Interview with Stefan Fletcher

LEH: All right. So my name is Lena Evers-Hillstrom. I'm interviewing Stefan?

SF: Stefan. That's right. Yep.

LEH: Okay. Fletcher for the UW System Restructuring project. Can you say your name and then spell out your last name?

SF: Stefan Fletcher. And that is F for Frank, l-e-t-c-h-e-r.

LEH: All right. It looks like we're all set.

SF: Great.

LEH: Okay. So, why don't we start pretty broad? So what brought you to the UW System? And how long did you hold your position before restructuring started?

SF: So my kind of journey in the UW System actually started as an undergraduate student. I was an undergraduate student up at the University of Wisconsin Superior. I moved over here from the UK. So spent four years up in Superior. During my doctoral program at Michigan State University, I worked at the UW System during summers. So I worked for the Office of the President at the Board of Regents Office, and then the senior vice president for administration and fiscal affairs. I permanently joined the UW System kind of in the precursor role to my current one in January of 2015. And so I was kind of from them till restructuring, I think you'll count and it's about nearly three years. Two and three-quarter, let's say, years, until restructuring was announced in October of 2017.

LEH: All right. (laughs) So how was restructuring sort of like presented to you?

SF: So I think if you look at it, I was involved on the very, very front end of the conversations about restructuring. I remember having to do a little, a bit of background research, background work about other consolidations that occurred at like other systems around the United States in higher education. Looking at, you know, working through, I think, with System leadership okay, if you want to go forward with this route, what would it take to kind of do the announcement, and then how do you kind of actually get your arms around what was the biggest higher education really since the 1970s when the two public higher education systems were merged to form the UW System as it is today, really.

LEH: Yeah. Wasn't that, that was the one where they created the Colleges as they were, right?

SF: So that was, so you had the University of Wisconsin and then you 00:03:00had the Wisconsin State universities. And so it was how do you bring those two systems, education, which did include some of those campuses. Kind of how do you bring those two together? Obviously since then, you've had the closures of one of the branch campuses, through a legislative task force way, way, way before restructuring. But there was a two-year campus in Medford, Wisconsin. And that was closed, I forget. You could look at the records of that. I forget off the top of my head.

LEH: At some point.

SF: Yeah. It was, it was I think in the 1980s, maybe early 1990s. But I would double check.

LEH: Yeah. So could you sort of expand on that? Like those early process, the early decision making stuff?

SF: Sure. I think if you looked at the kind of goals of the project and why the project, well, the rationale, right? So, one, UW Colleges had several years of substantial declining enrollment. Between 2010 and 2017, you had an average decline, or a decline of up to 54 % in student FTEs at some of those institutions. You had an average, I think, in the, about 30 % or around that number. And I can get you the specifics if you remind me later on, if you looked at the colleges as a whole. And so the question was, are the two-year campuses, as they're currently conceived, sustainable? Because if you have that much of a decline in tuition revenue, and students actually attending your student, you do have a subsequent decline in tuition revenue, which makes the problem okay, we as the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Idea, have a commitment to outreach to various parts of the state, including some of our most rural communities, where these two-year campuses are located. There's a commitment from the municipalities themselves, because they fund, or help to fund, the facilities where those two-year campuses are located. And so what are the options that we have on the table?

Closing campuses was never a preference, was really never an option. Because of our commitment to the Wisconsin Idea, because of the need and the desire to have strong access points for people to come in at the kind of lower tuition rate, and then maybe move to a four-year institution later on. So we looked at that but didn't, I would say that was never seriously, in my opinion, on 00:06:00the table.

What we ended up on, was the model that we proposed to our accreditor. Which was the restructuring project merging, or joining, I'd say, as Carleen Vande Zande would correct me, but joining the thirteen two-year campuses with seven of the research and comprehensive universities. And then integrating various parts of what was UW Extension with both UW System administration and UW Madison. For UW Madison, of course, having the Cooperative Extension was almost coming back full circle, because that is where it started. So.

LEH: Yeah. Why joining and not merging?

SF: There are technical differences when it comes to accreditation in terms of being precise with the language that you use. And that was something very early, early on. Because if you looked at the way that you did this, the branch campuses were joined with the operations of accredited entities. It was UW Colleges' accreditation was basically being subsumed and the accreditation of the four-year institutions was, their application had to be okay, we'd like to join one, two, or, in Green Bay's case, three branch campuses to our existing accreditation. So there are technical differences. If you speak to Carleen, have you talked to Carleen Vande Zande yet?

LEH: Uh-uh.

SF: Carleen was the involved who was pretty instrumental in completing the accreditation process for the UW System and helping to work with our federal accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission. And so I just remember very early on in the project, Carleen would have to correct people consistently and say, you know, "It's joining, it's not merging. And here's the differences."

LEH: Yeah. All right. (laughs)

SF: Okay?

LEH: Okay. All right. I guess we went over this a little--

SF: Sure.

LEH: --but could you say a little bit about your position within the System, and how that's evolved throughout the restructuring process?

SF: Sure. So when I joined the System in January 2015, I was the special assistant to the then senior vice president for administration and fiscal affairs. Almost, when you think about kind of what a chief of staff does in terms of handling issues, facilitating communication. That was kind of my role initially when I came in. My career in the System thus far has been 00:09:00shaped by kind of two questions. One, a question around how we developed, communicated and approved system-wide policies, that apply to, as the name indicates, all UW System schools. And really now I oversee about three hundred plus system administrative policies that relate to finance, academic affairs, general operations, and helping to design, again, how they're organized, communicated. How we draft them. Setting the overall framework and bringing consistency to that process. So that was my role kind of before restructuring, was that chief of staff policy management role. And research. I did a lot of benchmarking on various sorts of issues for System leadership.

Then, with restructuring, the question was, oh, would you like to oversee the restructuring project and serve as the project lead? And so I said yes, I would do that. And that was the journey from 2017 onwards, really, was kind of how do you navigate and put your arms around this massive project?

I mean, during the course of the project, as an example of scale, library. There were 423,000 library items moved during the course of the project. In under two years. On the student information system side, there were 11,738 student records that had to be moved from one instance of a student information system at UW Colleges to seven different configurations of the student information system at the seven four-year receiving schools. Just to give you, so part of this in the very, very beginning was how do you get your arms around all these different issues and kind of work through that.

And again, I think one thing I can't reiterate enough, and I'll do it in this form as well, is to praise the amount of effort and hard work that people, employees in particular, put on or around the system, during the past two and a bit years now, to minimize the disruption of this transition to students and to faculty and staff. And you know, but in the very beginning, it was really okay, how are we going to do this?

LEH: So--

SF: So now, just to close out my actual question, sorry, Lena, now there was a project management office that was formed during restructuring to oversee the project, to help facilitate and coordinate the project at the System level. One of my ongoing responsibilities now is to continue to oversee that office as its transition to support eleven or twelve now different system-wide initiatives. As restructuring kind of milestones have been completed and wound down, there have been other projects that are like oh, well, you know, so would you guys also like to help out with the implementation of student success tool? The title and total compensation project. You know, various other sorts of things that have come on, it's just kind of naturally flowed into that.

LEH: All right. (laughs) So, starting with like all of these big kind of, how do you sort of turn, sort of like big problems into like a more concrete like these are the things that like we need to really focus on? And go about setting those timelines?

SF: Sure. So I think one, Carleen and the accreditors provided guidance in terms of here are the issues you should think about, right? In terms of, if you want to go about this, here is what we would expect you to think about during the course of your planning. And so if you go back to the original application that we submitted to HLC, we have to propose how we were going to maintain the accreditation of the four-year schools and join these branch campuses onto those four-year schools. So really, things like academic programming, if you think about the finances of the institutions. If you think about how student services would operate during the transition, and how they would be planned for long-term. Again, the key, in my mind, is how these things would over time integrate into the four-year institution. Because at the end of the day, that was the accredited entity from, basically July one, June twenty-eight, technically, but July one of 2018, when HLC approved the joining of the campuses. How would services to those branch campus students, now they were the responsibility of the four-year institutions, continue to operate in these areas? How do you make sure that they are, again, adequately supported? How does the integration of faculty work, and kind of academic 00:15:00planning work? And how do you maintain academic quality at those two-year schools?

Part of the project's goals, though, if you go back to, so the HLC application is like one guiding light for the project. Those are the, you have to meet what you said you would tell your accreditors what you would do. If you don't do that, you're in trouble. A lot of trouble. Two, the Department of Education expects you to be planning this in a way that will make sure that financial aid transition is handled seamlessly. And you have to work with the Department of Ed not only to make sure that financial aid is still being delivered, because again, you have to be approved by the department to issue Title IV, simple, like federal financial aid. And so there's a transition that you have to work with the department on to make sure that that is being handled and documented appropriately. And, that this entity that was UW Colleges is wound down in a way that the department believes it has met their expectations. You have to kind of close all the documentation out. Close the accounts appropriately. Boom, ba boom, ba boom. And make sure that that is being done in a way that the Department of Education says yes, you have both transitioned financial aid awarding and distribution appropriately, and you've also wound down this former entity that was approved for that accordingly.

The same with the Department of Homeland Security. You have to transition and make sure that you get approval, or adequate authorization, I should say, from the department so that the branch campuses can, through the main campus, now have international students attend. You can issue F-1 student visas, and those sorts of things.

And so what we tried to do was identify these sorts of issues. Like we had various functional teams that were stood up through the course of the project very early on, that looked at issues like this. That we sat down and identified okay, what's our universe of issues that we have to kind of get working on? Athletics. Student visas. Accreditation.

We had a consistent approach at the beginning, which was have a tripartite partnership. One, representation for the receiving institutions. Two, representation from system administration to look at issues or things that we needed to fix at the system level that campuses could not do by themselves. And then three, have staff from the UW Colleges and Extension's central office, who would help--and very graciously, I will say this as well--with 00:18:00the transition of these services to the four-year schools. And help them be as successful as they could be in assuming responsibility for these various services, like student visa issuance or you know, libraries is an example.

And so we tried that matrix approach very early on. And we deferred a lot to subject matter experts to help us think about what's your timeline for completing this multitude of different tasks. And again, we brought people together at key stages so that everyone could see each other's planning and could ask questions and go wait, this timeline for financial aid isn't going to work from a registrar's perspective, how do we figure this out? So we had to try and bring people together at various key points to say, you know, you all have access to milestones and the road map, but is this working for all of you? Make sense?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SF: Okay.

LEH: How does that work from a, could you expand on that from like a communication perspective of like how you get people in maybe different areas?

SF: Yeah, so, in the very beginning, we had a steering committee. And I think various people have talked about the steering committee. That they had that same tripartite representation: System admin, Colleges Extension, and the receiving institutions, including Madison. We set the steering committee meeting up the day after the board of regents approved the project. I remember it like it was yesterday because we were at Regent Street in 126 A & B. The room was too small for a group of that size, but that's all we had available to us at that point. But we got going right from the day after the board approved the project in November 2017. So, you know, what functional teams did we need to stand up? What were the key issues that we needed to address? So the steering committee always served in an oversight capacity for the project, but also served as bringing key system-wide decisions or thoughts back to each of the campuses and translating them.

We did have, and something that's very unique, I think, for a project management office, we had an integrated communications function in the PMO, so that we could try and get at various levels of the project what was going on. So each campus had their own planning process going on. So there's a system plan, and then under that were like eight basically different planning processes that were occurring at each of the institutions for things they needed to take responsibility for.

So, again, part of that was trying to define what is the campus responsible for? 00:21:00What is the system responsible for? Where we needed a more consistent approach, we issued system-wide decisions or had the system-wide functional teams figure that out in their own individual sorts of teams. But then with representation from all of those teams, that was great. Because each of the campuses then had a common message coming out from those groups.

On this scale of project, communications is always tough. You always think, oh, haven't we communicated X fifteen times already? But there's always someone who's like, "Well, did we really say that?" Because there's a lot going on. Especially at the beginning, when you're just trying to get your arms around everything. People, I think, were, A, worried about, to be honest, what the project meant for them in terms of their life. Even though people, even though staff, even though we tried to make commitments very early on that would allay people's fears about losing their job. You know, we said, "If you're a branch campus employee, a transition will be made to the receiving institution. If you're a central Colleges and Extension employee, you have a guaranteed two-year contract to kind of work with us over the next two years." And again, the willingness and collaboration of those individuals was key in successfully transitioning these services across. We could not have done it without them, to be honest.

But throughout the project, we tried to keep a regular cadence of meeting with System leadership, escalating issues, escalating questions. We had an FAQ page set up very early on in the project to address key questions that we got. Which we got a lot of questions on day one.

I remember, the PMO was set up during the course of the first bit of the project. So it wasn't like we had a PMO fully staffed like day one, right? It was like, we had to do the hiring. So for the beginning, it was Gillean Kitchen, who served as a deputy project lead, myself, a couple of people from our consulting partners at Huron who had to really help in terms of, again, trying to get our arms around this with System leadership.

And I remember being in that building, just down the street, Van Hise Hall, until pretty regularly eleven o'clock at night. Coming in at seven AM each day. For about a good six weeks at the beginning of the project, honestly. And I remember one individual asked me like, "Stefan, could you not send out emails at eleven PM?" And I thought I'd rather not be in Van Hise Hall until eleven PM. But, you know, that's just the way that it was at the time. And we 00:24:00did what we needed to do.

The one thing, I think, a lesson I learned, or if I could have done things differently, I would have gotten out to the receiving institutions and the branch campuses sooner. Because I think in our system, what people react positively to is seeing a face. Seeing someone out there who's listening to them, who's trying to address questions, etcetera. But I think given, given where we were, it's difficult to do that when you have few staff and you need to coordinate the project, it's difficult to kind of do that. There has to be a tradeoff.

LEH: Yeah. Was part of that, I know that a lot of people heard about the project from the news? (laughter)

SF: Do you have a rubbish bin in here, by any chance?

LEH: Yeah, we have one over here.

SF: Okay. I'm going to throw my gum out. So that was unfortunate. I will say that. Again, that was something that lingered with the project for the first part, especially, was, "We found out about this in the media." There were very few people who knew. And I will say that that was definitely not anyone's intention in System administration. We had a communications plan that would have rolled this out in an appropriate fashion that we were in the middle of. When it was leaked, I think, to the news, that would be a fair summation on my part, when the kind of, when it did get leaked to the news, we needed to try to adjust on the fly to that issue. Sometimes your best laid intentions and best laid plans don't work out the way that you hope. I think, you know, the concern at the beginning, as you probably heard from some, was well, why didn't we spend a year studying this project and having a long consultation period?

And I've ruminated over that. I've reflected on it. And having lived with the project for the last few years, and having been a former student government leader up at Superior who is 100 percent supportive and understands what shared governance is about in this system, I--(pause) I can see why, and very much supportive of why we wanted to reduce uncertainty. You'd have had for 00:27:00a year, the whole, "Well, are these campuses going to shut? What are we going to do?" Like this whole pendulum hanging over the campuses for a year or so. And then, we may have reached probably the same conclusion, that something would have needed to have been done.

And the value that was placed on maintaining those two-year institutions as access points was a factor right from the beginning. Moving quickly and efficiently in thinking about a solution, and thinking about, again, what the best solution was for maintaining access, expanding educational opportunity, leveraging the education and curriculum that the four-year institutions can bring, which you've seen already in some of the collaborative programming that's been proposed and approved by the board of regents to bring certain upper level classes and courses and certificates, etcetera, to those two-year campuses to help to meet workforce needs. Those were unique opportunities that I don't know that that particular, let's take X number of time would have changed anything, and would have only created more uncertainty for, not just potential students. Current students, employees, etcetera. So, yeah, that's kind of, I think the question that typically came up.

LEH: Yeah. I mean, I guess it's kind of a lose/lose scenario either way, it seems like it.

SF: Yeah. I think in the beginning of the project, obviously there was a lot of--there's never an easy way to go about this scale of organizational structural change. You know, when we initially, when the timeline was developed, the two-year timeline where accreditation would transfer year one, operations and the actual service would transition in the June of 2019, again, there are some days where I stood back and looked at the timeline and I'm like, man, this is quite an aggressive timeline, right? Part of it in the beginning was having to reassure people, no, we're not going to be able to transition financial aid, the student information system, all of these things by June 1, 2018, seven months. That was not going to happen. But again, in the beginning, when you talk about communication, people saw in the initial newspaper articles the July 1, 2018 date. And they were like oh, wait, this is all going to happen on 00:30:00July 1, 2018.

So we had to counteract that very quickly to say hold on, time out. Let's go back to the accreditation submission. Let's reflect on the fact that this is really a phased, two-year project. And let's try and stick to that, and this is the sensible, rational way that we're going to approach this project. And I think that proposal, that 1400-plus pages of proposal helped.

The follow-up visit, when we were already in the fall of 2018 when they'd done the approval, they wanted to check in and see how planning was going, were we doing what we said we would do? The accreditors came and they met with each institution. They met with various system-wide groups, like the system-wide chief business officers group for the receiving institutions, your provosts, your chancellors to say okay, do you guys understand the scale? You guys said this in your proposal. Are you really on course to transition these services across? And we were able to speak pretty well to, again, by that stage in the fall, how we had divided out responsibility for certain tasks. How planning was going at each of the institutions. And that was a successful effort. But that was another twelve hundred-plus pages of kind of paperwork to submit to the accreditor. I mean, there were over twenty-six, twenty-seven hundred pages of planning and implementation paperwork that support this project. So it's no small endeavor.

LEH: Definitely not. (laughs) Where would you say that like your, like which functional teams were you like most involved with? Or like saw the most amount of like discussion happening?

SF: Sure. So there were a few core principles, right? You've seen and people have talked to you about the stated goals of the project several times, right? I mean, or no. Yes? No?

LEH: Yeah.

SF: Okay.

LEH: But it's always good to hear it again.

SF: (laughs) Educational opportunity, maintaining access, you know, leveraging our operational efficiencies, being examples of some of those goals, right? And again, I think maintaining the affordability at the schools being another core goal as a part of that.

The core principle I look at from a very, very baseline perspective, and in the beginning we did talk with peer systems, particular the university system of Georgia,

who'd gone through this. I had been to their presentation, coincidentally, at 00:33:00the national Chief Business Officers conference the summer before all this. I'd gone to their conference and been like, oh, this is how Georgia, oh, this is kind of an interesting presentation about how they had approached like a merger and consolidation style project. Their approach was very different. But the issues, like financial aid will be one of the most, the last things that you close out on. And it's true. It has been, just because of how much work you have to do with the Department of Education. So we were able to learn a lot from that project, even though their approach was very different than ours. Put it that way.

So, remind me of the question, Lena. Sorry.

LEH: Something about functional teams? (laughter)

SF: Oh, yeah. Sorry, sorry. So, the functional teams. So given that I had to work with Vice President Cramer. Vice President Cramer was the chair of the steering committee. So we had to basically be the individuals responsible for charging each of these functional teams upfront, right? And standing them up pretty early on. And really asking them to explore the universe of issues and problems that we should work through. Because again, you can't run the project centrally and think that you know everything there is to know about every financial aid issue that's going to arise in the next two years. You have to have deference to subject matter experts, the financial aid directors at the receiving institutions and at UW Colleges and Extension, to work with your federal partners to come up with a, again, rational approach for transitioning what we needed to do.

So I was involved, I think, with a lot of the functional teams just by nature of the role. In terms of focus areas, if you will, that became focuses. The student information system, the transferable student records, that had to be done. It had to be done quickly. Again, 11,738 just on that part of the project. We would estimate that between consultant time and campus staff time, there were about nineteen thousand hours just spent on that part of restructuring. So that's five years' worth of hours spent on one component of restructuring. And that had its own kind of more complex governance structure that made it more like a typical IT project, which is kind of what it needed to end up being. So this was a focus point.

Financial aid. Don't screw up people's financial aid. That was key, right? How people register for classes. We could not not have people registering for classes in spring 2018 or spring 2019, in the two major focal transition points. So how are you setting up the systems to allow that to occur? And how are you working with the federal government to make sure that A, they're 00:36:00comfortable in the transition year. With UW Colleges and Extension, so the central office in 2018-'19 became a service provider for the four-year institutions. There were signed memoranda of understanding with each four-year institution. Ninety percent of it was boilerplate language. Ten percent of it was customized to the business needs of each institution. We sat down with the leadership of each institution. System admin, Colleges and Extension as a service provider, and the receiving institution. Worked through these thirty-two core functions. You know, veterans' services, who's going to be providing that? What's the campus' role? What's Colleges and Extension's role for this 2018-'19 period? So that everyone knew what each other was supposed to do. We had a management plan underlying that that said resolve issues of the lowest level you can, at the unit level. So between the veterans' services staff at the campuses/colleges level, only then, if you can't resolve at these two lower levels, should you then raise issues to system administration. Because what you don't want is bottlenecking of problems in a small funnel at system admin with vice presidents and a president who, very knowledgeable, very experienced, you know. And I'd say with this project moved pretty quickly with the decisions that they had to make. But you don't want to overload that group, that small group, with issues that they had removed from by three or four layers in terms of like the actual issue here, and you're asking them to make a decision about something that should not be coming to them. So we established that as a principle in the management plan through an issue escalation process.

So those, when you talk about communication, I'm a big fan of documented, having people sign and then pointing back to something and saying, well, this is what we all agreed to here. Let's remember that and let's have the document, like distribute this document widely so that you know who's responsible for X during the transition.

LEH: Could you maybe expand on that? Like an example or two of something like an issue occurring and like, yeah.

SF: Oh, gosh. (LEH laughs) So I think, I think if you were to look at, let's look at HR, right, as an example. So there were around, just shy of 00:39:001900 employee appointments we needed to transition. So, again, System, we set the framework. We said, if you're at a receiving institution, or if you're at a branch campus, you'll transition to the receiving institution. If you're in the central office, you have an appointment for two years. Part of the discussion around, there were pieces that System was responsible for, right? We needed to work with the board to make sure that tenure, faculty tenure, was transferred to each receiving institution so that tenure would transfer in like for like, roughly speaking. So that people wouldn't feel like oh, I'm losing my tenure as a result of this transition. Or, at the branch campuses, oh, I'm losing my job, for the most part, as a direct result of this.

The campuses, I think, were encouraged to try to work out okay, how do you have the faculty, and how are they integrated into the academic planning that's occurring in departments, the programmatic array and the curriculum planning. That could not be done by System administration. We could not get involved department by department issues, so much as again, we all helped to set the framework. But how you should be working through this at the campus level.

The other example I'll use is regards to athletics. So again, well, I don't know if I want to use athletics. Let me think about it. It's slightly different. Let's look at, let's look at, again, I'll look at HR, maybe. Going back to HR. We said to UW Colleges and Extension HR, you know, you'll be the ones, and they agreed to this in the MOUs, working with each of the receiving institutions to determine things like how are these employees and their benefits going to transition across in the HRS system? And making sure that that was done appropriately. Now if there were questions that were asked about oh, what's our principle around unemployment insurance? Or what's our principle around name your, any I guess bigger picture sort of question about making sure that there's a consistent application of a principle. So do you want, when do you want to actually officially move the employees over in HRS, versus transition 00:42:00kind of the reporting authority? That was System who set the principle. Campuses had to kind of be the ones, at the campus level, to be interfacing with the employees and answering their questions from a campus context.

LEH: Okay. So when you're sort of like formulating these things--

SF: What things?

LEH: Like policies about--

SF: Well, you have to look at what exists. What exists already in policy within a system. The System has four hundred plus system-wide policies. If you look at the board and you look at the System administrative policy set. And each campus has their own policies. So we had to be clear during the transition year for these employees, Colleges and Extension's personnel policies are going to apply for this transition year. Just so that, you know, again, people don't have to worry about that during this year. That was part of the MOUs. So I don't know, we tried to avoid creating new policy just for the project. And I'm a big proponent in not doing that for interim solution, temporary solutions. Because again, with such a, the UW System is the fourth most highly-regulated environment for higher ed in the country. So there are a lot of state and, there's a lot of state law and regulation on top of our own board of regents policies and administrative policies. So it was more, I think we always pushed to what do our existing policies allow us to do? Let's be as employee-friendly as we possibly can, given the work that's going on here, and given that this is a time of significant change. And kind of just move on from there.

Again, it's more about the principle that's being set from System administration. And kind of again, how do you minimize disruption? How are you understanding kind of through this? But there are clear timelines, and there's things that we need to do. Because that's what, again, we have committed to our accreditor. But let's not create new policies. We issued, the system-wide decisions are all on the restructuring website. The steering committee minutes and materials were sent broadly to the same distribution groups after each steering committee meeting, which was monthly throughout most of the project until, I'd say, the last six months of the project, where we held more meetings remotely and we may have canceled a couple of meetings, because there wasn't anything to discuss with that group.

Yeah. Go ahead, though. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

LEH: No, no, no. Talk about what you want to talk about.

SF: Oh, no, no, no. I'm done. Yeah.

LEH: Oh, what was I going to say? I had a question. And then I lost it. Oh, it's coming back again. (laughs) So like, when it comes to like 00:45:00formulating principles, how do you sort of, could you expand on how that works with sort of like the, sort of like individualized like identities of like the UW Colleges? And then the UW Extension, which is like its own thing. How you formulate principles.

SF: Yeah. I mean, I think that if you look at a broad principle, you want to transition the services across as successful as possible, right? So there aren't things that are unintentionally lost in the transition. Sure, receiving institutions may choose to operate certain services differently in the context of four-year campuses may be used to providing a certain level of service that is different than UW Colleges because UW Colleges was what I'd call a mini system within the UW System. One central office that was providing a lot of centralized services to the two-year schools.

So when we went back and we talked individually to each unit within Colleges and Extension. Again, like human resources, finance, student affairs. And the sub-units underneath and we talked to them about like what is it that you do? Talk to us about the FTE in your area, what do they do? And we had to kind of reverse engineer, okay, as we look at how these services and the funding is going to be apportioned back out, what is the fairest way of doing this, considering the service?

In the beginning, we did have to go line by line by line through the Colleges' budget, and line by line by line through the UW Extension budget. My colleagues, mostly on the Extension side. Again, Gillean Kitchen, who served as the deputy project lead for a while, can talk a lot about the budget and financing side. She was really involved with the Extension piece in particular, too. But we went line through line. And again, there was a great degree of thoughtfulness put in about what is the most equitable way of distributing funding for these particular services to the receiving institutions now, given that UW Colleges operate at a slightly different model.

It's also about expectation setting, right, as well. If you're at a four-year campus, you may have a different service model for certain student services than exist in a branch campus, in a two-year campus, to centralized service provider. Because UW Colleges had gone through a round of regionalization before all of this. And budget cuts, along with the rest of the system, 00:48:00significantly before this. So they had, they were already, and our accreditors recognized it, very kind of thin in certain areas on the student services side, where the four-year schools, again, have a different expectation, I would say, just because of their own lens and their own context on those services.

LEH: Could you expand on that?

SF: In what way? I think I, okay, I guess in what way. I mean, there's not really much more I can expand on in terms of that. Again, I think if you were to look at the, some of the materials that were issued after the accreditors' report was written on kind of okay, on that fall 2018 visit, the focused visit the accreditors conducted, they had to write a report basically stating well, yeah, this is okay, this is fine, we don't need to check back in. Or they could have said no, we want to check back in, this is not going according to what we had said. Or technically, they probably could have come back and then said wait, these guys are way off base. Like let's put a pause on this project. That didn't happen. It was all (from one?) which was they're making appropriate progress. The review of the accreditation of the branch campuses can now occur in the context of the review of the accreditation of the four-year institutions now that they've joined with. So I think that speaks to that. But you'll see that student services was focused on, in that report. Because again, of the budget decisions that had to be made at UW Colleges and Extension prior to restructuring, it had a lot of centralized service, centralized solution centers. And they provided a lot of service with not terribly, not that much funding. Just because of the budget situation. And again, their commitment, really, to their students, was evident to me throughout the course of the project in transitioning services. And again, how do you help students understand what this impacts and what this really doesn't impact for them?

LEH: With students, what do you choose to highlight for them?

SF: What do you mean, highlight?

LEH: Like communicate to them about the process?

SF: Yeah, I think the main things, the main things in the beginning, so when we set up the frequently asked questions portal, you know, the thing with students was, are the campuses closing? Oh my goodness, am I going to be able to finish my degree? Just answering basic questions and saying no, the campus isn't closing. Yes, you'll be able to finish your course of study. They were interested in oh, is this going to impact, how do I, what will the benefit be, eventually? Like is this going to make transfer easier? And that's one of the goals of the project, right? Is medium to long term, and there's a transferology project occurring right now to enhance, right now we have the TIS system, the transfer information system. It's antiquated. We're upgrading that, which will be beneficial for students. But medium to long-term, it's trying to make transfer easier for students across the system, so they can go where they want to go. And impeding, there isn't unnecessary barriers to student success that don't need to be there. And so part of this is that with a tighter connection with the four-year institutions, hopefully that that would be borne out in the long-term is improving student transfer. So that was one of the questions we got.

Others ranged from like athletics, I think, was one. And are we going to be able to continue to play club sports? And I think the answer is, you know, athletics was more of a, the definition of athletics is different at a four-year school. Like intercollegiate athletics versus at a two-year campus where there was inter-site or inter-campus sports going on, but it wasn't intercollegiate athletics in the same way that a four-year institution would think about it.\

Am I going to be able to access some of the services at the receiving institution? Well, that depends on how the receiving institution's kind of going to work with you on the segregated fees. And like Whitewater. Whitewater has a shuttle bus now between the branch campus and the main campus in Janesville, just to build that kind of connection. That's been wildly popular throughout there just helping people actually show the connection between the branch and the main campus.

Oshkosh. Oshkosh was the last campus to have a naming convention for its branch campuses. They put in a lot of effort and time trying to have a study 00:54:00that kind of got people's perspectives about okay, how can we successfully, what would be inclusive for, how do I put this? I think they were very interested in not just what the name is, and doing like a naming study, but also what would make people feel a better sense of engagement with the institution? And so they used the kind of naming marketing study as a tool to try and engage people and get their thoughts and concepts about this new relationship, really, between the branch campuses and the main campus.

So again, the one thing that we were cognizant of was that each individual campus within the UW System--yes, there is a system--but each campus has its own culture and identity and focus area. Part of the decisions in the beginning, where we aligned the branch campuses with the four-year institutions, wasn't just based on geographical proximity, but also on programmatic array and opportunity in the future. And so, you know, I think there's plenty of long-term possibility for these partnerships to grow and evolve. I mean, you're not at the end of restructuring yet. June, 2020 is technically the end phase of the project, which our office is still tracking a few system-wide milestones. So.

LEH: Yeah. What are you guys still tracking now?

SF: There's a few like IT-related milestones that need to be completed. Mainly that couldn't be completed before the start of the last academic year. That period, because we talk about like the MOUs going from July 1 of 2018 to June 30, 2019. There was in some of those instances, though, a recognition that you can't turn certain things on or off in the middle of the academic semester. Summer semester. So you have to wait until the end of the summer semester and the beginning of the school year to make certain transitions happen. And I think on the IT side, pardon me, there were things that weren't as high as a priority. On the back end, that the CIOs kind of worked out and were like okay, this could wait a while.

LEH: All right. I'm kind of curious about consultancy. So could you expand on like the decision to include outside consultants?

SF: Consultants? So Huron, we ran an RFP. Huron was the firm that was 00:57:00selected. Huron and their engagement with other campuses throughout the US. I mean, part of this is broadening your lens so that you're not just focused on what's, you know. Part of this is a balance, right? You have system expertise and the way we do things in Wisconsin. And then you bring in consultants to offer you how do other campuses handle this. Other institutions may have had some experience with mergers and consolidations, aka Georgia. How do you kind of work with people who bring in that outside perspective to help you shape the project?

So there were two things where consultants became really useful. One was in the project management office context. The PMO was a blended PMO from the beginning of the project through until September of 2018, when System admin staff comprised the entirety of the PMO. Given where the workload was. So, again, what Huron was able to bring to the project was again that more global perspective. They were able to actually go out to some of the receiving institutions that kind of wanted directly consulting help. And go to the campuses, and actually become embedded with the campuses. Oshkosh is a good example where this occurred, and Stevens Point as two kind of core examples. Centrally, they were also able to work with System admin staff in terms of basic core project management responsibilities. What are your milestones? Are we tracking, are we making progress appropriately? Helping with communication and facilitating that, and also providing advice on what's the overall nature of the work that remains. So the focus for the first part of the project was on accreditation, transition of services, etcetera.

Before Huron left, one of the pivots was, well, you also need to think about how you decommission UW Colleges and Extension appropriately and wind down that entity. If you think about, like in the private sector. I know people like this analogy. But if you think about it from a private sector perspective, you have, in a, if you have like an M&A or that sort of thing going on, there is a process with certain elements that you need to kind of tie the bow on closing out, in essence. That you need to think about not just how you would join the 01:00:00entities together, but what sorts of things no longer need to be done, and how do you wind down those particular services or functions.

And so we pivoted from a true functional team model into work streams for the second kind of part of the project. Which was, you know, the UW Extension at UW Madison integration was one work stream. The standing up of UW Shared Services now out of what was really the UW Colleges and Extension central HR, IT and procurement units was another work stream. Separately planned for, but still borne out of restructuring. The CIS project, and all its hours of time and records, another major work stream.

And then you had kind of closeout, really. Which was, again, you had several accounts while you transitioned the funds. How are you winding out the accounts and backing out of the Colleges and Extension accounts that no longer need to exist? How do you switch certain things off in HRS? How, on a very base level, how are you removing signage that used to relate to the old Colleges and Extension? So there were closeout-related milestones. It's a shade of distinction from just transitioning the service. That make sense?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that there's sort of like related things that just sort of, like you said, shared services sort of borne out of the same thing.

SF: Restructuring provided a unique opportunity for us to look at a shared services function. You have seen over the course of the past several years budget cuts to the UW System that have been widely publicized, well known. For our smaller campuses, you often see, in my alma mater at Superior, you see one person wearing like five or six different hats, right? You don't have the advantage to take the economies of scale that you may have at larger institutions. And what that means is, at more the comprehensive schools, the question becomes, do you need to be doing that particular service at the institution? Or is there more of a service provider model for particular functions for again, related to HR, IT and procurement. Certain things that don't need to be different at a campus, and can be handled centrally. Or can be customized to serve you centrally so that there's more consistency of service, so that you can use, again, funds that you were using previously, 01:03:00maybe to re-divert that or redirect that to the academic core. So.

LEH: Yeah. I think about that with libraries. It's a big thing, sharing services across libraries.

SF: Well, the librarians, you guys have been all over that sharing longer than most, right?

LEH: Yeah.

SF: If you think about the interlibrary loan programs, etcetera, right?

LEH: Yep.

SF: Yeah. (laughs)

LEH: All about that. (laughter) Hmm. Let's see. We talked about the steering committee. Talked about how the phases kind of changed. What did you feel like the mood was with like your staff and the staff that you interacted with on a regular basis?

SF: My staff within the project management office? And then staff--

LEH: Yeah, or just administrative--

SF: You mean within System, sorry, I just want to be--

LEH: Yeah.

SF: Within System admin?

LEH: Yeah.

SF: In the beginning, it was, again, how you get your arms around the project. The scale of the project. If I look at the project, I always talk to the folks, from my lens, at least, about the triangle. Scale, speed and complexity. This hits all three, in my mind. Big project. Complex. Number functions need to transition across and you need to have appropriate planning coordination, so that nothing catches people off guard as to why something is being done at the System level and how that synchs up with what's going on at the campus level. That's why we always, like for the last, during the transition year, even before, we tried to publish a road map that let people know here's what's being completed at the System level.

I'd say the work and the pace is very difficult, right? Because people, to your point earlier, a lot of people weren't expecting this to be on their work load early on, right? So when this was announced, it was roll up your sleeves and let's figure this out now that we have to announce it. And again, I will very much give credit to the collegiality and hard work of people throughout the system in making this happen on the timeline that it did. Were there probably some days where folks, you know, were frustrated about things? Yeah, 100 percent. Or why can't we transition things this way? Why can't we, you know, isn't this a campus responsibility versus a System thing? It's small 01:06:00things like that, that actually if you think about it are questions, really, that are fundamental to the System, and are all going in the System regardless of restructuring, right? Campuses will typically push for institutional autonomy. System, this being a system, this is not Michigan, where there is no system of higher education, System will try to bring a coordinated approach where we need to, to ensure the overall, you know, there isn't a disparate effect occurring because of a decision that's made at one campus. You've got to think about, so, you've got to think more globally about okay, what does access and affordability look like across the institutions? Across the 26 campuses.

So, going back to your question, though, I think the hard, so, one is how do you get people past the surprise of maybe not knowing about the project to kind of transitioning and saying okay, we've got to move forward and get this done? I am very thankful for the individuals that we hired into the project management office who were always willing to roll up their sleeves and work with folks in HR, folks in IT. Okay, what do you need?

But to that point, the role of the project manager is different than the role of like the functional team lead, your subject matter expert, right? You're relying on--it's like a partnership. Your functional team lead looking at, let's say like the student application process and if there's any changes that we need to make is going to be, and student recruitment, is going to be very different than this project manager who may not have that expertise but is willing to help kind of coordinate and facilitate and bring the, okay, well, we have this overall project timeline. How does your kind of piece of the puzzle fit in?

So part of it is acclimatizing System administration to project management in an environment that maybe outside of IT hasn't always been used to project management, if that makes sense. So, again, it's partly kind of defining that role in an environment where people weren't expecting a massive project and this to be added to their workload.

And you know, I think as the project wore on and people got more into the, probably into the kind of natural groove of things, as it were, once we were able to bring more clarity in terms of okay, here's what we need to accomplish, and here are the milestones and here's the way we're going to try to 01:09:00work it out on a regular cadence, I think that increased people's, okay, you know, calmness about things. There are still individuals, though who, I mean, the project is very personal for folks at Colleges and Extension, you know? Because you know, literally the institution does not exist anymore. And it's being sensitive to the fact that this is, there are people involved in this project, you know? You've heard me talking this conversation about the numbers, the sheer scale of restructuring. But with each of those numbers, there's a person, there is a human being, that is facilitating a process or working on a campus to make sure that students aren't negatively impacted by this. That this does, that this transition mechanically worked as best as we could in the timeframe that we had. And so I am thankful for the people. Because without the people, this project doesn't get done. On time.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I think, pretty important, yeah. Okay. All right. We talked about communication. All right. Is there anything you'd like to add? Anything that just comes to mind, you're like, got to talk about this?

SF: (laughs) So, a few things. I mean, one, this sort of project isn't something you can go into and hope to solve every problem on day one. Like if people were going back and thinking oh, you know, you could have a different planning timeframe than this project and still not solve every problem on day one. There are things that will just crop up that you'll be like oh, okay. How do we address this? And you have to be open and flexible and calm enough to just rationally work through it, provide people as much guidance as you can, and move on from there.

Two, there will never, or there can never be enough communication on a project of this size. And it's tough in an environment in higher ed that 01:12:00you're so used to emails. But one of my reflections would be, and other projects have done this subsequently that have been really, I think it's been well received. But how do you broaden out your communication methodology to reach people as broadly as possible?

Three, I think the importance of trying to define the campus role in the project, and campus staff, versus what System could handle and manage, was something that I think, I'm glad we got there kind of when we did. And really President Cross in February of 2018 kind of set the tone in terms of trying to make that delineation clearer for folks. Because that was an important component of moving forward in a constructive manner given the timeline that we had. Trying to define responsibility.

I think the next point I'd raise, the memoranda of understanding, I'll give credit to my colleague in the general counsel's office, Noah Brisbane, because he was the one who kind of actually made the stuff that was going on in my head, and a couple of others actually putting it down onto paper and having the structure. But those were key, along with the management plan, in terms of being guideposts for how we conducted the transition year. You screw up the transition year, you don't allow yourself enough time for actually transitioning the services, because the services you're providing aren't working. That causes problems. We'll see. And that would not have gone well with our accreditors.

I think in terms of like the long-term ramifications of restructuring, there's a lot of like question, right? There's like oh, well, given your project goals, did this all work? And the thing I always like to remind people is again, restructuring, the project, as we submitted it to our accreditors on Martin Luther King Day in 2018, federal holiday, that was the date that HLC chose, but, that it actually wound up being. You are not finished with that project. And that this is the first year where the services have 99 percent fully transitioned to the receiving institutions, where they have full operational control instead of relying on Colleges and Extension as the service provider during the transition year. So this is the first year. And not even 01:15:00fully for the first year. This is the second semester, halfway through, where they've worked through that. And they will continue to refine those services over time to make sure that the branch campuses are appropriately integrated.

I think that, in my ideal world, would there have been a PMO ready on day one to kind of take up this project right when it was announced in November 2017? Yeah, there would be. There would be. And I don't think, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn our out of school when it comes to that. But, System leadership, System staff stepped up in the beginning to kind of help to facilitate this. You know, with me.

And I appreciate in particular Vice President Cramer being the steering committee chair and being my supervisor, kind of working through this and giving us enough space at the beginning to kind of put our arms around this. And I would say for me, I just remember again those nights in Van Hise or really early mornings where we're just trying to, kind of turn a concept into actual reality. And you know, he was very supportive all the way through this process about giving people time to work things through, being calm about any issues that we were encountering, and encouraging us just to keep up the cadence of reporting to him. So we held weekly meetings with him, with the project management office, to kind of track progress at the beginning. We met with President Cross pretty regularly, directly.

But as time wore on, it was like okay, now that we've set the course, let us just execute against the plan and the milestones. Let's continue with the regular cadence of reporting to the board. And kind of go on from there. These types of projects are difficult because the System is undergoing massive change outside of restructuring. There are other projects campuses have going on. There are other projects, system-wide projects, like a new budget and planning tool being implemented. The Title & Total Compensation Study that has other kind of ramifications for employees. And so, given everything else that people have going on, to make this kind of work, again, I just can't give people, 01:18:00our partners on campuses as well as, you know, I think the consultants who work with us both on the project management side as well as, we had consultants work with us on the CIS project, with the technical implementation of actually transitioning the records across. Because you don't have, campuses don't necessarily have the IT staff to just handle that by themselves. And plus the expertise to actually map out how you're going to approach that particular project. I would just give people a lot of credit and thanks for, again, what they were doing. So.

LEH: All right.

SF: Yeah?

LEH: Thank you.

SF: You're welcome.

End First Interview Session