While the four of us might stay the same, Wisconsin is certainly about to embark on its most dramatic era of change.
The rapidly changing face of Wisconsin that we just painted will create tough new challenges:
How will we create the jobs of tomorrow?
How will we fill the gap created by a shrinking workforce?
How will we educate our youth to prepare them for these challenges?
How will we care for a decidedly older population?
And what will the role of government be?
The Face of our Future – and the answers to these important questions – will be determined by the actions we take today, in these hallowed halls and in our cherished communities across Wisconsin.
Our work starts in the same place as at the dawn of the last century, with the economy.
Without a strong economy, we cannot improve education, provide better health care, help the poor and disadvantaged, enhance our environment or protect our citizens from crime.
Ladies and gentlemen, the face of our future economy lies in this little tube and many others like it in laboratories across Wisconsin.
Unlocking the mysteries to this small strand of DNA is just one way we will ignite a New Industrial Revolution through the unlimited potential of the bioscience and high technology industries.
New discoveries in science and technology will create high-skill, high-paying jobs in Wisconsin. These jobs will provide a higher quality of life for our families and a brain gain for our state.
A driving force behind this new economy will be the New Wisconsin Idea, a bold new partnership between the University of Wisconsin and the private sector.
In the early 1900s, scientific pioneers at the University of Wisconsin revolutionized the state's agriculture industry by developing ways to measure milk quality, reduce feed spoilage and eliminate disease in dairy herds.
Today, the science being developed in our university laboratories is literally spawning new companies that make the technology and products to bring new discoveries to the marketplace.
Now, all the average person really knows about these high-tech companies is to buy lots of stock. So let's take a moment to move beyond the hype and literally put a Face on our Future economy.
With the help of today's technology and Ameritech, we have joining us from the University of Wisconsin Biotechnology Center David Schwartz, a world-renowned genetics and chemistry professor who we recruited from New York University as part of our recent $1.5 million investment in star faculty. And from Third Wave Technologies here in Madison is company CEO Lance Fors.
(Biotechnology Demonstration)
Thank you Lance and David and keep up the great work.
The economic potential for biotechnology and high technology companies is incredible. For example, UW professor Michael Sussman and his partners used research at the UW to create a company called Nimblegen that will make DNA chips.
Brokerage houses assess the market for these DNA chips at $1 billion immediately– with room to expand to $40 billion in the next decade.
Imagine the next Microsoft being developed right here in Wisconsin. Already, the race is on to see which state will create the Silicon Valley of 2000 and put its people out front with exciting and lucrative new career opportunities. As one of the top 10 technology states in America, Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to lead the pack.
But to win this race, we must make the right investments to fully grow these industries and make Wisconsin more competitive. Make no mistake: Our economy is soaring today, but that can all change if we don't aggressively prepare for tomorrow.
We should begin by strengthening our position as the nation's leader in biotechnology research. I present to you tonight a new $317 million BioStar initiative to build a series of state-of-the-art research centers on the University of Wisconsin campus.
BioStar would round out a $909 million investment in our science and research infrastructure that includes WISTAR, HealthStar, the Biotech faculty initiative and our venture capital funding. This will give Wisconsin a distinct competitive advantage over our closest competitors: California, Colorado, Washington and the Northeast.
With your support, we can begin planning a new addition to the Biotechnology Center this year, followed by construction of a new Microbial Sciences Building, a new Biochemistry Building and a new Interdisciplinary Biology Building.
These facilities will allow us to hire 100 new faculty members and strengthen our world-renowned team of scientists. Two shining members of this team are with us tonight, UW researchers Laura Kiessling and Jill Banfield – recent winners of the prestigious McArthur Foundation Genius Awards.
Most importantly, BioStar will allow us to educate and train the scientists and researchers for the workforce of tomorrow. With 30 percent of our incoming freshmen at the UW majoring in the biosciences, let's expand their opportunities by developing a Masters Degree in Biotechnology.
S400
Next, we must create a new High Tech Corporation to aggressively attract and develop the companies of the new economy -- letting these entrepreneurs know Wisconsin is the place to be for opportunity and prosperity. The director of this new endeavor will be Dick Leazer, who is with us tonight.
Our high-tech corporation will build rural Wisconsin as well.
Let's not lose sight that while some of the most far-reaching discoveries may be taking place in our labs, some of their biggest benefactors will be on the farm. Genome mapping of corn, rice and soybeans are plowing new fields of profitability for farmers.
These technologies will allow farmers to produce new value-added crops and milk -- and give our dairy farmers new opportunities to overcome egregious federal dairy policies that are driving milk prices too low.
Two great examples of the future are Gala Design and Vienna Pharms. They're both raising cows that produce milk fortified with biopharmaceuticals. They are literally turning milk into medicine.
Please welcome Bob Bremel of Gala Design, Mark Clark of Vienna Pharms and Joel and Jeff Henschel, two Green Bay dairy farmers. They represent the face of the future in Wisconsin agriculture.
The new economy will not only give us new products to buy, but it will change how we buy them.
Imagine the day in the not-too-distant future when we will accomplish all our daily tasks with one standard appliance. We'll pay our bills, buy our groceries, manage our household and get our entertainment all through our TV set. And we'll only need one clicker.
E-commerce is so simple even a Governor can use it. Let me show you.
I have a new, good friend in the Governor of California, Gray Davis. But poor Gray is in a tough spot. He leads a state that can't play football and can't make good cheese.
He owes me 86 pounds of that fishbait they call California cheese because the Badgers whipped his alma mater Stanford in the Rose Bowl. But to be fair to my new friend, I want to send him the equivalent to 86 pounds of his cheese – 1 pound of our world championship Wisconsin cheese.
Gray needs to know what real cheese tastes like. He's living a deprived life out there.
So I'm going on-line to our great Wisconsin company, Swiss Colony, and with the simple click of a mouse, I'm going to make Gray's day. This is a great example of how a partnership between two Wisconsin companies, Swiss Colony and TDS, is helping them both succeed through E-Commerce.
Main Street businesses and corporations built today's strong economy. Now, we need to help these companies use E-Commerce to better compete and increase their profits.
To do so, our Department of Commerce will create a new focus on turning existing business incubators into e-business stimulators. And Dr. Raj Veeramani of UW-Madison is leading a new consortium of higher education, business and state government to makesure we take the greatest advantage of our newest tool of commerce. Companies like Lands End are leading Wisconsin into the future of E-Commerce.
Once online, businesses must have the certainty and the security that transactions are binding.
By passing an Electronic Transfer Act, Wisconsin will surpass other states by ensuring electronic purchases, contracts and signatures are completely legal – drastically reducing overhead and improving the bottom line.
And finally, we must make sure consumers have access to the Cyber Marketplace. So pass Speaker Jensen and Representative Hutchison's tax exemption for Internet access.
Growing our economy and changing the face of industry in Wisconsin will pose an incredible challenge for our workforce. Where will the workers of the future come from? And how will they learn the skills to succeed?
In just 16 short years, the number of people leaving the workforce will outstrip the number of people entering the job market. This will greatly exacerbate the worker shortage we have today in Wisconsin.
Rising to this challenge will require us to change the Face of the Future for the Wisconsin worker.
More seniors will be needed in our classrooms, science factories and service industries -- changing the very definition of "retirement." People may retire in their mid-50s to enjoy five to seven years of rest and relaxation before beginning a new "twilight" career. Or seniors may go directly into that new career as technology makes it easier to work without sacrificing health or time with their grandchildren.
The new economy will need the talents of the disabled as well as dynamic women entrepreneurs like Shirley Lanier, who founded Legacy Bank in Milwaukee.
And W-2 will need to build upon its remarkable success at helping former welfare mothers thrive in the workforce.
Next month, I will be unveiling a new study that shows just how incredibly successful W-2 is at moving families from welfare to work. The results will underscore why Harvard University hails W-2 as one of the most innovative programs in America.
To help working families meet their child care needs, we should develop the marketplace for second- and third-shift child care centers. The jobs of tomorrow certainly won't be 9-to-5. A $1 million investment now will pay big dividends for our families and businesses.
And finally, meeting our workforce demands will force us to look at the sensitive issue of crime-and-punishment in a different light. We have the lowest crime rate in 30 years because we're keeping the bad guys off the street. But we need to turn these bad guys back into good guys – because we need them to fill jobs and support their families.
An inmate can't leave prison, get a job and succeed if he can't read. Therefore, I am instructing the Department of Corrections to target the necessary resources for basic reading skills and GED studies so that no inmate will leave prison without being able to read and fill out a job application.
Instead of hitting the sack, inmates will be hitting the books.
An inmate also can't get a job if addicted to drugs or alcohol. So let's build upon our recent $40 million investment in prison rehabilitation programs by creating an alternative treatment program for felony drug offenders. Judges would be able to sentence criminals with no prior record or weapon offenses to this special program, where inmates will get treatment, attend class, and learn job and parenting skills.
I want to give credit for this concept to a strong partnership between Corrections Secretary Jon Litscher, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Michael Skwierawski and District Attorney E. Michael McCann.
S401
At the same time, let's put 100 new probation and parole agents on the streets of Milwaukee County so criminals make a safe transition back into the community. These agents do make a difference.
While we're talking about sentencing alternatives, pass the proposed changes to the criminal penalties code. I appreciate the tough work the Assembly did on this matter; now it's time to finish the job. We need to give our judges more authority to make sure the punishment truly fits the crime in Wisconsin.
Furthermore, we plan to bring all women inmates back to Wisconsin by year's end.
If these changes to correction's policy succeed, we can turn today's criminals into productive members of our workforce.
The bottom line is that we need to take advantage of the talent and skills of each and every person in Wisconsin.
The Face of the Future Wisconsin school must change too if we are to change the face of the Wisconsin worker. Learning will start from the earliest days of life and last throughout our golden years.
To accommodate the new learning needs of our society, our system of schools must be seamless -- flexible and dynamic enough to prepare our youngest student and our oldest worker for the tasks for the new economy. And the world must literally be the classroom with the help of our Study Abroad grants, international education initiative and distance learning technology.
The jobs of tomorrow will require students and workers to get high-skill training from technical college as well as greater expertise from a university. And workers will need to go back to these schools for more training throughout their careers.
We've talked for years about building this seamless system of schools. And programs like youth options, school-to-work, 2+2+2 and a new Virtual Technical High School are laying the foundation. Now, it's time to get it done.
I'm calling on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the Wisconsin Technical College System Board to meet and overcome the final barriers to a truly integrated system of higher education.
Our K-12 schools must be the foundation for this new seamless system. Our schools are good. But being good today is not good enough for tomorrow.
Competition is clearly helping us build strong schools and improve the education of our children. Nowhere is this more evident than in charter schools, where the collaboration between parents and educators is awe-inspiring.
Just look at the Milwaukee Science Consortium – a new charter school developed by UW-Milwaukee and the Medical College of Wisconsin that will emphasize science and math. Can you think of a better idea for a school for the science-based economy of the next century?
The opportunity for these education partnerships must be available statewide, so I am proposing an expansion of the charter school program to allow any state university or technical college to develop its own school.
If we put power back in the hands of our parents and educators, they will create an education revolution that builds the dynamic schoolroom of the future.
Competition can help us push our students harder in math and science as well.
Sheppard Mollick, a parent and school board member from suburban Milwaukee, wants to stimulate more interest in science in his community by starting a science fair. Shep, it's a great idea, but let's take it even further by creating a State Science Fair. The winner would receive a full scholarship for their undergraduate and graduate studies at any University of Wisconsin System School.
We must also do a better job teaching our children to read, for reading is fundamental to all learning.
A recent National Education Goals Panel Report shows that progress in reading scores by Wisconsin fourth-graders has remained flat since 1992. That's not good enough for America's Education State.
To push Wisconsin forward, I am proposing an aggressive Excellence in Reading Initiative that:
⋅ Directs $1 million to develop innovative reading academies around the state.
⋅ Invests $350,000 to distribute the "best reading practices" over the Internet.
⋅ And convenes a statewide Governor's Reading Summit to be chaired by our First Lady, Sue Ann Thompson, with the help of Barbara Manthei of the Governor's Office of Literacy.
Our children must spend more time reading books and less time trading Pokemon cards.
If our children can't read, they can't participate in the new economy.
As we push our children and teachers harder, let's make sure we are rewarding success in the process. A new program called Award for Achievement creates a stronger correlation between the performance of our schools and the earning potential of our educators.
The framework for this program would set standards of accountability, such as:
⋅ Schools would have to test 95 percent of their students
⋅ Scores would have to improve for all students, including disadvantaged.
