TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION TROUBLES? In March, Wisconsin-Milwaukee's vice-provost for research and graduate school dean Abbas Ourmazd had high hopes.

Ourmazd's arrival was a coup for the university, said UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago, who recruited him. Santiago wants to transform UWM into an "entrepreneurial university" that acts as a piston of innovation for a blue-collar metropolis that has been hard-hit by global competition.

Santiago and Ourmazd agree that the stakes are high. Milwaukee ranked 48th among the nation's 50 biggest cities in a University of Kansas index that rates each city's economic prospects according to its volume of research grants, venture capital and stock offerings in new companies.

"He was courted by other schools" that already boast fully developed research programs, Santiago said. "We're trying to build this from the ground up. He was very excited about the potential, and that's what attracted him."

The arrival last July of Ourmazd, 51, an Oxford-educated scientist who has been a close colleague of several Nobel Prize physicists, adds momentum to Santiago's vision. In his two years as chancellor, Santiago has begun overhauling how the school allocates its research budget, with the goal of rewarding entrepreneurship. With influential UWM alumni, he has launched fund-raising initiatives to finance new resources, salaries and eventually a new state-of-the-art engineering building.

He noted that more resources would be required to follow through on the research his colleagues were doing.

The biggest problem, [engineering professor Nikolai] Kouklin said, would take place if and when he publishes any breakthrough research. Universities with more advanced facilities would recognize its applications and advance Kouklin's research beyond what UWM can support.

"It's like the old prospector who finds gold but gets muscled out by the bandits," Ourmazd said. "We cannot afford that."

In July, he's simply Professor Ourmazd.

Abbas Ourmazd, vice chancellor of research and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is threatening to resign unless he receives more support from Chancellor Carlos Santiago.

In addition to the downside of technology commercialization, which is that every upwardly mobile university is trying it, there is the downside that the education and humanities and theoretical mathematicians also have research ambitions.

Ourmazd, whose contract allows him to assume a faculty position in the physics department, would not discuss in detail the reasons for his resignation, saying only that the "processes and resources" had not been aligned with the chancellor's research mission.

But Rita Cheng, the university's provost, disagreed.

"The campus community and I have been fully supportive of the Chancellor's research agenda since the time of his arrival at UWM," Cheng said in an e-mail. "I believe we have accomplished a great deal in a short period of time and have great potential for continued research growth."

Translation: departments other than physics and engineering want theirs, too. And they have votes on the university council.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was roiling in shock and confusion Thursday to news that its research czar had threatened to resign, with the administration sending mixed messages about whether the resignation was final and the rank and file expressing mixed feelings about leadership of the university.

It's not simply about "credibility," these paragraphs notwithstanding.

But Ourmazd cracked that credibility when he informed Santiago and the Graduate School earlier this week of his intention to resign and told the Journal Sentinel that the "processes and resources" had not been aligned with the chancellor's research mission.

It revealed divisions within the administration and the broader campus over the direction of the university.

"Changing the course of the Titanic is not easy," said Virginia Carlson, a professor of urban planning. "Bringing on board someone like Abbas raises conversations about the direction of UWM within the administration."

Reading between the lines: technology commercialization and advanced physics and graduate students uses resources that might be used for general studies and retention and remediation efforts, and doubtless other projects -- last June the string quartet -- that have influential friends outside the university and votes on the university council. Carlos is not the only colleague who is up against those pressures. It's his responsibility to make the final decisions. Professor Ourmazd, as a successful inventor and grant-getter, has greater free agency value. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel continues to show its irritation with the University of Wisconsin system, using the "backup job" rhetoric to describe Professor Ourmazd's return to faculty.

Ourmazd, who will assume a backup job on the UWM faculty as a physics professor, said in the statement: "I came to UWM to help build the research initiative. I am pleased with what we have accomplished and believe that, going forward, I can best serve the university in the capacity of a contributing member of the faculty and an active researcher. I look forward to working with world-class colleagues in our Department of Physics. I remain convinced of Chancellor Santiago's vision for UWM and will continue to support him in every possible way."

He's a free agent. Anybody want to wager he isn't raided by February? But the "backup job" language grates. Under university rules, deans are members of a faculty. (Associate and Assistant usually; anything with "vice-" in front of it is suspect.) That fewer of them are temporary administrators in the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain model does not mean the rule has lost its utility.