Reflections from the Director’s Corner Office

by Harvey M. Jacobs

I took up the position of LTC director after a year away from the UW campus, including spending the spring in Florence, Italy, where I taught for the university as part of our cooperative junior year abroad program with the University of Michigan. Toward the end of my stay I began planning my directorship. But as is often the case, events overtook planning (a hard lesson for someone trained as an urban planner!).

Days before I formally began my tenure we had the tragic death in South Africa of Scott Kloeck-Jenson and his family—this event has overshadowed much of the last few months for all at LTC; only a few weeks ago we had the Madison-based memorial service. Then during my first month, Paul Strasberg the economist who worked closely with Scott Kloeck-Jenson on the Mozambique project, resigned to take another position; John Bruce formally requested a 50% leave to take up a new position at World Bank (John began that position on September 1st, and now resides full time in the Washington, D.C., area); and we almost lost Peter Bloch and his faculty spouse Marianne (former LTC Fellow) to another university. Thankfully they decided to stay, but Peter is now 50% with the Department of Forest Ecology and Management.

Despite these personnel challenges, I continue to move forward with my plans for a “re-invention and re-engineering” of LTC for the twenty-first century. We have adopted a new mission statement (see our web site), and I have re-constituted an advisory board of nine UW faculty and staff from five different colleges. One of my goals is to move LTC into greater integration with UW and Wisconsin state agencies. Toward this end, I have been meeting broadly and exploring ways in which LTC can help fulfill all aspects of the university’s mission—research, outreach, and teaching. If LTC is to prosper we have to become even more relevant to UW, as UW itself changes.

Elton Aberle, Dean of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and Ken Shapiro, Associate Dean for International Agricultural Programs, share my excitement about the significance of LTC for the future. The reasons for LTC’s founding are as pertinent today as they were in 1962—throughout the globe social conflict over land tenure is ever-present, and thus the need to find workable solutions for land tenure problems is central to programs for economic development and social improvement. The challenge is to position LTC to continue playing the pivotal role it has over these decades.