Interview with Dan Anhalt

LEH: All right. Can you just say your name and spell out your last name for the record?

DA: Sure. Dan Anhalt. A-n-h-a-l-t.

LEH: Okay. So I guess we'll start with just like preliminary questions about like your background, how you got started with UW, UW Colleges.

DA: Sure. And I will get you a copy of my resume shortly, too. I think I finally found out where it's archived. But yeah, I joined the UW Colleges in 2004. I worked in the private sector for about twenty-one years before that, working in human resources, training and development, employee relations, those types of things. Primarily for Fortune 1000 type firms. Discovered after doing that for a long time that flying three hundred thousand miles a year isn't as cool as it sounds. So I went back and finished my graduate work and went to work for UW Colleges at the UW Washington County campus. So that's in West Bend. And was in that position, or started there, actually, running their continuing education department. Built that up. There was a retirement within the business office for the assistant dean of finance and administration and facilities, and was promoted to that position.

And from there, I was probably only in that position for two years when the colleges went through the regionalization restructure. So that's the point at which literally everything within the UW Colleges was completely redesigned. We literally took every process that exists within the entire university, created what are called swim lanes for that. So diagrams showing the flow of every single thing, right down to admitting a student to paying a bill. And I was part of a number of the teams that did that restructuring that led to the regionalization process.

And at that point, was promoted to the regional associate dean for finance and administration, and then was also the campus administrator at Sheboygan. So I'm not sure if you've talked to folks who have talked about their roles in the regional structure. But we all had dual roles. So I always joke that we did our campus administrator position by day and we did our functional job by night. Which isn't really a joke. It was really true. (laughter)

LEH: Which is?

DA: So each of us, each region, well, the colleges, usually the colleges went from around fifty-four people who were responsible for running various campuses, because there were a number of assistant deans and associate deans, and then the dean at each campus. After regionalization, there were seventeen of 00:03:00us statewide instead of fifty-four. But for example, the Southeast Region, which I was a part of, was UW Sheboygan, UW Washington County and UW Waukesha. So I had two primary roles. One was to be responsible for the UW Sheboygan campus. So functioned in a dean-like position. But then I also had finance and administration and facilities, basically, for Sheboygan, Waukesha and Washington County. But then I had a counterpart in Washington. Her responsibility was to be campus administrator for the Washington County facility. But she was responsible for student affairs on all three campuses. And then the Waukesha person who was the campus administrator there, he was responsible for academic affairs on all three campuses. And then we reported to a regional dean, who then reported up to the chancellor. So there was basically the regional dean or the regional executive officer, and the three of us, who were responsible for that three-campus region.

Southeast Region at that time comprised about 34 percent of all the students in the UW colleges. So it had some of the larger campuses on it. So, lots of windshield time. Lots of back and forth between campuses. An incredible team to work with, though. They were just amazing people.

And then I was also on the restructuring teams then of course when UW Colleges started the transition towards technically not existing anymore, and then being associated with each of the comprehensives. So because Sheboygan went with UW Green Bay, I was part of that transition team for a while. But was offered the opportunity to either stay on as a campus executive officer at Green Bay, or to come back to West Bend, where I lived. Because I commuted from West Bend to Sheboygan for that three and a half, four years' time period. And become a part of UW Milwaukee. So for the last portion, probably a year of my career, I was technically an employee of UW Milwaukee, but working with finance and administration with UW Waukesha and UW Washington County.

So, lots of change in that five, six-year timespan. Tremendous amount. There were a lot of positions that were eliminated during the regionalization and restructuring. I mean, I think it ended up being eighty-some FTEs. I'm not sure if that's exactly right, but it was close to that. But it came out to about 130 people who lost their jobs during that time period through the restructuring.

LEH: Could you expand on what FTE--

DA: Sure. Fulltime equivalent. So that's how you could have 80 FTE but 130 people. Because part of those 130 people would have been part-time. Sure.

LEH: And so, 130. Is that in the region?

DA: That would have been statewide for the colleges. Yeah. And I don't have the exact numbers, but those were about what the numbers were.

LEH: So currently are you still with--

DA: Nope. I actually technically retired from the UW System in July.

LEH: (laughs) Oh, because all the information I could find said that you were still at like, it was from when you were like with Milwaukee.

DA: When I was with the UWM campus? So it's only been a few months, so it would still show that information. Yeah. But I retired to something else. So I work on a part time basis for an economic development consulting company and help run that, just on a part time basis. So I still get to use all my knowledge. Nobody ever takes away knowledge.

LEH: No.

DA: They just don't. I mean, that's my soapbox in life, typically. But I learned so much during the fifteen years I was with the colleges, and then the year with UW Milwaukee.

LEH: Yeah. So you said you were part of the restructuring effort.

DA: Mm hmm.

LEH: What was sort of like your role in the restructuring?

DA: Sure. I'll go back to the regionalization portion first when the UW Colleges went to the four different regions around the state. There were a number of teams that analyzed various parts of the colleges. So some teams analyzed the financial side and the facilities side and the administration side. Other teams looked at the student affairs side. So everything from recruiting through admissions to when someone's a student and the student affairs. Other teams looked at how to analyze and redesign economic affairs. How courses are structured, how faculty are dealt with, how ad hocs are utilized. All those kinds of things.

So, for example in our group, was Courtney O'Connell and then Stephen Schmid and I. And Jackie Joseph-Silverstein, who was the regional executive officer. You may have talked to Jackie at one point, right?

LEH: Yes. (laughs)

DA: Yeah, she's brilliant. She's just brilliant. I think she actually mentioned my name in this process, if I remember right. I mean, for us to meet.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: But yeah, she's absolutely brilliant. Don't tell her that, though. That's not good, right? (laughs) Because we had the best team, of course, for any of the regions.

So each of us were involved in multiple task forces and teams that were looking at all those processes and how the institutions should be designed. There were well over a hundred people around the state from all the thirteen different campuses in Madison, the central offices, who were involved in those redesign teams. And there was an outside consulting company as well called 00:09:00Huron, which was a part of that doing some of the background work and some of the design work and things like that.

Then when the movement towards aligning with the four-years, with the comprehensives, took place, I was on, oh, probably four different teams at UW Green Bay, plus another three or four at UW Milwaukee to try to help two of our campuses transition to Milwaukee and one of the campuses to Green Bay. So it was a lot of back and forth there. But it was how are we going to handle the budgetary process as it gets transitioned? How do the funds get moved over and transitioned? How do we handle IT being transitioned over to another institution, and when do all those things take place? And how do you align the technology?

I was involved in the piece that involved facilities transitioning over, and health and safety, and all those kinds of things. Literally thousands of details.

LEH: Yeah, it sounds like a lot. (laughs)

DA: I tell people I'm really only thirty-nine. I just look like I'm fifty-nine. (laughter)

LEH: So like in terms of funding, what were the major concerns with moving funding over?

DA: To the comprehensives, to the Milwaukees and that type of thing?

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Part of it is that the UW Colleges certainly weren't overfunded in any means. So the primary sources of funding in the UW Colleges would have been the tuition, and then it would be what's called GPR. So GPR is basically tax money. So that's state support that might come in and so it just means general program revenue. Lots of fancy terms for money that comes through the state via people paying taxes. And the amount of GPR per student that would come over is significantly less than what a UW Milwaukee might get. Or certainly a Madison. But it's a whole different story for Madison. There's a lot more infrastructure to support financially.

And the UW Colleges tuition, I'm not sure you're familiar with what that looks like, but it was always significantly less. So for example, a year of tuition and fees at one of the UW Colleges was about $5,100. So we saved students a ton of money. But it also meant a lot less money to work with to run the institution, right?

LEH: Yeah.

DA: So picture tuition that's less than what here at Madison would be. I don't even remember what it is right now, but I think undergraduate's probably close to twelve grand in tuition, if not even a little bit more. Do you recall?

LEH: Uh--

DA: Did you do your undergraduate here?

LEH: No.

DA: Okay. Where did you do your undergraduate?

LEH: SUNY Geneseo, it's a state university in New York.

DA: Okay. Yeah. New York. Yeah.

LEH: Which is where I'm from. So.

DA: Where in New York?

LEH: Brooklyn.

DA: Okay. All right. When I was in the private sector, I had offices throughout New York. But mostly Albany, Binghamton, all the hot spots.

LEH: Our nation's capital. (laughs) Nation! State.

DA: State's capital. I liked Albany. I like Syracuse a lot. Buffalo, yeah, I spent a week there one night. And I like Binghamton. That's a really pretty area, especially in fall.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: So how many people actually know where Binghamton is, right?

LEH: (laughs) Yeah.

DA: So when you take a look at those as funding sources, it truly restricts the amount of monies that are available. So the colleges were running at a deficit when the restructuring, both the regionalization took place and when the realignment with the four-years took place. So when the funding that used to rest with the colleges was moved over to the comprehensives or the four-years, it really isn't enough to cover all of the costs yet. So that leaves the UW Milwaukees and the Green Bays and the Plattevilles, Whitewaters, all of those, to figure out how they support those campuses without having all the revenue they need to do that with. Does that make sense?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. It does.

DA: So I mean, structural deficit just means every year you're taking in less money than what it costs to run the institution. So that's where we did so many of the cuts in regionalization. And not just cuts, but redesigned how we do things. Defined every efficiency as we could. And the four-years are doing that now. We found as many efficiencies as we could, again, once we went through the second redesign and restructuring.

LEH: Could you give like some examples of like what like an efficiency would be?

DA: Sure. I use facilities management. And the person who ran facilities and health and safety for our region is just really, really good at what he does. He works for UW Milwaukee now, but he runs the facilities for Waukesha and Washington. So instead of having a building director of a building superintendent for every campus, under regionalization we went to where there was one for all three campuses. But stopped having them have a tool belt on. They weren't actually doing any repair work, those kinds of things. They were managing all of those functions. So you go from three to one there.

And then taking the people on each campus where there are campuses close together. And for any downtime or efficiencies you could gain there, we would have an HVAC, heating, ventilation, air conditioning person. Someone 00:15:00who fixes that kind of thing. They wouldn't just be on one campus. If there was something that broke on a campus close to, nearby, or there's a big replacement project going on, you bring some of the workforce from campus to campus to do those kinds of things. You don't have health and safety people on every single campus. We had someone who did that for the entire colleges. We consolidated other things.

Another example would be the business office. So we used to have a business office on every campus. Students could pay tuition face to face at the business office. All of the funds that were tuition-based and fee-based and permit-based and all those kinds of things would be taken care of on the campus itself. That's not a very efficient way to do it.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: So a more efficient way to do it was all payments were paid into one central location here in Madison. I mean, when's the last time you wrote a check for something or paid it in cash when dealing with school? Maybe a check, but not paying it in cash.

LEH: Yeah. Right.

DA: So we set up a process by which students could pay by e-check. And didn't charge for it. They could pay by credit card with a small service fee. And those were the two primary methods. So, e-check or credit card. Or they could mail the check, right? But all of it came here to Madison. A lot of people took advantage of the e-check because we didn't charge for it. And it was just taking it right out of your account the way it is.

And then that eliminated a number of finance-type positions on each campus. So it took away some of that personal touch of you being able to walk up and talk to somebody. But you could still call people and talk to them with questions that you might have. And students, I didn't get a single student complaint about us moving to a centralized method of collecting tuition and fees. So that's an example of creating an efficiency.

LEH: Yeah. I'm just like thinking of that in terms of like digital literacy, maybe. What, were there like certain efficiencies that were made of like making things more like digital access, as opposed like that's kind of an example.

DA: Yeah, that is an example. Because one of the digital access was students being able to access their accounts in different ways than they could before. And that obviously creates efficiencies for students as well. Some parents struggle with it a little bit.

LEH: Yeah. (laughs)

DA: They're just not as comfortable with technology, maybe. But actually, the only complaint I ever got about that was from a parent whose daughter was probably about your age, maybe just a year or two younger, I'm guessing. And the parent was like, "Well how in the world can I do this? I want it to 00:18:00come out of my checking account. I don't want to mail it."

I said, "We can do e-checks."

"Well, I would have nowhere to start."

Her daughter was standing behind her going, "Mom, be quiet. I'll show you." (laughter) It was one of those kinds of deals. But it's educating parents and walking through that process and making sure everybody understands it, too.

Students used to sign terms and conditions agreements in many places by paper. Are you familiar with what that means? Terms and conditions are if you're going to go on the payment plan for tuition?

LEH: Right. Yeah.

DA: Yeah. So we automated all of that so that before students could sign up for courses, in order for their account to be released, they had to sign the terms and conditions document electronically and go through the training electronically as opposed to a hard copy kind of approach to life.

LEH: So I'm sort of curious when it comes to like payment plan stuff, with the like sort of demographic makeup of the colleges, how does like having something in person versus making it like an online process sort of change maybe like how it's being viewed? Or did you notice any differences? Was it pretty much like smooth sailing?

DA: Yeah. That's a very intuitive question. Because the answer is no, it's not as smooth sailing as if it's in person. But it's because of the demographic makeup of the colleges' students. We had a very high generation of first-generation college students. I'm one. I was the first person to get a degree, a four-year degree, in my family. So that's a whole different method. Parents of first-generation college students are very supportive. But they have no idea what it's like to go through finals or pick out classes or deal with the financial FAFSA process and all those kinds of things.

So we had people on campus who would triage some of that. Think of it kind of like a first-level help desk. And they'd answer some of the basic questions. But other help was from a distance. And that could be done by Skype, it could be done by phone, it could be done by email. But it is different than having somebody sit across the table and walk you through how to do the FAFSA form. So, for first-generation college students, I think that that might have been a little bit, viewed as a little bit less of a service level. Does that make sense?

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Veterans as well. That was a centralized function. So veterans' assistance was handled in the same distance kind of approach, with the exception that there were people in student affairs who could handle the first, call it first-level help desk or concierge kind of questions that might come up. But things that got a little bit deeper then had to be deferred to someone at central who coordinated veterans' affairs, for example.

Disability services, same thing.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: So, yeah, so our demographic was always slightly different than a 00:21:00lot of four-year schools where it might be the third child going to school already and everybody's got a lot of experience with it. Our percentage of part time students to fulltime students was also quite high on the part time side. Because our students were typically working 25, 30 hours a week and taking as many classes as they possibly could. Because many of them were paying their way through school. As opposed to getting other kind of assistance from home.

I love working with first-generation college students. It's so much fun.

LEH: Really? Yeah?

DA: Oh, yeah. Because everything's possible and wide open. And they work super hard at getting it done. And we had a fairly high percentage of returning adult students, too. However you want to define it. The colleges defined it as someone over twenty-tow as defined by age. But that's not always accurate, either, in terms of a quote "nontraditional student." You could have a seventeen year-old young lady who has a child who's trying to go to college. That's not a traditional student, right? She's dealing with a whole separate list of issues that somebody who's twenty-five and single is dealing with. Yeah, so our demographics were pretty cool.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: You can't tell I enjoyed it.

LEH: (laughs) Yeah, no, I definitely can.

DA: It was a great experience.

LEH: I can see where depending on the demographics and like balancing that stuff, it would be different than here in Madison where things--

DA: Mm hmm. Where you might have very structured first-year experience courses and programs.

LEH: Yeah, yeah.

DA: Whereas in the colleges, our job was to get those students ready to move on to a four-year program. We have collaborative baccalaureate programs. So there are four-years that always had programs on our campuses where students could either come close to finishing their baccalaureate degree on campus, or they could finish it. Like our engineering program with UW Platteville, and a few others that we had. But students would always stay to getting the associate degree and then transferring. Students might transfer at one, two, three, four, five, seven semesters. So there wasn't the, you know, we could measure it, but there wasn't the ability to say, we know they're staying for four semesters. Didn't have that ability to have that. When students either felt they were ready, or they were financially ready, or they were on an academic track that said yeah, you know, I do need to move on after three semesters, so that I get the courses that I need that are now 300-level courses that apply to my major. So that's the part that's difficult to do, those kind of first, 00:24:00second-year especially programs with. So, yeah.

LEH: In terms of experience, how does something like that sort of affect like campus culture? Because I, so like New York City has community colleges.

DA: It does.

LEH: But they're very, they're almost kind of like, they're not that far from like the four-year schools that are also in New York City in terms of just sort of like the atmosphere. It's sort of similar.

DA: Yeah. There's more of a campus culture in a community college. Wisconsin did not have a community college system. I mean, the UW Colleges were not a community college. Community colleges many times have structures that are both technical college and bachelor's degree preparatory. So they tend to combine them. Like the Minnesota system tends to do that pretty heavily. So really, the UW Colleges were, as I indicated, they were there to help students get ready for that transfer. It was assumed that everyone was going to transfer, or almost everyone was going to transfer, to complete the baccalaureate.

There were some who would just--not just--they would do the associate degree. That was the goal for them. And then they would go into the workforce at that point.

LEH: So moving to like that transfer point, you talked a little bit about funding.

DA: Mm hmm.

LEH: And how like funding is, it's always at a deficit because of like tax revenue and the Colleges

DA: Well I would say for the last, I couldn't put an actual year on it, but I would say the last five or six years there was a structural deficit. Because think about what happened. So take a look, this was like the perfect storm, right? What happened in 2008, economically?

LEH: Uh--

DA: Huge recession.

LEH: Yes.

DA: Right? Two thousand eight to 2011 was the largest recession since the Great Depression in the late '20s. What happened then is so many people lost their jobs that they came back to school. So enrollments were, the peak enrollments for almost every campus in the UW Colleges was the highest it ever was during that time period. But then the economy improves. This is like this inverse relationship. When the economy is great, adult students don't go to school. They don't go back and retool until they're out of a job. So we saw the percentage of our student population that were adult returning students decline dramatically from about 2011 onward. So that dramatically decreases the amount of tuition revenue that's available.

And then we had the state budget cuts, which cut, as you know, hundreds of 00:27:00millions of dollars, three out of four biennium budgets. And those were cuts to the base. And the base means there's less state tax money coming to the colleges. So if you have declining enrollments because of declining number of people interested in going back to school because the economy was doing well. You have declining support from the state. And then I'm going to give one more, declining numbers of people graduating, not graduating, but coming out of high school because population demographics show a decline in 18 year-olds.

And there will be another thing that happens in, around 2025, there will be something that's being referred to as the birth dearth. So there is another dip in the number of people who are turning eighteen at that point in time. What happened eighteen years before 2025? It was the recession. People didn't have as many children then. Couldn't afford to have families. Waited. So if you look at the demographic data for Wisconsin, there isn't this nice line that goes upward in terms of the number of people turning eighteen. At its very best, it's flat at certain portions. Other pieces of it decline. So it becomes that question of are there too many academic seats that exist for the number of people who are going to be interested in it?

So you think about it. Tax cuts going to the university system, declining enrollments and declining number of people turning eighteen. And those are the three things that all came together between 2011 and now. And that led to that structural deficit.

Can you tell I've given that speech before?

LEH: (laughs) I can tell you have a very like, it was a nice--

DA: Because we were always very clear and transparent with faculty and staff. We always talked about where the finances were and had these kinds of conversations so that everyone understood how to respond when they got questions from people. And people were great about that.

LEH: Yeah. I'm just wondering like, so, how does the funding change when the colleges become part of their partner four-year institutions?

DA: Sure. A certain percentage of all of the funds that existed under the colleges went to the new partner institutions. So some things were divvied up like one-thirteenth, because certain things make sense to divvy up one-thirteenth. Others were divvied up based on the percentage of faculty, because that made sense. Other parts of the funding were divvied up based on the percentage of students.

Accommodations for students with disabilities, or who are on accommodation 00:30:00plans. That was divvied up based on student population. Because it wouldn't make sense to just do one-thirteenth if Waukesha is the largest campus and has the most students under, with accommodation plans, right? So that was split up differently.

Some of the funds, though, were held back to stay in Madison to create this central services function which are kind of shared functions that will help all of the comprehensives. So there's some IT things that go that way, some finance things, some human resource things. So 100 percent of the money that exists in the colleges did not go out to the four-year partners. A fairly high percentage did, but not 100 percent. Does that answer the question?

LEH: Yeah. I mean, kind of, it makes a certain amount of sense that like human resources--

DA: There's certain things that can be centralized for the whole UW system, right?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: And some of the funds were held back to support those pieces. Of course, that puts the four-years in a position of not only taking campuses that have financial deficits, but not getting all of the funds to try to fill that bucket, so they have to figure out ways to do that. I got to help do that for a year.

LEH: (laughs) Hey, could you expand on that?

DA: So it's going back and looking at where else might there be efficiencies, or where else might there be revenue sources? You can do it either through expenses or revenues, one of the two, and it's usually a little bit of both.

LEH: Yeah. So I'm wondering, like for students, were students, what was the student reaction for like potential like financial aid, grants, scholarships, things like that?

DA: Sure. I'll start with the scholarships. Each of the campuses has its own foundation. And for the Southeast Region, we had, two of the three campuses had incredible foundations that had a huge amount of dollars and total number of scholarships that went to students. Those foundations, for the most part, still exist. A couple of places, I think, decided to merge with their partner institution's foundation. Others have kept it separate. So students who are at UW Washington County still apply for scholarships through UW Washington County. Excuse me, UW Milwaukee at Washington County. (LEH laughs) Old habits, right? And they still pay the reduced tuition for courses that originate at the Washington County location. So that gets to be a little messy of when do they start paying the other tuition?

LEH: Right. Yeah.

DA: So most of the--not most--all of the institutions have figured out when that transition takes place. And their Milwaukee courses that students pay the Milwaukee tuition for instead of the Washington County tuition. There's always--and this is faculty, staff, students, community--who are concerned about the loss of identity of their university in that town. And that's a hard thing to do, because that's part of the culture of the community, right? And to go from having your own campus university to having a location that's part of UW Platteville, it is hard for people to swallow at times, I think.

Other students, the benefit of going wow, now I have access to all this stuff at Milwaukee or Green Bay or all these other types of things. And there are a lot of benefits to the scale that comes with size, right?

LEH: Yeah.

DA: It's change. Change is hard for most people.

LEH: Did you see it being harder in certain places?

DA: I would say it was hardest for faculty. That I honestly think faculty struggled the most with it. It was being merged into faculty lines with the receiving institution. How will it affect professional development? How will it affect the courses that I get to teach? How will it affect academic affairs as a whole? How will it affect shared governance as a whole? So that's a big part of faculty life is shared governance, and how will it affect that? Will student government be at a campus level or will it be at the whole UW Milwaukee, or whole UW Green Bay or Stevens Point level? So think about, those are all potential changes as well. Yeah.

LEH: Right.

DA: Athletics. Will there be athletics at every campus? Each receiving institution has the right to make those decisions. Or do they just become a part of the athletics from the home campus? So there are a lot of unraveling and retying of strings.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Oh, I win. I like that metaphor. (laughter) Is that a metaphor or an analogy? That would be a metaphor, wouldn't it?

LEH: Yeah. Because an analogy would be a reference with something that exists, right?

DA: A reference to something that's like, yes, right.

LEH: So I think it's a metaphor.

DA: I'll admit after way too many years of academics, I still goof up metaphor and analogy at times.

LEH: I still misspell "necessary." It's been years, so. (laughs)

DA: Oh, there you go. There you go. There you go.

LEH: So, yeah, so do you think like given that these schools, the 00:36:00colleges are now part of like a bigger system, that that opens more doors for faculty? Or it may also limit that.

DA: It should. And I'm not familiar with ones beyond the Milwaukee/Green Bay experience, so I can't speak for the people who are now affiliated with Stevens Point or Platteville or Whitewater or Eau Claire, that would be the other one. But it should. Because that means there's opportunities to try to bring 300-level courses onto campuses, and can the former colleges faculty have an opportunity to teach those? Or can they teach some things at Waukesha and some things at the downtown Milwaukee campus, at the main campus? Will those opportunities exist? There's more access to professional development funding, I know, with the Milwaukee alignment than there would have been strictly with the colleges. Support for research. All those kinds of things are tremendous opportunities.

LEH: Yeah. Why do you think that the professors choose to stay in the college system?

DA: In the UW Colleges, what used to be the UW Colleges?

LEH: Well, yeah, all right.

DA: Yeah, the former colleges, right? No, that's okay. Faculty who worked for the UW Colleges were there first and foremost to teach. So they do research, and some really incredible research. But it's research so you can teach. In some four-years and comprehensives, faculty teach so they can research. Because teaching is a requirement. At UW Colleges, teaching was why we were all there. That was the primary focus. The research was either for your own edification as an academic, or to strengthen your teaching within the colleges. So you had people in the classroom, they wanted to teach. They chose the colleges because yes, they enjoy research, but they don't want that to be their complete focus in life. That they loved the classroom. And that would be the biggest reason. No question about it. I still teach part time, even though I'm retired. Not in the colleges, but--

LEH: Really?

DA: --I can never walk away from the classroom completely. Yeah.

LEH: Do you think, too, that maybe there's something about the difference in community?

DA: Yeah. In smaller campuses. I mean, if you think about it, there were campuses as small as 250, and campuses as large as 2300. Waukesha was 23, 24, well, even 2800 at its height in I think 2010, 11ish, something like that. But yeah, in a smaller campus you can develop that sense of community. 00:39:00Faculty know the students by first name. You just, yes, there's office hours, but you just stop in the office. All those touch things that can happen in a smaller community. Every committee has a faculty member or staff member sitting on it as well as a part of their service work. And so that doesn't always occur in clubs and organizations at a really large university, for example. Very intuitive question, though, about sense of community.

And that's, you know, you go from a sense of community in a small organization to designing and developing and being a part of a sense of community in a large organization. That's a big transition for faculty, staff, students.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: A lot of my background's in organizational development, so I think of things from that perspective.

LEH: Was that something you were involved in with restructuring, too?

DA: Oh, yeah.

LEH: Yeah?

DA: Yeah.

LEH: (laughs) Is that more of the efficiencies?

DA: Part of it is the efficiencies, but the other part of it is how do you communicate it? And how do you design roles? And you know, when you're running at a structural deficit, some of the changes you make are deeper than you want to make them. And they reduce some of the touch pieces. But you have to ID those things that are on the critical path. So how much does it affect the student experience? And minimize those as much as possible. That was really our mantra, always, was number one, how is it going to affect the student experience and try to figure that piece out. So if that meant less on-site desktop support for faculty and staff, that's what was decided. If that was in exchange for making sure we had enough advisors to have the ratios we needed for students, yeah, we picked having enough advisors versus having IT people on campus. But you have to make those kind of, those are the hard decisions you end up making when there's a very finite amount of money.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: And it affected all aspects, right? Academic affairs, student affairs, finance and admin.

LEH: Yeah. I mean--

DA: If you like that kind of work, it's fascinating to do restructures.

LEH: Really?

DA: But there's a huge human cost that goes along with it, right?

LEH: Right.

DA: Yeah.

LEH: Yeah. Do you think like, hmm. I'm trying to re--

DA: That's okay. We've gone down a couple of rabbit holes.

LEH: Do you think that that has always, like what is the thought process behind--so you said sort of like the student experience is the most 00:42:00paramount thing.

DA: Should always be. That's not just BS. That's exactly what it should be. And that's what the colleges did well. I'm biased. But the colleges did that really well.

LEH: How do you make a decision of like if two things could both potentially impact student experience in different ways, but like one thing needs to get taken out?

DA: Yeah. So you think about things like, I'll take the student advisor piece. In the beginning, the colleges had made decisions that student to advisor ratios would be a certain level. And it was looked at as, there's some national data that says they should be at 1 to X if this is the kind of work that an academic student advisor does. I'm not talking about career advisement, but academic advisement. And when we felt we weren't at that point, there was some additional funding that had come in via the state biennium. We made a decision to increase the number of advisors so we had, we could have increased the advisors to lower the ratio of students to advisors so that advisors could spend more time per student. We could have added IT support. That was another piece that we could have added. We could have added to, sorry, to library science or other kinds of things.

LEH: No! (laughs)

DA: I'll talk about how we did some things there that actually worked out pretty well. So we said in order to prevent, where can you prevent the most issues, right? And that's kind of upfront. If you're advising students correctly, they're not taking unnecessary courses. They're taking the right ones. They can talk to you about all of the other pieces that might present more problems for the student down the road. But, yeah.

LEH: Hmm. Okay.

DA: We consolidated acquisitions, by the way. In libraries. So we centralized all of that.

LEH: Oh. With Milwaukee?

DA: No. The colleges had a centralized process. So they behaved, in library science, it behaved as close to what the four-years are like well before any kind of process like that. So rather than having, for years, rather than having any, all campuses have this separate acquisition and collections and everything else, it moved toward this centralized function in one of the campuses that collections and disbursement came out through. Yes, each campus had its collection.

LEH: Right.

DA: But the collection moving back and forth between campuses happened daily type of thing. Because there are things that you can gain from an 00:45:00efficiency standpoint there that are absolutely seamless to a student, right?

LEH: Yeah. Oh, you mean like loans and stuff like that? Or?

DA: Yeah. Loan system. But actually acquisitions as well in terms of book and audio, video and all the other things that go along with it. We outsource a number of functions, bookstores. We negotiated a statewide contract for all of our campuses that way. Turned it into a process where the bookstores were a revenue source as opposed to most of them losing money. Food service, we did that in some areas as well. Vending. Statewide contract where we got a percentage of all the vending net revenues. And those kinds of efficiencies are created, too.

LEH: Where was the bookstore losing money?

DA: Well, when you're operating the bookstore yourself--

LEH: Oh, you have to have--

DA: You have all the staff costs. And you carry all the inventory. And there are efficiencies of size that you gain when it's a large company, like a Follett is who we outsourced our bookstores to. So they ran them. They had to deal with all of the returns. They owned the inventory. We didn't have to carry any of those kinds of things. And we built into the contract a guaranteed dollar amount that they would pay each campus every year.

LEH: Hmm. So was like that type of outsourcing, were those sorts of operations run by the college previously, or by like local businesses?

DA: Most places, the vast majority were owned by the individual college campus. Right.

LEH: So even the vending stuff?

DA: Vending was left up to each campus to make local arrangements on. And then you don't always get the best deal and all that kind of stuff.

LEH: Yeah. Does that depend a lot on like where they're located?

DA: Mm hmm. If you have a campus that's much more rural, you might not have as many companies that could support that campus. So we even did a statewide contract for what's called managed print services. So all copiers, you know, print devices, all of those kinds of things. And we were able to save the colleges a tremendous amount of money that way. So one company had the contract for all thirteen campuses. I was actually on that team that helped design that piece. And the bookstore. And the vending, actually, now that I think about it.

LEH: (laughs) It's all coming back.

DA: There was lots of opportunities to learn. I mean, there were some really rough spots to doing those two restructures. Not everything worked. The IT support was less than it should be. There might not have been the food services on campus that we would like to have had. Because the focus was truly on, an academic affairs curriculum would have shrunk. And by that, I mean 00:48:00there might not be twelve sections of this particular class. There might be six, seven or eight, so that you could get the utilization that you needed out of each course. But student affairs, we tried to make sure that that was kept as clean and positive as possible. You know, never changed the level of support for mental health counseling and things like that.

LEH: Stuff like that's important. Yeah.

DA: It's key. Life is messy.

LEH: Definitely.

DA: It's okay. It's just messy, that's all.

LEH: Yeah. Especially, I'm sure, if you're a nontraditional student.

DA: Yeah. Or veterans coming back. Yeah.

LEH: So in terms of like student representation, you talked a little bit about, mentioned governance briefly.

DA: Sure. Student governance. You want to talk about that piece a little bit?

LEH: Yeah, yeah. Sort of like did that change at all during restructuring? What was the student input?

DA: For some. Yeah, for some, I'll say that. Because under Wisconsin rules regarding student governments, students decide what form of governance they have. So at one receiving institution, students might have, and I think there was one for sure. I'd have to go back and double check that. But students could decide if they wanted to roll student governance at a given colleges campus in with the main campus' student governance. So they could make that decision. At Washington County and Waukesha County, the students at those two campuses voted to have student government of their own on each campus. So, separate. I've got to believe someday they'll do a little bit more overlap. But they're just far enough apart that it's really hard to do joint activities and events and those kinds of things. They're about thirty-five miles apart, I think. But there's opportunities for them to tie in with some of the things at the main campus.

For example, Waukesha and Washington certainly for the last year and this year, they have their own seg fee levels that they set. They have their own activities and events, although we were doing a lot more event coordination between the two campuses. And they kept student governance separate for those two campuses. But then they had an individual, I believe, I think there was one from each campus, or one between the two, I forget which it was, as a representative on the UW Milwaukee student governance, to just be able to be there, voice things, talk things through.

LEH: And that's continuing? They're continuing to happen?

DA: I know it is for this year. Because part of my role is to help students coordinate the seg fee process.

LEH: So the segregated fees are in, because they're now a Milwaukee campus, are they separate?

DA: They're separate yet. Yep, so Waukesha, Washington and the main campus for Milwaukee all have separate seg fee dollar amounts, and the funding is still split up. So the money that's collected from Waukesha students can't be spent at the main campus from UWM or at UW Washington County. And students made that decision.

LEH: Oh, really?

DA: Yeah, that's their right to make those decisions.

LEH: Wow. I'm just thinking like if they chose not to make that decision, like would Milwaukee be able to like put money into activities?

DA: Potentially. The issue then becomes do you charge students at the outlying campuses the same seg fee rates as at the downtown campus?

LEH: Right.

DA: So I'll give you a difference. I mean, students at Waukesha and Washington pay 200 to 210 dollars a semester, in that range, for seg fees. Milwaukee's over 700.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: And students looked at that and said wow, there's a ton of additional things available, like the health center, like reduced tickets to events and free tickets to events. And how often are they going to drive downtown, though, to drive to an event or to drive to a basketball game or to go to the health center down there? And they did surveys amongst themselves to ask students what they thought, what they might be interested in doing. And it led to them making the decision yeah, we're not going to go there right now.

LEH: So how does that relate with like athletics at the college campuses?

DA: Every receiving institution, and that was the term that was used for the Eau Claires and Stevens Points and Platte, every receiving institution has the ability to make that decision as to whether or not they're going to continue conference-based competitive athletics, or whether or not they would go to club sports. And club sports are student-run, typically. They may or may not have coaches. They may or not travel. You know, those kinds of things. So, yeah, so each institution, it was left up to each one to decide what they're going to do. And not all of them are going to make a decision right away. I think some of them are going to wait and see. Because seg fees support athletics. It's one of the largest single pieces of the seg fee fund. Of that two hundred 00:54:00and some dollars, it could be anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of the seg fees.

LEH: See, why do people pay for--

DA: For the colleges. I'm saying for the colleges. I don't know what it is here.

LEH: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. I was just thinking, wait a minute. (laughs)

DA: I'm always talking about the colleges, unless I'm [unclear] 54:20 Here in Madison you think about it, athletics brings in huge amounts of revenues in terms of supporting itself.

LEH: Well, but Madison--

DA: But UW Washington County's not NCAA Division 1 now. (laughter)

LEH: So like in terms of the process and like the steering committee, what were things that were like, what were like the primary focuses in restructuring?

DA: For the most recent restructuring?

LEH: Yes.

DA: The one where, the partnering with the receiving institutions?

LEH: Mm hmm.

DA: Okay. Because there were steering committees on different--so each receiving institution had a steering committee. And then they broke it up into segments as well. Students participated in all those steering committees, just so you know that as well. So there was that student voice in most of those steering committees. A big chunk of the two that I was a part of were really focused on how do we make sure the business of the institution continues to run? So it was how do we get students apply, what's the process, how do we get them enrolled, how do we advise them, how do we coordinate the curriculum that they can take? How do we handle dealing with all the counseling pieces? How do they handle the payments and fees? So the first part really had to be a lot of the mechanical processes of faculty, staff and students. You know, making sure people all get paid when that transition took place on July first. Because you don't mess up somebody's paycheck, and you don't mess up their name. Those are two things you stay away from. (laughter)

LEH: Oh, no. Yeah.

DA: So, yeah. There was making sure that those critical path things, and those were, so I left on July fifteenth. And up until that point, that's what we spent a full year identifying. How you do all the transition of all of the software and all of the computer systems. And getting everybody on each other's networks and all of those things.

LEH: Yeah. You kind of briefly, you've kind of briefly touched on like mental health. What is like, how, like if at all, does that play, does like the health aspect of like the colleges, or what was the college system, play into restructuring?

DA: So students, staff and faculty, which aspects? Or aspect?

LEH: I guess I'm thinking in terms of like access and maybe--

DA: Mm hmm. So UW system has really great benefits in terms of employee assistance programs. So faculty, staff would access health issues, whether it's mental health or physical, through those avenues. Really the benefit structure through the university system really does accommodate, I think, that really well. But that's a piece of it. You also have to have management staff and a leadership group that help with that and try to influence both the physical and mental health of staff and faculty. And that's a hard part with all that amount of change taking place.

Students had access to mental health counseling on every campus. The percentage, there are some state statutes that actually require that. And then there are some ratios that are set up by policy through the regents that say if you have this many students, you need to have half of a part time mental health counselor or a fulltime mental health counselor so there's a ratio there. The colleges always seemed to go above what that ratio needed to be, by rule. And students pay for the cost of that mental health counseling out of their seg fees. Students at the campuses I worked with, the three in particular, were always incredibly supportive of it. I don't remember them having a conversation about reducing support for mental health counseling.

And then students had very confidential access to the mental health counseling on every single campus. Some farmed it out to counseling firms. And others, our three in our region we believe that we wanted them to be employees of the UW Colleges, so we had employees on each of the three campuses.

LEH: Why employees and not firms?

DA: We wanted the longevity. Because the longevity of an employee and the constancy of the same person that people can go to, they get to know and trust them, that type of thing, is much longer than if you outsource it. Slightly higher cost. But there's a stability there, faculty get to know the individuals, they're more comfortable referring them to the on-campus mental health counseling, that type of thing.

LEH: Hmm. Do you think that once people are sort of introduced to like a role within the UW, either former colleges or university system, how does the culture at those institutions affect, in the UW system, affect like whether or not they're willing to stay?

DA: Wow. There's a whole book probably in that question alone. It's a great question.

LEH: (laughs) Just maybe just on your personal experience, really. Interactions you've had.

DA: I can tell you that there's a lot of research that shows that the primary 01:00:00reason that people begin a job search is the lack of a positive relationship with their immediate manager. And there are a lot of good relationships with immediate managers, at least certainly in the Southeast Region. And it's a sense of team and a sense of community. And as long as you have the vision and goals and where you actually there for and keep in mind that you're there for back to the students experience again, that then you will tend to see longevity. And I personally believe that you see longevity of faculty in teaching-focused institutions, as opposed to to research-focused institutions. Because if a faculty member really is, their primary thing in life is research, they need to follow the research dollars. Which institution is doing my kind of work and is getting the most number of federal grants and private grants to be able to do the kind of work that I like to do? So you may see a little bit more change there. We also have some pretty long longevity within faculty.

But yeah, I think it is a difference between research institutions and teaching institutions. And that's critical to understand. Colleges were a teaching institution. Whereas you've got the two R1 institutions in the state, Research 1s are Milwaukee and Madison. And in order to keep those R1 status, they have to, it's the number of PhD students that you put out, it's the amount of research dollars. It's the type of research. It's all those kinds of things that go into play on maintaining your R1 status. Grants that you get.

LEH: Huh. That's really interesting.

DA: It's a whole different world. They're the only two in the UW system that are R1 institutions.

LEH: Hmm. So I mean, there must be, with Milwaukee at least, a lot of focus that goes into finding those grant opportunities.

DA: Right. They have a grants and awards department that a lot of that comes through. Just like almost every larger institution.

LEH: Yeah. That just personally reminds me of the undergraduate school that I went to, which was a former teaching college. And also very social science-based.

DA: Well, keep in mind the colleges were a liberal arts institution.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: And that's because their focus was on the first two years. So yes, a lot of their students were majoring in the sciences and the engineering.

LEH: Right.

DA: We taught liberal arts.

LEH: Right. How do you think that the sort of like curriculum that is 01:03:00like formulated and taught in those two years is important in the development of like a student's, their life as a student, and then maybe going into their career?

DA: We joke I'm the product of a business school. I did my undergraduate at a business school and I saw absolutely no value in liberal arts at all. (LEH laughs) It was people who can't figure out what they want to do for a living, right? You can sense the sarcasm in my voice.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Both my children are products in the undergraduate of liberal arts institutions. And I have come to believe in it very strongly, especially as I grew in my private sector experience dealing with everything from critical thinking to creative thinking to all of those kinds of pieces come out of a liberal arts background. So my views over a lifetime have changed in regard to that. So the one thing that was see, I think, in academics, and again, my view is narrower, maybe, than some, is that it's how fast can I get through the liberal arts pieces so I can get to my major? And more and more curriculum is being set up so there aren't as many opportunities for those. An example that I would suggest is engineering. There are very few electives available, the time within a schedule of an engineering student to be able to take liberal arts courses. That's one example. You have to be into your courses within your major in a very short time period after starting as a freshman.

So they don't get as much of that. And I think you remember your liberal arts courses even more than you remember some of your major courses within your major. Because they're teaching you how to make decisions and think and evaluate and critique and all those kinds of things. Is that fair?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: Makes sense, doesn't it?

LEH: It does.

DA: Yeah. And that is truly what, I always believe, that the colleges did well through an incredible group of faculty and staff. Nothing stays the same, though.

LEH: No. (laughs)

DA: Things change.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: It's an overused phrase, but change is a constant.

LEH: Well, I'm just thinking in terms of like the sciences, part of that must, there must be like certain requirements in the two-years.

DA: There are. Because the colleges was the associate degree of arts and sciences.

LEH: Right.

DA: So the science departments within the colleges were very strong, whether it's biology or chemistry or physics or astronomy. You know, all of those programs were incredibly strong. But it's because it wasn't strictly an associate degree of arts. It was arts and sciences.

LEH: Yeah. Just like maybe using engineering as an example, do you 01:06:00think that, how does that translate like at a four-year school, having gone from like more balanced, sort of like sciences, but also some arts involved, too.

DA: Sure. I mean, some programs like engineering, the student might transfer earlier in their time period with the colleges, because they needed, in order to complete it in four, four and a half years, they needed to be able to get at those higher level engineering courses as soon as they could. Or they might do some courses at the four-year and some courses at the colleges. There's certain medical programs where that's a necessity as well. But if you were going to major in general business or marketing or psychology or education, those kind of things, you could go all the way through and get your associate degree before, because the colleges offered the, at least certainly the sophomore level courses that you might need for your major.

LEH: All right.

DA: You can tell that we all had to learn each other's fields. So although my background is finance and administration and then human resources, in order to do my job well, I had to learn and listen and find out as much as I could about student affairs or about academic affairs. And my colleagues had to do the same thing about each other's as well. So you create that sense of community where you have to be, not just okay with people in your sandbox, but you have to invite them into your sandbox.

LEH: Right.

DA: That's one of my favorite phrases. It just is.

LEH: Right. Because everyone has to sort of rely on each other.

DA: You have to understand ever decision you make and its implications on the other functions. Yep.

LEH: As things sort of become more consolidated, do you think that that changes or stays the same? I know it's kind of a broad question.

DA: I think it's going to, yeah, no, that's okay. I think it's going to be really dependent on which receiving institution it is. There are some that I believe will fully integrate the quote "remote campuses." And it will look, feel exactly like the main campus. Just it happens to be a different location. Others will keep a little bit more sense of identity and difference between the other campus, a little more of a [tub on its own bottom?]. So I think that's good. Very dramatically between receiving institutions. Because each one of their situations is different. Doesn't work to cookie cutter to do that.

LEH: Right. Yeah. I guess that kind of brings us back around to sort 01:09:00of like the HR perspective of restructuring.

DA: Okay.

LEH: And sort of like kind of back to the beginning, in a way. (laughs) But that's okay. So like when did you become aware the restructuring was going to happen?

DA: Second one?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: We found out in the newspaper.

LEH: Really? (laughs)

DA: Yeah. There was a bit of a premature notice of that coming out through system to legislator. And it got into the press. I don't remember the exact part it is. But literally, we found out the day after it appeared in the newspaper here in Madison. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. That was an accidental consequence of people talking to the wrong people too early. Unfortunate, but it is, and then you move on.

LEH: Right. Yeah.

DA: When the colleges restructured the very first time, that was an 18-month process. Like I said, well over a hundred people involved in it. Blogs and sites where all of the data was openly stored and people could look at it and post questions. It was a very, very transparent process. The first time we went through that would have been almost six years ago.

LEH: Yeah. Do you think that the process this time around was equally transparent?

DA: Once we got it going, I do believe it was. Yeah. There was, maybe some pieces weren't able to be as, stop and let everybody think about it for two months. Because there's a drop dead date. We have to get this done by a certain date. So some things had to move forward much more quickly and expeditiously than maybe the first time through. But the two campuses, two institutions I worked with, Milwaukee and Green Bay, they were both very transparent.

LEH: All right.

DA: Good stuff. Thank you.

LEH: Yeah, yeah.

DA: Can I ask you which other colleagues of mine, former colleagues, that you've had a chance or are going to have a chance to talk to?

LEH: I interviewed Charles Clark. I'm going to be interviewing--

DA: There you go. I've known Charles for a long time. Charles came out of UW Manitowoc.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Which happens to be my hometown.

LEH: There you go. I'm going to be interviewing Jackie next week.

DA: Wonderful. Would you do me a favor and please tell her I said hello?

LEH: Okay. Will do.

DA: All right. Thank you. We still try to keep in touch. Our old leadership team from our region tends to keep in touch.

LEH: Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

DA: Anybody else?

LEH: Not yet. I'm contacting people, trying to get back responses.

DA: If you find you have a gap in the backgrounds or type of people that you want to talk to, feel free to reach out and I can think of who I might suggest or recommend that you do.

LEH: Yeah. I mean, if you ever think of someone--

DA: Like I think you really want to talk to somebody on the academic affairs side. So there's two people I would suggest. The one I know the best is Stephen Schmid.

LEH: Ah, yes. I've already contacted him.

DA: All right. Is he able to do it?

LEH: Um, we're rescheduling, so, yeah.

DA: If he's not able to, and of course I think the world of Stephen, because he's one of my former colleagues in the Southeast Region. The other one would be Bill Bultman. And bill worked out of the UW Fox campus, so he's with UW Oshkosh now. B-u-l-t-m-a-n. I think it's a single "n." It might be two "n"s. And he and Stephen worked together on a lot of things. But Stephen lives right here in the Madison area. Just on the outskirts of Madison. He was probably involved in both the first and the restructuring as much or more than any of the associate deans. I would suggest, yeah. And he would really be able to fill in the gaps on the academics affairs side, and the kinds of tough decisions that had to be made. Because he had to make a lot of them.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Cool.

LEH: All right.

DA: Well, thank you for the opportunity to share.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. Do you have anything else you want to add? Or--

DA: Southeast Region had the best team of anybody in the colleges.

LEH: All right. (laughs)

DA: Jackie and Stephen will say that, too.

LEH: And that will be preserved for the record.

DA: Absolutely. That group had so much synergy and worked well together. So, that was the cool part.

LEH: Yeah.

DA: Good.

LEH: All right.

DA: Well, thank you and good luck with the project, okay?

End First Interview Session