I take this career. So we need to do all of these things.