Interview with Jackie Joseph-Silverstein

LEH: All right. So can you say your full name and then spell out your last name?

JJS: Sure. My name is Jackie Joseph-Silverstein. J-o-s-e-p-h, hyphen S-i-l-v-e-r-s-t-e-i-n.

LEH: All right. It looks like the sound is good, so we're ready to go.

JJS: Great.

LEH: So why don't we sort of start with like the basics. So what sort of brought you to UW Colleges, and how long did you hold your position before restructuring started?

JJS: Okay. So I came to UW Colleges in 2013. My husband and I had moved to Milwaukee from Cleveland, Ohio. And I did something different for about fourteen months until I was offered the job to be the dean of the UW Sheboygan campus to start with. So in January 2013, I started at UW Sheboygan. I had actually had a previous job with a branch campus at UCONN. And that was probably my favorite job that I had ever had. So the job in Sheboygan was just perfect for me and my balance of being out in the community, but also working with faculty, staff and students. And that's what I really enjoyed sort of balance working across all of the constituent groups.

So I was at Sheboygan until we went through what we initially called the restructuring, which was the regionalization of UW Colleges. And so in I believe it probably was January 2016, I became the regional dean of the Southeast Region, which was Sheboygan, Washington County and Waukesha. And I did that until the restructuring and merging with the four-year institution.

So I was with Colleges for a total of about six years when the actual, or maybe five years when the actual transition happened. I guess it was five years.

LEH: All right. So you said that sort of like the balance of the colleges with different constituents was something that you really like. Could you expand on that?

JJS: Sure. So at the campus being in UW Colleges, first of all, as you probably have heard by this point in time, the UW Colleges campuses were actually, the land and the buildings were owned 00:03:00 by the counties. And then the 00:03:00programming, you know, was provided by the state. So that we had to develop close working relationships with the leadership in the county. But also, we worked with economic development people. I participated in boards in the community and really became part of that community at the time. So that was really part of what we were tasked with doing at UW Colleges. We were sort of the UW, it's not the right word to use, but I'll say outpost all across the state. And we were part of helping to move the Wisconsin Idea across the state, to provide education and needed education to the constituents in our own parts of the state.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. How do you think that that translated into some of the services that the former colleges offered in student affairs, academic affairs?

JJS: So, first of all, I'll start with the fact that as you know, UW Colleges offered the transfer associate's degree. So the basic curriculum was the general education associate's degree curriculum. But that didn't mean that we didn't offer the unique courses that would get students started in a particular major of their interest when they transferred. For example, we offered the first two years of all of the engineering courses that a student would need for transfer. We offered some of the pre-education courses, all of the STEM courses to go on any of the STEM fields, including going into premed and becoming a doctor, dentist or a vet or whatever. So we prepared our students to transfer on to their bachelor's degree programs.

In the case of engineering, engineering was something we specifically brought to some of our campuses being that was something that the community was looking for. And in fact in some instances we entered into collaborative agreements with four-year institutions to offer the junior and senior year on our campuses or through streaming video or through online courses specifically for those students enrolled in those programs.

And the best example of that that I think we're probably the most proud of was that there was a collaborative on many of the campuses, and Sheboygan and Washington County were two of them, 00:06:00 with Platteville to bring the 00:06:00engineering - the mechanical and the electrical engineering - to our campuses. And in Sheboygan, that was very important. Because we have a lot of major manufacturing companies, including Kohler and [Bemis?] 6:18 which does certain plastics kind of work. And a couple of others, Plenco, which is another plastics company. We had a lot of very large manufacturing companies that were looking for an educated workforce but were bringing in people who'd been educated elsewhere. And they didn't stay in small communities like Sheboygan. They didn't keep them long. So they felt like if they were able to grow their own and have an educated workforce that grew up in their community and went to school in their community, that that would be a good way to sort of hold on to that workforce in areas like engineering.

LEH: Yeah. I think that's really interesting, sort of creating a culture that makes more people want to stay. So through restructuring, how did some of that stuff either change or stay the same?

JJS: So I think, for the short term, it changed. And I'll talk about the campuses that I know the most about. Obviously it's going to take a while for a new administration, and particularly an administration where the real leadership, the chancellors are elsewhere. And there are lots of priorities. They don't just have this priority of working in these local communities. They have their big local community where their university is and now they've added these other local communities that they have to get to know. In my own experience going from one to three, it takes time to build the right relationships. It takes time to figure out what the workforce needs are.

So for the short term, for example, Washington County and Sheboygan, as I already mentioned, had those strong collaborations with UW Platteville to offer the engineering degree. In fact, they both have some community resources and county resources that built small facilities with engineering labs on those two campuses.

And when the transition happened, the collaboration was lost because it was long longer between Platteville and UW Colleges campuses. I think in the long term, those will build new, 00:09:00 the new leadership will be bringing those 00:09:00programs in their own way back to those campuses. But for the short term, that relationship was lost. And therefore, for the short term at least, that particular opportunityfor students, at least on those two campuses, was lost. Platteville (obviously there were students already in the program), they were great about getting those students through the program. But students who had intended to enter that program, for the short term there was no program for them to enter. Although I believe that in the case of Green Bay, they certainly intend to bring their own engineering program to Sheboygan. And in the case of UWM, I've heard through the grapevine that they may be working to do something with engineering.

So with new leadership, there are whole new sets or priorities. Getting to know communities. Getting to know community needs. Seeing what kind of resources you have. Seeing what kind of collaborations you need to build. That all takes time. So while it could get to where it was (you know, they clearly are a little bigger) from perhaps lpast years there will be lost opportunities because of that. But there are lots of new opportunities. Opportunities for those institutions that now have the two years to bring their own four-year degrees, where in the past they always had to work with a four-year institution to sort of get them interested in bringing one of their degrees to our campuses.

LEH: Hmm. Could you expand on that?

JJS: On which part?

LEH: On the last part about bringing things from the four years to those former UW-Colleges campuses.--

JJS: Yeah. So I don't know what all the four-years' visions are for how they're going to use those campuses. But some of them have at least talked about bringing four-year degrees to those campuses that after talking to the business community meets a community need, perhaps bringing things like one or two master's degrees that again, fits the community need. So I think you've got to start with figuring out what is it that community will need. And sort of not bring it down, bring it out to the branches and they will come. You have to figure out first what it is that the community wants. Sometimes what the community says they want, and then the ability to get students enrolled isn't easy. 00:12:00 So I think there are conversations about that on some of the 00:12:00four-years - I've heard about secondhand or thirdhand. But again, that takes time to decide which are the right ones to export out to the campuses. Or shouldn't use "export," because it wouldn't be that you would probably not have them on your main campus. But if you have it also on the branch, you're attracting a whole new population of students that might not come to your main campus because of their need to sort of stay in their own community.

LEH: Hmm. So when you say that, what community people say that they want, is that necessarily, there's still potential issues with attracting interest?

JJS: Yeah. I mean, I have to say, that's from my past experience. I worked at a community college. And in community college, every single program has an advisory board of people in the field who sort of guide the faculty and the deans on what programs they should grow, they should build. And what programs are really the cutting edge and their community is going to need. And sometimes they would develop those programs and you know, students wouldn't come. So sometimes, you know, there's a disconnect between what the workforce needs might be and what student interest in a particular area might be. You see what I'm saying?

LEH: Yeah.

JJS: You know, because you're talking countywide. Or maybe you're talking three or five counties wide. So your pool of students isn't the whole national pool of students, it's students in that area. And so while the workforce--and probably while no one would ever say this--but while the workforce needs are what you look at first, the workforce needs and what students are necessarily aiming for may not match up. Obviously, if the business community and the university do a great job marketing why this particular degree is going to get them a great job without having to leave their area, that helps with that piece. So I wouldn't put a lot of emphasis on that, but I'm just pointing out that it's not easy to move into a new area as an educational institution and figure it out and 00:15:00 suddenly have this huge enrollment growth because the communities, the 00:15:00business community says this is what we need here.

There were certain areas, perhaps like nursing, where there might be such an interest in the profession on the part of students that you will get immediate growth, that you can add a second site with a new population to draw from. But that isn't necessarily always the case.

LEH: Yeah. So when restructuring was happening, you also made a comment about entering students, opportunities changing as the process was happening. Could you talk a little bit about that, and just sort of the information that was accessible to students about this process? Your experience with how students and community members in your region reacted.

JJS: Well, you know, the System did a good job reaching out to the counties, for example, which was a really important thing to do, obviously. And we as deans actually, there was a move, if I remember correctly, (you know, some of this is two years later, you don't really remember, you've been involved in so much since then). But we were asked to sort of, we all had communications persons in our region. And they were asked to work really closely with the System communications office. And most of the information in the early days of restructuring came out of the System office. Because what they didn't want, which was absolutely right, is that everyone, every campus to put a different spin on the story, or to give out different information that may or may not have been accurate information, to their community.

In terms of how the community responded, you know, I think there was a lot of trepidation. I mean, with the unknown, there's always trepidation. You know your dean. You maybe don't see the chancellor very often, but you know who that person is. You know that there's this commitment to the community and to access to education for all sorts of students. And now there's going to be a new sheriff in town. There's going to be a four-year institution. And on the one hand, that was exciting for these communities, 00:18:00 because now they would 00:18:00have UWM, or UW Oshkosh right in their communities. But on the other hand, there was an awful lot of unknown: "what does that mean for our program? Are they still going to be offering the associate's degree down here? What about our foundations? Are we still going to have foundations? Are we still going to be able to raise money for scholarships and programs?" So I would say that there was tredpidation and lots of questions. And on the part of students, I think there was - as much as we worked to provide students with the right information, for advisors to get students the right information - I think it was confusing for students. And I think this is, we have no data that says this for a fact, and we know that already the enrollment downturn's happening. But there were continuing enrollment downturns. And we do feel like students were confused. "Okay, what do I do? Do I apply at UWM? Or do I apply to Waukesha? I want to be on the Waukesha campus, what do I do?" And students that were already here: "should I transfer early? Or can I still get the associate's degree?"

So obviously, all of the one-on-one conversations with advisors were helpful to that. And there was regular information put out related to all that. But as you know, you're close to having been an undergraduate student. It's sometimes easy to not read all the information that comes to you from your school.

LEH: (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Especially, I think it depends, too, how you might be getting that information. Like what sort of networks you're going through and what people in those networks are saying.

JJS: Yeah. You're absolutely right. I think you're making me think about, you know, faculty were also asking: "what's going to happen to me? Am I going to lose my job even if I'm tenured? I'm coming up for tenure this year. Is this going to impact my ability to get tenure?" So as much as 95 percent of the faculty understands that this all has to be sort of not what you're talking to students aboutthe students have to still be having a great experience. So faculty questions and fears all needs to be behind the scenes. There are always a few that are going to complain about it, that are going to sort of have their own view of what's going to happen. And so, you're right. 00:21:00 It depends on 00:21:00where you're getting your information from. And so there likely were instances where students didn't get accurate information because faculty didn't have accurate information and had their own angst and fears about this.

But in general, I think the approach to getting the information out, the communication that System was doing, the communication that we were doing. The new chancellors came down to the campuses and visited and had town hall meetings with faculty and staff. And had town hall meetings with student government leadership. All of those kinds of things were done very early on after it was a given that this was going to happen.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. I can see where doing those types of things would be important for trying to make sure that people understand, make sure that people have the right information.

JJS: Yeah. And I think the one thing I would say is that it's important to know for this history that it was just two and a half years earlier that the colleges went through regionalization. Sixty two and a half fulltime equivalent employees were lost from the institution. Everyone who had a job after regionalization had to reapply for that job. No one was just kept on. Everyone had to reapply for their jobs.

LEH: After, after regionalization?

JJS: Yeah. Yeah. Because, well at least, I don't know, I shouldn't say everyone. But certainly everyone in any leadership position had to reapply for their job. So for example, there were thirteen deans. There were thirteen student affairs assistant deans. There were thirteen associate academic affairs deans. There were thirteen finance and administration assistant deans. There were thirteen communications leads. There were thirteen library directors. Every single one of those people had to apply for and compete with their colleagues for what were now four jobs instead of thirteen.

So there was, you know, there was a lot of low morale because of the regionalization. There were a lot of people who were just wrung through the wringer in order to get the job that they now had in this new regional structure. And now this (restructuring and dissolution of UW-Colleges) happened. So when I talk 00:24:00 about angst and fear and unknown in terms of faculty and 00:24:00staff, we'd just gone through that two and a half years earlier. So that should sort of be, you know, sort of in the background of this restructuring. Because it sort of tells you something about, you know, faculty and staff, what they had just gone through not too much before this happening.

LEH: Yeah.

JJS: No faculty lost their jobs. But they would certainly, oh, I would be at meetings where people would be crying because they knew their colleague lost their job and wasn't going to get one of those regional jobs. It was a very, very tough time in Colleges.

LEH: Yeah. And I have to imagine, too, that just given sort of the emphasis on like the Wisconsin idea and these communities that when you're in sort of like a structure like that, where people know each other and people are in communication with each other, that seeing that happen to someone else would be--

JJS: Yeah. It's hard. And it also then becomes hard for the right communication to get out. Because as you say, there's a big network of people. People who work at the institution, live in those communities, know people in those communities. You know, we came out of the other side of regionalization and we had it working at that point. But it was hard. And there were people who were still probably scarred by that to this day who now went through this next restructuring.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of goes into this question about I guess what kinds of conversations you're having with your coworkers and sort of the mood in restructuring. Do you think it was similar to regionalization because of people's fears or like different in any way?

JJS: Well, I mean, it was somewhat different, only because of the fact that when we did regionalization, there was sort of a, there was a longer time when people knew that regionalization was going to happen. You know, it was known that something needed to happen. There was a committee and a consultant brought in to talk about how if we did this, how would we do it. 00:27:00 Then there were all 00:27:00of these committees that were put together that spent a year working out what the various structures would be in a regional setting with some things further centralized than they had been. And I don't know if that was better or worse that there was really a long period of time where people knew that this was going to be happening sort of you know, we're seeing on a regular basis how it was moving along before it actually happened.

With restructuring, the Colleges' people, I don't know how much knowledge our chancellor had. Rumor has it she had very little, very little knowledge of it before it was announced. But the people out on the campuses had no knowledge of this until it was announced. So while we still had a period of time during which the transition was happening, there was a decision made and then we knew it was happening. So I think it was different for people in that they didn't have this long time period to think about oh, no, oh, no, what exactly is going to happen, how is it going to impact me? This was, okay, this is happening. So that made it a little different.

And also, the faculty trepidation. You know, they very quickly started working on what it would be like to be part of a new institution and working with their colleagues at that new institution. And after an initial trepidation, I think the faculty started to turn their attention more to the future than to the past. I think some staff, again, went through some uncertainty, as they did before. But it was just a very different sort of situation. And perhaps having just been through it, the people who were left--I don't know. Just, it was different. Even for me it was different. It was one thing to see through a process like okay, well, what's going to happen? They say they want to regionalize. How many regions? Where are these regions going to be? Which campuses are they going to be? What services are going to get centralized? And we had a whole long period of time to sort of think about that. And people worrying about 00:30:00 what was 00:30:00going to happen to them in particular. Whereas in this case, we knew this was happening. We knew from the beginning, this is what's happening. This restructuring is happening.

LEH: So in a way--

JJS: Now I think that, I think some of the people on the ground were concerned about well is my job still going to be there? I'm an advisor on the Waukesha campus. Am I still going to be an advisor on the Waukesha campus once this transition was completed? And in most instances, you know, at least in the short term, that was the case. But there are obviously people who have lost their jobs or who will be losing their jobs as a result of this restructuring, including people like me. And for those people, those were mostly people who worked in central sorts of services. All the financial aid people. All the registrars' people. All the student affairs people who worked centrally in Madison. You know, finance people who worked centrally in Madison. Those were the people who were going to be losing jobs.

So I'm not sure. But it's hard to answer. Because I didn't feel the same sort of mourning when we restructured on the part of faculty and staff, you know, the people on the ground, as I did with the regionalization.

LEH: Yeah. Can you expand on that? Is it just because the regionalization, yeah, can you just, yeah.

JJS: Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure I know, I sort of tried to explain it the best I could. Which is it happened really quickly. There clearly was no turning back with it. And there was still a job to do and there was still this transition to take care of. And we wanted to make sure our students were treated well. And we need to put a positive spin on this in our communities. So I think for some of us, we were mourning the fact that we were just starting to build something new that we thought we could make work, and now we weren't going to have that opportunity anymore. So it just, it didn't feel the same on the ground for faculty and staff.

And as I said, on the part of faculty, I think faculty fairly quickly turned their attention 00:33:00 to their futures at the four-years. And I think our 00:33:00chancellors, our four-year chancellors, did a great job of putting faculty's minds at ease about how they were going to be accepted into their institution, or what kind of a structure was going to be put in place in their institution so that these faculty would have a place.

LEH: Do you think that maybe one of the difference might be like the level of transparency or just to the sheer amount of information available at the beginning of the process?

JJS: That's a good one. Let me make sure I, let me clarify what you're saying about the level of transparency. There was much more transparency with regionalization than there was with restructuring. (laughs)

LEH: Yeah.

JJS: Is that what you meant?

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

JJS: Yeah. I mean, I sort of do think that. I think that so many people from all the campuses were engaged in these committees that worked on regionalization, and how would that work, and what would be centralized and how many people were going to be needed if we do this? So there were tons of people from the campuses engaged in that. And they were living it. Whereas this one was just okay, here's the decision. And so people still had to do their work, still getting in their work. But people weren't so much engaged at the same level. I think on the four-year campuses, the faculty were very much engaged, as I said, in what their transition was going to be, like moving to a four-year. And the four-years did a great job involving them.

But in terms of people lower down in the organization being really engaged in this, that wasn't the case. And as I said, they were told this was going to happen. So it wasn't like you could help shape what was going to happen. It wasn't like there was this--it was just, it was different. And I think you may, I think you're right. I think it could well have had something to do with when we regionalized, a lot of people on the campuses lived that for a year through involvement on various committees, and being asked to describe their work and their workload so there could be an analysis done on how should this work in a regionalized environment.

And that sort of wasn't, that kind of approach wasn't the kind of approach taken with restructuring. 00:36:00 Lots of people--oh, sorry, let me just--(phone 00:36:00rings) See, I'm working from home and I get lots of spam calls. Okay. I just took care of that.

You know, but obviously everyone on the ground at Colleges was very involved in restructuring. Because they were still serving students, they were still taking care of financial aid and registering students till the end of this summer. So it wasn't like they weren't still involved and still engaged, but not around planning the future (phone rings) But not involved in planning for it. Just involved in doing that.

LEH: Yeah. What's interesting to me is that all of the, well, the PowerPoints for the steering committee are all online. But for what I've seen, that appears to be more about moving things around after how things have been moved around, after that was already decided.

JJS: Yeah, yeah. So I'm sure you've talked to people who have talked about the structure. So once they said this is happening, then they needed to put together functional teams to figure out how to make, you know, how to get student records moved over to institutions. How to eventually take over financial aid at the four-years. How to take over all of the HR stuff. But that was all done by sort of, the planning piece of it, like how it should work, was done by functional teams. And functional teams were often made up of the leadership in that area from receiving institutions. So there wasn't, there was some involvement by Colleges people, but only at the highest levels, really. The registrar and the associate director. The financial aid director. You know, the HR director and one or two people that they had representing HR. So while it was kind of a really tough thing, while everyone on the ground was still working really hard and still making the day to day work, they were also being asked to take on some new stuff that would make the transition easy. But those grassroots people weren't involved in any of the planning.

00:39:00 And so those steering committee meetings were really about the 00:39:00decisions functional teams had made. Or decisions System had made related to things. Or how a particular receiving institution would sort of be highlighted to talk about how they did a particular thing. So I think it was this project management team that was a System group that was sort of guiding the process and sort of behind the scenes, and making sure meetings got called, and making sure if there was an issue that it was bird dogged and followed up on.

So there was all of that, but it didn't include the grassroots of Colleges people in the same way. So, big deal. Maybe they didn't even look at the presentations online from the steering committee. Because at that point, they still had their job to do. And they were still doing that job. And these decisions were all being made out there. And they were decisions about sort of how things would work in the big picture, you know. As I said, how student records would not get transferred. Not with how do I deal with a student record. Well, they knew. They knew that until this day I'm responsible for these students and these student records. But after this day, the receiving institution is responsible for them. So I think I'm not articulating myself well, but it really was a sort of, it's very complicated from a people perspective.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. Do you think that some of those grassroots people, like did you hear anything from those people about their sort of lack of input? Or was it just that people didn't really have anything to input?

JJS: You know, these days I mostly talk to people who are in those leadership positions, like the financial aid people and the registrar's people. And it depended on which functional team they were on as to how they were accepted and how they were listened to on a particular functional team. But I really, at the grassroots level, I never got the impression that people saw themselves as being left out 00:42:00 because it was a done deal. After they became part of 00:42:00four-years, then it was like at their particular four-year, gee I wish this institution would let us do this this way, because this is how we had done it before and it really worked well for students. But that's a different thing. That's not part of the restructuring process. That's how now they're basically working for a different institution and how much they feel like they have input into how they work with students now that they're part of a different institution.

So that might be an important thing to look at is that really, we talk about these official phase one and phase two of the restructuring. But for staff on the ground, there was really a phase one and phase two as well. You know, the phase one was that year after the announcement was made, or six months or whatever it was, that we were still colleges. And then that year where now with the exception of the central people, like financial aid and registrar and HR and finance, but people related to students and faculty, they were now part of a receiving institution, and they now needed to start doing things the way that receiving institution wants them to do it.

So I hear things like that once in a while. You know, we used to do orientation this way, and now they're expecting us to do it the same way they do it on the main campus. So they'd like input into those kinds of things. But that's sort of a phase two. They're now part of that receiving institution. It's not about how to plan to make the transition. They're now there. That's something I didn't think about before, actually. (laughter)

LEH: So you also made a comment about some of this being shaped by larger influences, the movement of some of these areas. Could you talk more about what sort of the outside influences were in your region and how you had to deal with those?

JJS: Actually, outside influences that impacted the decisions or impact--

LEH: I was thinking sort of impacted like the movement of different areas. And sort of like, specifically I was sort of thinking about like academic affairs, programs, and like sort of program planning.

JJS: Well I think I talked about that when I talked about the potential for four-year degrees. 00:45:00 That will be up to the receiving institutions if 00:45:00they're going to do that or not. And there was in the board resolution approving the restructuring, it did speak about the fact that there needed to continue to be an access mission at those institutions. You know, all of them now have, all of the four-years now have approval from the Higher Learning Commission to offer associate's degrees. So those associate's degrees are still being offered on all of those campuses. But as I said before, the idea of what other programs will go there will be the decision of the receiving institutions and conversations that they have with their local communities and then conversations they have with their faculty and dean about what's realistic to sort of bring out to a second site.

LEH: Do you think that the associate's degree, it's currently arts and sciences, do you think that, and this is, I guess it's sort of restructuring and also it's just sort of curious. Do you think that from what you heard on your campuses that that has potential to change? Or do you think it's going to stay the same?

JJS: Well, so, I think there will always be, always, as long as it's being offered, a general associate's degree that's a transfer, you know, a straightforward transfer degree. But that being said, there are institutions, like Plattevillewho I believe developed two new associate's degrees, I think one might be in business, that they're offering at Baraboo, maybe. I'm not 100 percent sure if they're offering on both branches or just one. And the other one is an agriculture associate's degree they're offering at the Richland campus. And I think that was based on conversations with the local community and sort of what the strengths of those communities were. So I think there's an opportunity. But you always need to keep in mind that our associate's degrees are not like technical college. Or some of the technical colleges have a transfer associate's degree. Five of them in the state do. Many of them just offer sort of the applied associate's degrees. And very often those are terminal degrees that people go out and get jobs with.

I think that the associate degrees that we need to be building would still contain that general education core 00:48:00 that would allow students to 00:48:00transfer and pick up on any degree. But it's more like it gives them a pathway, a core of courses in that more focused discipline.

LEH: Hmm. So sort of creating--

JJS: So for example, this Platteville has an agriculture two-year now. I would assume, but I don't know this for a fact, I haven't looked at it.( It would be interesting to talk to someone at Platteville) that they designed those degrees to go right into their four-year program. So a student could seamlessly move from the associate's degree right into that program.

On the other hand, sometimes life happens and an associate's degree is all you're able to pursue at a period of time. And then at least that person has a degree in hand. So I don't think the associate's degree will go away. Because that first degree -, for some students it may be a long time before they can get that bachelor's degree. But I do think and hope that there will be more sort of focused pathways inside the associate's degree.

LEH: So how do you think that sort of like, you talked about this with engineering. I'm sort of curious as to how it translates in like other areas, like student affairs, advising, sort of like other needs. But how do you think that sort of like the makeup of your region influenced sort of the structure of those former colleges?

JJS: Well, you know, it's an interesting question. Let me talk a little bit and see if I'm getting to what you're asking. You know, every community has a different culture, has a different, you know, set of needs, has a different personality, really. So each of those thirteen campuses tried to respond to the culture they were in, to the needs of that community. But there were certain things that were fairly similar across the colleges that became more similar with regionalization. So with regionalization, the student affairs offices were all structured the same way. There was a solution center with academic advisors, and then people who were generalists who could help you with simple financial aid question or registration question, and anything that 00:51:00 was really 00:51:00complicated, they needed to call the central office to try to get help on.

But on the other hand, there were certain programs that happened because of the communities that we were in. And like anywhere else, because of the people you have working for you and what those people bring to the table. So the Waukesha campus had a very, very strong diversity hub for students in pre-college programming for students, that really focused on diversity. And that had something to do with the kinds of, with the city of Waukesha itself and the diversity. There's a lot of, there's a very large Latino population in Waukesha. And also with the person who came and worked there and ran that center.

In another community, there was a faculty member with a strong interest in LGBTQ. And so that campus had a very strong LGBTQ center that actually began to do outreach into the community in that area. So there as a lot of community-based back and forth between the community and certainly various faculty and in some instances programs, especially special programs for high school students and that sort of thing. But the overall structure of needing advising, you know, those basic things that our students need. Orientation. Orientation wasn't done the same way on all thirteen campuses. But everyone had an orientation program. Open houses to recruit students, wasn't done the same way.

Now the nice thing about restructuring is that when we restructured, regionalization, with certain things that got centralized. And then there was more standardization of how they were done across the state. And some things weren't centralized but they were regionalized. So at least all the campuses in a given region were sort of doing things the same way and standardizing how they did orientation, for example.

So I don't know if that answers your question. But it was sort of more about, the community shaped a lot of the extra things we did, as opposed to the basic things we did.

LEH: Hmm. Can you expand on that? Like what extra things?

00:54:00

JJS: Well, continuing education. For example, in the Sheboygan community, there 00:54:00was a group called the American Association of University Women that were very interested in having a STEM program for women. So our continuing education office began to collaborate with them to make sure that program was offered. As I said, in the Waukesha, city of Waukesha, there was a large Hispanic population. And so there was outreach done and special [unclear] 54:34 programming done for high school students related to that. In some areas, the campus was the only game in town, for example, for cultural activities. And so there was a lot of work done on those campuses to make sure that they were able to provide the kinds of cultural activities that those communities were looking for.

LEH: So in terms of continuing education, do you think that continuing education has changed at all because of restructuring either in just sort of like the atmosphere or the mission or availability?

JJS: So, you know, continuing education is sort of a bigger entity that sort of includes some of the stuff that gets done through extended campus. Like some of their online, short-term certificates and that kind of thing. But when I talk about continuing education, I'm sort of talking about the continuing education that sits at all of our institutions, both the four-years and the two-years. And I mean, first of all, the two-year continuing education offices, obviously now were part of the four-year continuing education offices. And report into the directors of continuing education. At least the campuses that I'm familiar with. I don't know if this is how they did it in every single campus. But they now report into the four-years, so they're part of a larger entity. And I have not kept track of their programming to know if it's changed, if it's been expanded as a result of being part of a larger entity. I think my hope that there would be extended programming on the campuses. Because now there's a bigger sort of pool of expertise you could draw from.

So, for example, if you were in Sheboygan and you wanted to offer a coding camp, 00:57:00 for example. Well, we didn't have faculty with expertise in coding. And 00:57:00we could reach out and put out an ad to try to get someone who knew how to teach coding to come in. But there's likely someone at Green Bay who knows how to do that. So I think there's a larger pool of expertise to be tapped into to bring those programs out to the campuses.

So I haven't kept track of them to see what they're offering, to see if their offerings have changed. But I believe over time it will change, just because they're not freestanding anymore. They're part of larger entities.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. And I think, too, that there's more, there are more vehicles for people to reach out, maybe. Just because so much is online. Obviously there's UW Online. But you can also do stuff with continuing education.

JJS: Yeah. I mean, I think that the extended campus tried to do some of that. But I think you're right. Every single one of these four-year institutions had built something that, you know, something special in their CE units. And I don't know for example if Oshkosh or Green Bay has online built into their continuing ed.

Colleges use, there are some external vendors, there are some companies that actually offer online and you can just pay them to be able to offer their courses. So we always had some online CE as well, but through a third party sort of thing. Now it may well be that there's some that can be done directly by the institutions because they have, you know, they have the resources to do that.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So do you, hmm. Let's see. So do you think that there are, is there like anything else that you think should be like a consideration or something? Or anything else that you think is important but that people might not have seen in the restructuring process?

JJS: Well, that's a really good question because that's sort of like what we keep thinking about, Karen Schmidt and I as we talk, what are some of the lessons learned? And you know, I think a big lesson learned relates to something we've talked about. Which is communication. 01:00:00 And I think that while 01:00:00System had that great website and there were steering committee meetings and there were notes out there, I think the communication that happened within institutions, up and down there, from the top administration down to the grassroots, and across, you know, from the financial aid office to the student affairs office. Sometimes I think we've gotten bogged down in some of these transitions. Because I think it's sort of a given that there already were a lot of silos, and how within institutions people communicated. And those silos kind of impacted, to some extent, some of these transitions. They're all done. They all went fairly smoothly. But there seemed to not be enough communication.

And I guess one of the things I would say is that in many instances, which I think was really good, because it brought continuity, people that understood Colleges remained on those campuses. And in many instances, the leadership on those campuses now are Colleges people who played a role on those campuses before. So they understand the students, they understand the population. They understood how we did it before. There's a commitment to getting it right for our students. But it's kind of interesting in that while that's been really, really good, and I think that overrides any negative, there is sometimes what I've seen, the communications between those people out on the branch campuses in the receiving institution, the four-year campus, it has been hard for people. It's been hard, I think, for the Colleges people to think about going to the four-year now to get a question answered, because now they're the decision makers. But it's also been hard because sometimes they're not getting the information that they need from their receiving institutions.

So while it's been great that there are Colleges people on the branches, now they're walking into a totally new environment and needing to build new relationships with people on the four-years, and needing to build new relationships with them. And it's sort of that, just like I started this conversation, that all takes time. And I think that's been 01:03:00 hard for 01:03:00people. And I think the other thing about the Colleges' Central people, I want to say, is we can't lose sight of the fact that all those people who were given sort of this two-year notification because their services were still needed, those people worked incredibly hard the last two years doing their day to day work as well as doing what they needed to do for the transition.

So for example, HR still had all their day to day HR stuff to deal with at the same time they had to figure out how to get the records to the four-years. And making sure the records had the right information in them the four-years needed. And they didn't have a whole new group of people to do that work. It was the same people who already had forty or fifty hours of work to do. The financial aid office, they were still processing financial aid through this summer. But at the same time, they had to answer questions that the four-years had. They had to be in conversation with the Department of Education about the changes. They needed to participate in the restructuring meetings to provide the expertise they had and to explain things to the four-years.

So I think that there were unsung heroes here. And the unsung heroes are those people who were left for two years, who were doing both the work of the transition and their day to day jobs as well.

LEH: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And maybe a good place to stop as well? So do you think there's anyone else that we should interview for this project?

JJS: Say that again?

LEH: Do you think there's anyone else that you should interview for this project?

JJS: Yeah. I mean, I had given you, first of all, it just came to mind now. She needs to be, she would need to be told that she can be totally open about this. But I don't know if you talked to Colleges' financial aid director? Her name is Ina, I-n-a, I talk to her every day and at the moment her last name escapes me.

LEH: I don't think that we have.

JJS: She might be, I mean, she's one of those people who's been in the thick of it making sure financial aid gets done, and making sure the DOE is getting what they need. Let me find, let me find the email from, 01:06:00--okay. Dick. D-i-c-k.

LEH: G-i-c-k?

JJS: D as in David.

LEH: Oh, okay.

JJS: So she was Colleges' financial aid director. She is still with us. She would be a great person to talk to. And have you talked to anyone in HR?

LEH: Another student interviewed Melissa Stutz.

JJS: No, but she's the head of student affairs.

LEH: Yeah, yeah.

JJS: She was the head of student affairs. But I'm thinking about all these other areas. I would talk to an HR, I think, I'm not sure who I would talk to in HR. You might ask the archivist to contact Jason Beier, B-e-i-e-r, and see who he thinks might be a good person in HR. If they're willing to be interviewed. Jason Beier is the HR director. HR is now in shared services. But those were all Colleges people who were doing these two jobs that I was just saying.

LEH: Yeah.

JJS: And then, let me, and have you talked to Colleen, have you talked to either Steve Wildeck or Colleen Godfriaux.

LEH: I believe we are in contact with Steve.

JJS: Okay. That's good. I mean, Steve was the head finance and admin guy at Colleges. And then I had suggested originally, do you have Stephen Schmid on the list? S-c-h-m-i-d.

LEH: Yes, we do.

JJS: Okay. He would be fabulous. So he was an associate dean for academic affairs at the Rock County campus. And he was very involved in regionalization. And then when we regionalized, he became my associate dean for student affairs in the Southeast Region. And then he spent a year as the interim dean of the UW Milwaukee College of General Studies, which is where our two campuses are housed in UWM. So he's seen it all the way from the beginning, being on the ground, to all the way to the end. And he's still working for UWM, all the way to where it is today.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah., I think he would be, yeah, he would be great to interview.

JJS: Yeah. And the other person I might suggest is someone might have given you here name, Kristin Fillhouer I think it's--

LEH: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

JJS: Did you talk to her?

LEH: Yep.

JJS: Okay. She's, yeah, because she has a similar view 01:09:00 on the student 01:09:00affairs side of things.

LEH: Okay. Yeah.

JJS: Between Stephen Schmid and Kristin, you've got a really good take on the student affairs and the academic affairs stuff.

LEH: All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for being willing to talk with me. We really appreciate it.

JJS: Oh, you're very welcome. I'm sorry it took so long for us to get together. But I'm glad to be able to do it. I just think that you know, the regionalization piece of it coming before this and you know, I think that piece is often lost. And then the unsung heroes, I think, are often lost. So I'm glad to have the opportunity to have you capture those two things.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, last thing, so I will send you a scanned version of the permission form. And there are three options on there, I believe. The first one is completely open access, as well as online.

JJS: Mm hmm.

LEH: The second is access but not online. And then the third, you can also choose an option to have it not be released until a certain date. Anytime in the future. But I will send you that form with the date and my signature on it. And then when you have the time to sign off on that, if you could just send that back to me, that would be great.

JJS: Okay. That sounds great.

LEH: Yeah. All right. Okay. Well, thank you again.

JJS: And thank you. I appreciate it. You take care.

LEH: You, too. All right. Bye.

JJS: Bye bye.

01:10:51

End First Interview Session