Interview with Vicki Keegan

LEH: --just turn on the recorder here. All right. So today is Friday, July 24th. And I'm here with Vicki Keegan for the UW System Restructuring Project. All right. So, Vicki, could you say your name and then spell out your last name?

VK: Sure. It's Vicki Keegan. K-E-E-G-A-N.

LEH: All right. It looks like the volume's good. Okay. So why don't we start with career background. So how did you get your start with the UW System, and how has your career evolved over the years?

VK: Okay. Can I just ask like the scope of this project again? Can you explain it to me?

LEH: Yeah. Of course. So the scope of the project is pretty large in terms of people we've been interviewing. I've tried to interview people from different areas of expertises at the Colleges, that worked at the former UW Colleges. So, yeah. My questions tend to be pretty general, but they focus on general questions about the restructuring process and how it impacted you and sort of your area of expertise as well.

VK: Okay. Okay. Sure. So my background with, I've been in the UW System a long time. From 1986 to 1994, I worked at UW Madison and Wisconsin Union as an assistant marketing director. And then I was home for eight years. And came back to the UW Colleges, to the Washington County campus in 2002. I was hired there as an interim university relations specialist for, they had an opening there. It was going to be a six-week, part time position until they hired a new person. Then that led into, actually it went on, I think, for about three months. And then I was able to secure a halftime position there from 2002 until like 2005, I believe it was, in the student services office. And then from 00:03:00Washington County, I got a job as a university relations specialist at the central office at UW Colleges starting, I think it was 2006. And then I held positions at UW Colleges. I became the director of marketing in 2008. And then I was in those positions until basically the UW Colleges, we were told that there would no longer be a central office. I've got to think about my dates here. So that was 2019. And then I went back to UW Madison. Became director of marketing at the Wisconsin Union again. (laughs) So I've been at Madison and I've been at the Colleges.

My background is, I have a degree in advertising and marketing communications from UW Eau Claire. And I've basically been in the marketing field my entire career.

LEH: All right. So, could you expand on your time as director of marketing at the UW Colleges? So sort of what were the big focuses before restructuring began and how did that change with restructuring?

VK: Sure. So I went, when I went, I was brought into the central office at UW Colleges. That was right before UW Extension, UW Colleges, came under one chancellor. So that was another time where there was a really big change at the Colleges. And my boss was the, I think she was a vice chancellor of university relations marketing. And she ended up working for that one chancellor. And then there was an opening, created an opening for a marketing director for just the UW Colleges. So I think, I didn't really look back at that timing. But I believe my timing was about 2008 when I started as director of marketing. And at that time, each of the campuses had--I'm just looking up some dates for you here. (laughs) Oh, it's hard to remember all these things. Yes, I became director of marketing in 2008.

And at that point what I was is, each of the campuses had marketing or university relations director. So each of the thirteen campuses had that. And then there was a central marketing function which kind of coordinated everything between all those campuses. So we did an institutional marketing strategy. We developed communications for the campuses. I managed the central budget for each, which the campuses would write marketing plans and then I would distribute funds to them. And then I worked extensively like at the chancellor/dean's department chair level. So it was a really different kind of a structure at that point, because each campus had their own university relations marketing department.

I didn't supervise any of those thirteen directors. So it was all collaboration. I was kind of like the leader, the marketing leader. But each of them had to kind of buy into the program that we were doing. And then they could take, like some of the things that they were doing on their campus and make them more campus-specific. So that was my role until 2013.

And then after that, I would say actually then what happened is we got into a more enrollment manage focus starting in 2013. And my role expanded then to enrollment along with marketing. So I was in charge of the same kind of structure that was still there with the marketing directors. But they also started to implement a statewide recruiting program and a campuswide, or an institution-wide, I would say like a CRM program to uplift enrollment and admissions.

Then, when the restructuring happened, everything changed. And my role shifted in that there were no longer these campus directors of marketing. Those were all eliminated. And I created a central staff that supported recruitment, enrollment, admissions, anything to do with increasing enrollment or supporting enrollment for all of the campuses.

LEH: Ooh, a lot of change. (laughs)

VK: Oh, yeah, it really was constant. Yeah.

LEH: Yeah. So I'm wondering if you could sort of expand on, you said that sort of your relationship with the campuses, it was sort of a very sort of collaborative atmosphere. Could you expand on what those relationships looked like before restructuring?

VK: Sure. So it was a really interesting setup, I think. Because as director of marketing, I was leading like the brand development and strategy and things like that, but I had no direct supervision of anybody on the campus. So all of our relationships had to be collaborative and communicative and very much as a team. So I did a lot of teambuilding. We did a lot of collaborating together. And it worked really well. With thirteen campuses, you had all kinds of, I always called it the bell curve, where I would have two campuses that did everything I said, two campuses that did nothing I said, and everybody else was in the middle, they kind of picked and choosed what worked for them. The directors of the university relations and marketing on the campuses reported to their dean. So the dean could override things that I wanted or things that I thought were good. And so the directors of, the campus directors of marketing, they kind of straddled that same line I was doing. Because I was doing what the chancellor wanted, and they were doing what the deans wanted.

I felt like we had a great relationship, I had a great relationship with them. It was very much give and take. They would do marketing plans each year and then we would discuss those goals and what they were trying to achieve. But again, I had no supervision of them. So, there was that, there was that piece.

And then the other piece was the colleges were always very lean. So I had a graphic designer, I had a university relations specialist. And then eventually we had like a web department. So they needed those services from me, too. So we did, out of the central budget, we would pay for the expensive four-color review books. We would pay for all of the website redesigns. All of that kind of branding material. So in that relationship, they were getting, there was a value-added that we were giving them. And that worked, it worked really well. I mean, sometimes it was frustrating because of the marketing 00:12:00director. I would have liked to have directed exactly what they did. But on the other hand, they were living in their campus worlds, and they were the experts in their areas, too. So it was very, very much of a collaborative environment.

And that's how the whole Colleges was set up. It wasn't just marketing that was set up like that. So central office had this model going in all different areas, too.

LEH: Yeah. I've heard many times, you know, that like depending on where you were, on what campus you were at, things could be very different. So, yeah. Yeah. That's always--

VK: Yeah, it was, yeah, you know, campuses had, I mean, the basic structures were always the same. But of course campuses are personalities, too. And the people in them. And so, you know, the strategies I used it was a great learning experience, too, about how to talk to that many people and how to get your point across and how to get consensus with thirteen people was a good, you know, it was working, that's for sure. There were some things that would get in the restructure that changed and helped things. And there were also things that didn't work so well. But the model had worked for a long time by the time I got there.

LEH: Yeah. So, I think that's a good way to move into sort of if you could expand on what you were talking about with how things changed during restructuring. You said things were sort of all centralized. Could you expand on that?

VK: Sure. So we got, when we got the charge from our chancellor about the budget reduction, I was actually involved in the initial budget group that met the phase one. And then I was really involved in the phase two group. And I led the restructuring for the marketing communications and recruitment. And then there was a third group with the CRM system. So I was the task force leader on those three task forces.

Once that happened, we had had a budget cut before this. And we had trimmed away some things. And we realized that you couldn't just keep trimming. I remember somebody saying, "We've trimmed all the fat and now we're just to the 00:15:00bones. And we have to look at something different." And it was the first time in my higher ed career that there was this momentum to really make a huge change. And it was scary, it was exciting, it was nerve-wracking, it was exhausting, it was all of those things because it was really recreating what basically had been in place for fifty years.

So what happened with marketing is that there was a decision made that we would have to cut a certain amount of money, which translated to a certain amount of positions. And what we would do is we would consolidate. Instead of those directors of marketing being on each campus, we would create a centralized marketing office that served all the campus. So no longer--and that my department then would report up to the chancellor. I didn't report directly to her, but I reported to her. And that the campuses would no longer have that person on campus to do the marketing. And that was huge.

It made sense on the admissions/enrollment side, to be honest, because I could then, marketing department, we could kind of control the money, which we didn't have a very big budget for marketing. But then we could, like a perfect example is, we could buy a statewide buy billboards and save a lot of money. I could hire specialists rather than generalists. The Colleges was pretty well known for everybody wore a million hats, and everybody was a generalist. And this way, I could create a web department, I could create a social media department, digital market. I could create a DRM department. We could have an actual recruiting department. So we started to specialize. That was the good side of it.

I think the bad side of it was there was still a need for local advertising and marketing of events. And we never figured that out. And there was a decision by leadership that central marketing would no longer support that. And that, I think, was the Achilles heel of it, that we didn't have somebody on the ground that would do the actual feeder events and promote those to the community. Or a lecture series, or any of that.

But the actual part of the enrollment, if we looked at marketing in support of enrollment, I think the restructuring actually did a better job than what we had done in the old model.

LEH: So to clarify, is this under the regionalized model or--

VK: Under the which model?

LEH: The regionalized model, or the--

VK: Yeah, yeah, the regionalized model. Yeah. That's what I was describing as the regionalized model. Which for us in the central office, my functions of recruiting CRM and marketing were all really centralized. Not regionalized. They were actually centralized to serve all thirteen campuses.

LEH: Yeah. So, you said the acronym CRM?

VK: Yeah.

LEH: Just, what, could you maybe clarify what that is?

VK: Yeah. It's a customer relationship management system. And it's an email, it's like an entire system of supporting like how we set it up is like it would be a series of emails, like somebody would apply, or we would be recruiting students. So we get a list of names, we put them into this software system. We'd send out a mass email to ten thousand students with somebody answering. We'd have the whole sequencing. So it's a communication management system. And used in conjunction with our recruiting and with admissions.

LEH: Hmm. So could you sort of expand on this focus on enrollment? What sort of in conjunction with marketing became sort of like the big, I don't know, like I guess ways that you're marketing to people?

VK: Yes. So, Rich Barnhouse was hired, and I don't really remember the date, to be honest. Rich Barnhouse was hired as an associate vice chancellor of enrollment management. And that hire was made prior, maybe that was like 2011 or ten. That hire was made as a way for us to start focusing on enrollment. Because we knew enrollment was probably going to start to decline because of high school classes getting smaller. And we needed a focused enrollment plan. And we needed it for all the campuses, not just campus by campus.

So when he was hired, he became my boss. And at that point, enrollment being the focus, so we decided, it was decided that marketing would 00:21:00be in support of enrollment. And that really gave marketing a really, really good focus for what we actually needed to accomplish. And then we added recruitment into that. So it was all the cyclings of enrollment that I was overseeing. So I was overseeing, in the restructured model, the recruiters, which were actually recruiting students. I was in charge of also overseeing this CRM system, which is how we talked to students and got them through the enrollment funnel. And then the marketing supported all of that. So getting awareness out of each of the campuses. Creating all the copy and content for this CRM system. So as we got students into our enrollment funnel, we were telling them all the good things of why to enroll on the campus. And then keeping students engaged so they actually applied and then were admitted.

So there was a really big, a real big concentration on organized enrollment plan so that we could either maintain or increase enrollment at all the campuses. And by centralizing that, we could use all our resources so that the really small campuses could also benefit from all the resources that we had.

And when we were going through the restructuring task force, we found out that the campuses were doing less. Campuses will disagree with me on this, but the actual data showed that the campuses were doing less one-on-one recruiting and less marketing in support of enrollment than they thought they were. So that, I think, was a really good outcome of the regionalization and centralization and restructuring.

LEH: So could you expand on that? Sort of, yeah. I guess that point of what campuses were doing sort of in support or not in support of enrollment?

VK: Yeah. So we did, we did a data review asking all of our, through the restructuring process and the task force with the marketing communications, we did a review of all of the campuses' marketing folks to find out what their actual jobs looked like. And it was an interesting, really a very 00:24:00interesting survey. Because it showed us that they were wearing multiple hats. I'm trying to find the right chart here. Luckily I grabbed this before I left. Let me just see if I can find it. What we found is they were doing more support of events, activities, crisis communications. They were doing a lot of that, which was part of their job, there was no doubt about that. But their actual like actually doing marketing for recruiting purposes, of getting students, and there was something like 25%. And so our, my task, you know, when we reorganized, was that I was going to focus 100% on enrollment, and 100% on supporting that happening. So instead of all these multiple hats, we were going to really focus on this one piece of it.

And in a normal campus, you don't usually have recruiting and marketing and the CRM and admissions all together. But that was a decision we made that was really, really important. And it was really a good decision, and it was really efficient. Because what was happening was I could direct all those pieces. I could direct our salespeople on the ground, our recruiters. I could also direct what the marketing messages that they were saying, and what we were saying to students. And I could also direct the messages we were giving in admissions. So it just really defined it, really focused, instead of generally, we really focused to this one overall charge of marketing supporting enrollment.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. That kind of, that reminds me of just during the discussion about the mission of the Colleges. And--

VK: Yeah.

LEH: --really reinforcing that.

VK: Yeah. And it was a, it was a, for me, like looking back on it, it was really the right, that was a really good thing to do. The campuses didn't like, I mean, some people on the campuses agreed with it. But many didn't. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of conflict with that. And we just would keep going back to what the chancellor's charge was and what we were asked to do. Because there was a lot of--the campuses were pretty upset by this, by what we did with 00:27:00the marketing and enrollment and recruiting.

LEH: Could you expand on that? What parts of that change were people upset about?

VK: Well, in a really broad sense, when we regionalized and centralized, we took people off of campuses. And the cut--and this is Vicki Keegan's opinion--the cut was way too deep. We needed to still have campus, and you needed to still have a campus atmosphere. But by centralizing and regionalizing positions, you took away the people on the campus. Especially in student affairs. The marketing side of it, again, I think was the right move, except that we needed to put somebody on campuses in regional positions that could have supported local events. I think that would have really calmed people down.

But most of the campuses felt that they were very unique, and that their campus markets were really unique. And in some cases, there was nuance. But they weren't as unique as they thought. And so, centralizing marketing, we could do messaging that, every campus had the same degree, the associate degree. Every campus had basically the same median ACT scores. Every campus still was something forty-mile radius was their basic market. There were so many things that were similar that I could see in a centralized role, but the campus faculty, campus staff, couldn't always see. So there was a lot of tension with that and a lot of, a lot of people lost their jobs, too. And that was very, very difficult for those small campuses which, in most cases were the, those jobs were really good in those areas. And it was really hard when people had to lose their jobs.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine. I mean, I'm sure those people lived in those communities, too.

VK: Yeah. And you know, a small place like Richland, UW Richland, which is a very, very tiny campus, the campus kind of was the center, it was a really big center for those communities. And then you start to take, you make, I don't even know how many staff they had. You take ten staff and you make it only five staff, that's really, really hard for a campus. And again, like had we not had to cut so far, I think we could have centralized and regionalized 00:30:00some of the functions. But we had to go so far that this second round, this big, five-million dollar cut was really, really difficult.

LEH: Yeah, yeah. And I guess that just sort of, it's that whole, I mean, you're competing, too, with the technical colleges and the other schools that are in Wisconsin. Yeah.

VK: Right. And you know, it was on top of tuition freezes. It was on top of, I mean, we were just being cut all the time. We were so lean at the colleges. I mean, just every penny was accounted for. We were using our resources pretty wisely. And then to do this. You know, that's what's so strange about it. Because in my department, it was kind of this exciting time because we could finally support enrollment the way we wanted to. But it came at a cost for the campus communities and to, if we could have done that and then shifted some of those resources back to the campus, I think that would have been better. But we couldn't do that. So we had to go--the thing, too, is that in the central office, at least in my space, I kind of understood what this overall goal was. And I wasn't on a campus. I was in a central office. So I could see it from that higher level. But being on campuses, I mean, working in that environment was extremely stressful. And defending actions was constant. And hoping we were doing the right thing was always in the backs of our minds. But I think we laid off eleven people through marketing. Eleven or twelve. And then had to retire people that weren't, that our campuses didn't have skillsets. So it was a pretty intense time. And it was only a very short period of time from the time the task force started in September till, I don't know, till we laid off people I think in January. And then I had to rebuild the whole department by August. So, it was a really compressed period of time.

LEH: Yeah. Oh, man. Hmm. Yeah. So, I guess that sort of relates to moving then into the most recent restructuring. I guess could you, could you I 00:33:00guess talk about sort of those enrollment issues, I guess a little bit prior to the most recent restructuring? So sort of, I guess what sort of like progress or differences you've seen at the colleges due to this sort of centralization and change in the marketing focus?

VK: So this is the like before this last one where they took the campuses, they disbanded the colleges, right?

LEH: Yes.

VK: Yeah. So I don't have exactly years. But our goal was like either to stay at even within enrollment, or increase it slightly. And I do believe we've met that goal overall. We had other ways of measuring, too. So we had measuring of our, so our CRM system, the system of training these communication plans for students when we recentralized it we actually created in like a three-month period of time, it was like a thousand communication emails. Because we had thirteen campuses. We reconstructed that whole thing, so instead of having maybe two touch points for a student, we ended up having like six touchpoints, which was huge. We had campus previews and we raised participation in those campus previews. Which for the colleges was really important to get students on campus. I think we raised those by 50% participation.

We also are recruiting, actual our recruiters going out, we increased those touchpoints, I can't remember, again, like it was a lot. So in terms of like our goal to have more touchpoints with students, to be creative and help students through the funnel, to not lose students, to help students understand that we could be a first choice, I think we met that goal.

The problem with all of it in the state of Wisconsin was the high school classes were shrinking. And I remember like at Richland, UW Richland, their high school, we had some high schools with thirty students. So if we kept, if we got 5% of those students, it wasn't many students in those small campuses, those counties, like a Barron County, a Manitowoc, Sheboygan, their county 00:36:00average age wasn't eighteen anymore. It was like forty. So we were climbing this uphill battle with a lot of competition from the techs and a lot of competition from the four-years, also.

So we understood that enrollment, you know, our goal was to stay even. And then our next goal was to retain students. And we were really focused on that. What that means to me is when they broke us all apart, all the enrollments went down. Because the four-years basically did not appreciate what, they weren't listening to what we had done. And it was so foreign the way we were doing things that they were unable to implement what we had done when they got those campuses.

LEH: Hmm. Could you expand on that? What were you hearing from people or seeing that was different?

VK: So, when we found out, so basically there was only a year that we were functioning like in the marketing department as a full marketing department. So we heard that the campuses, you know, colleges was being dissolved. What's fascinating to me is I thought the four-year campuses would look to us as the experts with these campuses. But they were not. I mean, pretty much we were neutralized in terms of giving advice or talking about what we were doing. And once again, it was because we were doing things in such a centralized fashion. And we were doing things in such an enrollment fashion. And the four-year campuses really weren't doing that. And so a lot of the tactics that we'd employed that had been very successful were not implemented by the four-years. At least in the time I was there, which was almost a year.

So, for me, it's very bittersweet because if we had known that the System was going to break up the Colleges, we should have never done that restructuring. Because the four-year campuses thought they were getting these whole campuses, if that makes sense. And they weren't. They were getting pieces.

I remember somebody asking one of the campuses, saying to me, "I just want your money. I just want whatever marketing money you can give me, and whatever position you give me."

And I said, "I don't have a position because we no longer have a 00:39:00director of marketing at each campus. So you can have a thirteenth of my staff. And you can have a thirteenth of the budget. But I can't just hand over a person to you." And it was like talking to brick walls. I did it over and over and over again. Multiple times, multiple months. So many times. And by the time I left that December after that, I still don't know if anybody implemented what we were doing. And we shared everything. We shared our marketing plans, we shared our CRM system, we shared our recruiting plans. And I have no idea if anybody used those or implemented those.

And there was no plan for the reorg of the, I don't know what we'd call it, the dissolving of the Colleges. There was no plan that I ever saw or understood. And then we weren't asked to help build a plan, either, as far as I'm concerned.

LEH: Yeah. It brings up one of my questions, which is how did you find out about the plan to dissolve the Colleges? And do you remember at all sort of what your initial feelings about that were?

VK: Oh, sure. So I had come into the office. And my assistant or associate director of marketing said to me, "I was listening to WPR this morning and I heard that the Colleges was being disbanded."

And I was like, "Really? That's interesting."

And then at the same time, our CIO came into my office and said, "Turn your computer on. Steve Wildeck has got an emergency meeting with the directors. And you need to be down in this room by eight o'clock." It was like two minutes to eight. And that's how I heard. There was no pre-notice. There was very limited information. Basically from then on, that's kind of the way we were treated. Like nothing ahead of time from the System. No ideas how this was going to go. And again, we thought we would, at the Colleges you're always helpful. So we thought oh, we'll be a lot of help to people. Very marginalized. Extremely marginalized. And for all the hard work that had gone into the regionalization, and all the hard work that we had been doing like flat out for so many years, it was, it was really disrespectful in so many ways.

And then I think there was such a deep sadness. Because we loved our students. We were giving students the best start. We were giving students a chance. And we realized that nobody really in the state knows how to do that but us. So it was a, it's a very hard, very, very hard to reconcile what happened to us.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard similar things from other people as well. Just about the emotional aspect of that. So I guess then going into this most recent, the dissolution, could you maybe talk about sort of, you said that individuals at the Colleges weren't really considered experts. Could you sort of expand on the conversations the four-year schools, what they focused on with marketing? I guess I'm sort of, this is a very (laughs) sorry, this is a long question. By this, too, they're like taking on the former Colleges, sort of the relationship or difference between marketing at a two-year school versus four-year universities.

VK: Yeah. So I think what was really surprising to us was that, to me especially, was how little the four-years knew about the two-year campuses, and how little they understood how we operated. So again, like that is a perfect example of one of the four-years saying to me, "I just want your money. I just basically at the end of the day, I want your money and I want your positions." And me trying to explain to them that we had centralized marketing.

The other thing that was fascinating to us is that the Colleges was really far ahead in the CRM system and recruiting than most of these four-year campuses. We had the most robust CRM system and admissions. And none of them were at that level. And they weren't ready. They weren't ready either financially to invest in the system, or the system they had was clunky and didn't work. At one point I offered to be, to two campuses, to be like a consultant to help them 00:45:00set up a system. But that was never really taken up. So it became, first I thought well, okay, I could just be like this consultant. And we could get people onboard, and I could get them to understand what we did. And that's what I'll use this year to do. But it became really clear really fast that they weren't interested in what the Colleges had done. They were only interested in how their system worked and how their Colleges' campus was going to be shoved into it.

There also was, I think, a very fundamental misunderstanding about who our students were. Many of the campuses said to me that they already served the same type of student we did. But that wasn't really the truth. Because the nuance is that we would take students with a 13 ACT. We would take students that would be the last in their class. I mean, they were number 400 out of 400. And then we would nurture those students through all kinds of ways to get them to be successful. And none of the four-years really has that same student. I mean, they say that they serve all the students in many ways. But we were doing it in a way that nobody else was doing it. And that, to me, was so disheartening. Because 30% of our students were first generation. Our program, I can't remember the percentage anymore, was so high. I mean, we just took students that nobody else would take. And gave them a UW education, which is different from going to a tech college.

So for me, the four-years were, they were shocked, too, to be fair to them. They didn't know this was happening, either. And they were losing enrollment at the same time we were. So now they're going to have a smaller campus. They don't understand. They aren't getting any more money or resources. And they're trying to increase their enrollment, too. So, I just think there was a real missed opportunity to use the Colleges people as consultants or experts. And System brought in other people that had nothing to do with the Colleges, and kind of made them the experts. Which was really odd to us and very hard to work through. And once again was another layer that we had to teach who the Colleges were.

So about two or three months into it, I made the decision that my job was to get all my people jobs. Because I had twenty employees. And I wanted them all to get new jobs before the money ran out and we were told to leave. And so I 00:48:00cooperated. I did what I could but found out pretty quickly that it just wasn't, it wasn't a priority for the four-years. And because there was no plan--and there literally was no plan--that nobody knew what to do to be fair to everybody. So.

LEH: Yeah. I was wondering if you could expand on the people brought in to the UW System to consult. Sort of what you or your colleagues understood their relationship to you guys to be.

VK: This is just my feeling. Huron Consulting was brought in. And those are people from outside. And again, that was kind of, I have nothing against Huron Consulting, but I felt like they never quite got the Colleges. Nobody seemed to get the Colleges. And if you don't understand the fundamental way we worked and now you're going to take us apart, you've got a big learning curve. And again, I just felt like we were dismissed all the time. There were some people brought into like a communications department that I don't even think had worked for the university, which is also a big learning curve. And that was a constant, I would constantly be asked to be at the table. I would constantly be asked to be listened to. I would be constantly asked to be part of decisions. And that was all hard. I was very marginalized. So I went from a position of authority and twenty people to supervise and supporting enrollment at the Colleges to basically being seen as somebody going out the door. And that obviously we felt many times that we were treated like we had failed. And I actually don't think that was true. I think we had succeeded. But there was some other political or some other decision that was made in some other room that kind of had nothing to do with what our performance had been.

And because there was no clear plan, people were making it up, to be fair to them again, they were making it up as they went along. But we were, once that announcement was made, we were pretty much lame ducks, and I think cut out of the process. At least on my end.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I guess this is my other question. You made a comment 00:51:00about the former Colleges giving students specifically a UW education, as opposed to the technical colleges. And I was wondering if you could expand on that.

VK: Yes. So, the UW Colleges had the AAS degree, which is the first two years of a bachelor's degree, basically. And they were taught by UW Colleges, part of the UW System. So, UW professors. Many of our professors had the highest degree in their field. They were always underpaid. Very dedicated to their students. So you were getting, in many ways you were getting the same classes you would have gotten at UW Milwaukee at UW Whitewater or UW Madison as a freshman. But being taught, not being taught by a TA, being taught by a full professor in these small classes. So those credits could then transfer. If you completed our associate degree, you transferred in as a junior, which is a really important step for students. You've met all your prerequisites or your requirements for an associate degree. And just the whole way we taught was so hands-on, with small classes and these really professional and really dedicated professors.

And then totally, totally dedicated to getting people up to speed. So many of our students would come in with low ACT scores or low grade points. They'd need a lot of remedial work and we were dedicated to that. Because we wanted everybody, everybody deserves, everybody should get an associate degree.

Another interesting piece to us was how many first-generation students we had whose families had not gone to college. So they had no idea how to do college. So we did a lot of handholding, which was good, and a lot of advising and a lot of keeping people on track. That need in the state isn't going to go away. And my fear is that the system will lose those students, because they will go to the techs. Because the techs have kept those programs. But it just serves a need of the kind of have nots in the state that is super important. And we were really, really, really good at it. And I hope the system can recoup that, but 00:54:00I don't see evidence of it yet. So.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I'm from New York, and we have really nothing, we have community colleges. But they're really kind of, I've never heard of anything like the Colleges.

VK: No, it's the only one, really. It was the only one in the nation. And the need grew out of the, the Colleges' history is interesting. Because the need grew out of World War Two and the need for more people to get degrees. And to bring it to local communities, which is also important. I think that's the other part of this that gets lost in the politics is how important these campuses were to their communities, and how they were a cultural center. How they were a good employer of good jobs. Of how local kids could be made good, you know, given these opportunities in these really tiny communities to actually go to college when nobody else in their families had. So I, for me, this is personally, I just think it's a big loss for the state. A really big loss for the state. We kind of lost our bearings a little bit on what is important in this state, and the Wisconsin Idea and all those good things.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good segue into, I guess sort of a general question about your thoughts about sort of the branding and identity of the Colleges and how that changed with the movement into branch campuses. If you have any thoughts about that.

VK: Yeah. Well, I mean, the identity of those local campuses was local. So at UW Richland was in Richland Center. UW Marshfield was in Marshfield, Wood County. They were integrally tied to their communities with county boards and city boards and funding and all those sources.

I guess creating identity for something takes a long time. So the four-years had an uphill battle with that, I believe. And I think by not having a plan, or not having one plan, letting each of the four-year campuses decide how they were going to do it, I don't know if that was, for me, looking as an outsider looking in, I thought that was an interesting decision. Because I think it would have been easier for everybody if it had been all these UW Milwaukee, 00:57:00Waukesha campus or whatever. Changing names, changing identities, having to go to like the new logo was in all those things, I mean, you really have taken away this brand that's been around for about fifty years. And it's morphed. That brand has morphed. But you know, it's rebuilding from the ground up. I mean, just the colors and the graphic logos and all of that. So, I think for each of those four-years, I'm sure it's a bit of an uphill battle.

We had suggested the first year that they keep the Colleges the same until they got it figured out. But that was dismissed really early on. I think that would have been a good thing to give everybody a year to figure this out. But for whatever reason, there was such a fast track with no plan that that was dismissed pretty fast. Because we could have functioned for another year and helped people get the next enrollment period done. But that was dismissed really early. But it goes back to having no plan. And when you have no plan and you've got that many jobs and that many people and it affects that many people in the state, it's not a good way to make a change.

The one thing I'll say about the Colleges, when we did our restructuring, we had a definite plan. And we did it fast, but we had a really good plan. And seeing that there was no plan this last time was really disheartening to me.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good segue into, there's no plan, so during this sort of period in between your job now at the Union (Memorial Union) and like the sort of end period at the Colleges, were there any other sorts of issues or points of contention that occurred? Yeah.

VK: Well, I think, I think what was really hard the year that I stayed was our leadership was shaken up, too. Because our chancellor was kind of asked not to step in at all. And I mean, as much as I was, so are our leaders. So 01:00:00it was never, to me, I mean, looking back now, and I try to forget some of this. But looking back now, I just felt that there was no direction. So we were trying to kind of make it up. Like at first we really, really thought we were going to be seen as the experts, and we really thought that we were going to be heard and listened to and be helpful. And more than once through that period of time, I tried to say like I could really help you. I mean, even one of the campuses I went up to asked, they had a position open and I asked if I could be in that position for a year just to get them on the ground. And each time I was rebuffed by that. So I feel like we just were never given a chance to help. And so at a certain point, again, I said, my job became getting my people jobs. Encouraging them. Giving them career advice. Helping them with resumes. Making contacts for them. I was trying to do that for myself, but found really early on that that wasn't appreciated with the four-year campuses.

So I turned to Madison, because Madison wasn't part of the process. And so I started looking for jobs at Madison. I decided I didn't want to be part of the restructure anymore. I didn't want to be part of the dissolution anymore. I didn't want to be the last person there, either. Because as people left, more kind of crazy work was coming our--crazy--more interesting kind of work was coming our way that wasn't always beneficial or, I felt like, even useful. So I just turned to find a job at Madison, because Madison hadn't been part of it. And I felt like I needed to get far away from it.

I have spent my whole adult life--I'm sixty--I've spent it in higher ed. And I just either had to get out of higher ed totally or I had to go to Madison that wasn't part of this restructure.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah.

VK: To be honest, I would have liked to have gone into enrollment stuff. But because of the restructure, that was also, I think, a negative on my side, that I'd been part of an institution that now was being dissolved. Which was very unfair. But I think that was the truth. So I went back to my roots, obviously. I went back to the same place I started in higher ed. I went back to just marketing, not marketing for enrollment.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think that's all of the questions on my end.

VK: Okay. (laughter)

LEH: I guess do you have any other thoughts about any sort of, yeah, anything.

VK: I guess, and I said this, I think the Colleges were on the right track. I think we needed another year. In hindsight, I wish that we would never have had to do this million-dollar cut. It would have been easier to dissolve us if we had been whole. (laughs) Yeah. I feel like at the bottom, at the end of the day, it's always about the students. And I don't know if this restructure was for the, I'm not sure it is for the students. So those are my final comments.

LEH: All right. Well, thank you.

01:04:08

End First Interview Session