Interview with Melissa Stutz

First Interview Session, June 5, 2019: Digital File

IL: All right. Today is June fifth. My name is Isaac Lee. I'm here with the oral history project, and I'm here with Melissa Stutz, for our first session of her oral history. Melissa, just to start off, if I could have you just say and spell your name so we have that on record? And I can re-test the audio one more time. MS: Melissa Stutz. M-e-l-i-s-s-a, Stutz, S-t-u-t-z. I: Okay. Great. So the first session of this interview, the overall plan is to kind of just talk about, largely about the restructuring of the UW Colleges and the UW system. And I think, as I kind of mentioned, when we get to our second session, we'll perhaps do a little bit more just about you. But to start off, maybe you could just say a little bit about what brought you to UW Colleges? MS: Sure. I was actually recruited by Chancellor Cathy Sandeen. IL: Oh. And previously you had been at Roosevelt? MS: I was at Roosevelt University. They were searching for the second time, the first time was a failed search, for their associate vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management. The search consultant actually reached out to me on LinkedIn, which was kind of funny, because I wasn't searching at the time. And I thought the position was intriguing. Intriguing and interesting. And the UW system had a great reputation. So I was very interested in learning more about the position and learning more about the colleges and about the UW system. So that's what brought me to the UW Colleges. IL: Interesting. So you didn't know much about UW Colleges or UW system prior to your position or interviewing? MS: I didn't. The only thing I knew was reputation. So I was in Illinois. Roosevelt University is in Chicago, Illinois. And what I knew was that it was really difficult to get into the University of Wisconsin system. Any of the institutions. And when I got the job, my boss even said to me, "You must know somebody in Wisconsin." In order to get that job. And I didn't. But now, two and a half years later, that should have told me something at that time. (IL laughs) So, but I knew it had a good reputation. And, yeah. IL: And so how long did you hold this position as associate vice chancellor before the, kind of the announcement of the restructuring efforts were going to begin? MS: Less than a year. Was ten months. IL: Okay. So you started right at the beginning of 2017, I think. MS: I started December 12, 2016. The announcement came on October-- IL: October 11, I think, right? MS: I found out on October eighth. IL: I think that's the Wisconsin Public 00:03:00Radio news story. And that was dated the eleventh, so that's probably a little bit. And then could you say a little bit, I guess, just about what your position and your responsibilities were as associate vice chancellor kind of prior to the announcement of the restructuring? MS: Yes. Providing oversight, direction, ongoing support to the student affairs and enrollment management functions for the college's 13 campuses and online. And those areas include--I have to write them down, because there's a lot and I don't want to forget anybody. So it includes recruitment, admissions, financial aid, marketing and enrollment, the registrar, accessibility services, which is sometimes called disability services at places, the prevention programs, veteran services, TRIO SSS (Student Support Services), conduct and compliance, student mental health, athletics and the Wisconsin collegiate conference. International programs came later and then the student governance council. So that includes, it's eleven direct reports, five dotted line reports, meaning they report to me for one area, they report to someone else for another area. There were about 125 people in the division, and it was a 10.7 million dollar budget. IL: Wow. MS: Yeah. It was a lot. It was a lot. IL: How did this compare, I guess, to your previous position at Roosevelt? Just in terms of like size and the number of people you were responsible for. MS: Similar in the areas of responsibility. A little less in the entire division. I actually had more direct reports at Roosevelt. Difference really being there were only two campuses at Roosevelt. So it was the Schaumburg in Chicago-- IL: (laughs) Quite a few more. MS: Whereas this was campuses across the entire state. So that was something very different. And I think for me this, what I always found very strange about this position, so it's an associate vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management, and yet we're not on a campus. And that was something that didn't, it never made sense to me. It doesn't make sense to me for students. You can't be a part of students when you're not with the students. But politically speaking, because it is 13 campuses, to be on one of those campuses would show favoritism. It would be perceived by the other campuses as favoritism. I don't think it has anything to do with being in Madison, or being near the Capitol, or being near the government, or the legislature. I think it has everything to do with not having the other campuses be perceived, having the perception that that 00:06:00campus is more important, that campus gets all the attention or all the funding or all the whatever. And I get that. I totally get that. And for me, I spent as much time on campuses as I could. I mean, I visited all the campuses. But I would go to Waukesha and Rock, as the closer campuses, once a week, once every other week, just to be in touch with the students and see what's happening on the campuses. Because what happens in the central office is very different than what happens on the campus when you have the students and the parents standing right in front of you. IL: Sounds like you spent a lot of time on the road. Did you have any particular, as you were starting the position, any kinds of reflections on the different campuses as you were moving around, or any-- MS: Just that, well, in Wisconsin-- IL: As you were getting to kind of know the space, I guess? MS: Wisconsin is a gorgeous state. I mean, really, really--I mean, I came in December. It was getting into spring and things as I was traveling more. Oddly, though, when I interviewed for the position, I asked does this position require a lot of travel. And they said no. (IL laughs) So I didn't have to go to any campus. It wasn't required for the job. For me to effectively do the job, I needed to see the campus. I mean, we do Skype. We are a Skype institution, and we do a lot of video conferencing. But for me personally, my workstyle, I wanted to see the campuses. I wanted to get an idea of the culture. I wanted to meet those people face to face. So it was important to me to go, not just to visit a campus but spend an entire day on a campus and kind of see what it was like. And what I thought was so neat was how individual each campus really, really was. It has its own culture, its own sense of unity within that campus. So when I came here, and we can get into this at another time, but the colleges had just gone through regionalization. IL: Right, right, right. MS: And so they went from 13 separate entities to four regions. IL: Right. That was I think 2015. MS: Yes. Well, that's when that started. But when I came in December of '16, they had just gone through their first semester of this regionalization. And a lot of people lost their jobs. Morale was low. Enrollment was low. And what I really saw in visiting these campuses was that the campus employees not accepting regionalization, hanging onto that individual campus identity. And so for the staff I think that was a big deal. And it was for the 00:09:00students as well. So I think one thing that's important to remember about the colleges people, staff and students, is they were, the wounds from regionalization were not healed when restructure was announced. I mean, that was just like ripping it right back open and pouring salt--really bad sea salt--right into it. And so some of the people that are, they've had kind of double whammy in pain and suffering is, I think, how they'll see it. But I enjoyed visiting those campuses and getting to know the people and having that connection to students. That was really important to me. So aside from the student government, having kind of that student advisory board with representation from all of the campuses, that was really important to me. IL: Mm hmm. Well so, we've started to gesture towards it, obviously. But so you said you found out about the restructuring efforts in early October. MS: Mm hmm. IL: What do you recall about both how this news was brought to you, and maybe some of your initial reactions? MS: Sure. So it was Sunday, October eighth, 2017. I was at a NASPA conference. That's the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Many student affairs people are NASPA conference people. That's a common thing. And it was a, it was a conference for new senior student affairs officers. So there were a lot of vice presidents of student affairs. And of the senior-most student affair officer with the colleges, it was something that Jim Henderson at system actually recommended that conference when he came into his position. And I was at the conference. Molly Vidal, she was the Chancellor Sandeen's chief of staff. She texted me and said, "The chancellor needs to talk to you. I know you're at a conference. Are you able to step out?" And of course, my chancellor wants to talk to me, of course I'm going to step out. And she called me and she said, "I need you to know there's a discussion about the colleges being merged with the four years. It definitely means a change. I don't have the details. I don't know exactly what it means. But I need you to know that it's being discussed. And when I have more information, I'll let you know." I appreciated that she told me as soon after she knew something as possible. But I could tell that there was something different in her voice. I don't 00:12:00want to call it anxiety or fear or anything, because I don't know how to label it. There was something different in her voice that made me know this was going to be a big deal. Even if she wasn't saying it at that time, I knew that meant every single thing was going to change. And then, so this was Sunday. And I want to say it was Sunday afternoon that the information, I saw the information on Facebook. I saw the Milwaukee Sentinel--is that a thing? IL: Yep, Milwaukee Sentinel. MS: It's either the Milwaukee Sentinel or the Milwaukee Journal. I want to say it was the Milwaukee Sentinel news story on Facebook that already in the, within colleges, somebody, somebody posted it on Facebook and it was like fire within all of the colleges' campuses like that. (snaps fingers) I mean, there was no announcement that came out, there was nothing from anyone within the colleges. I would guess the majority of the people at the colleges found out by Facebook. So I was appreciative that I had at least known from the chancellor that something was happening. But then you see that on Facebook and you know who's on Facebook. And then what was hard for me at that time is I wasn't here. I wasn't here with the staff. I wasn't able to see what was happening. I mean, I was day one of my conference. And then had to go through the rest of the conference kind of not knowing what was happening. You know, I called into a couple of meetings. I think there was a, I think Monday morning there was a meeting the chancellor had with the leadership team, the regional executive officers. And she clearly had a planned, well-written statement that she was making. And then I think the announcement had to come, because (UW) System knew it was already out there. IL: So it sounds like this impacted your, just kind of like your day-to-day work just immediately. MS: It did. So you know, so not being here, I kind of tried to, I tried to talk to staff as best as I could. You know, called my assistant and said, "Schedule a meeting with the entire staff the minute I get back." And so it was I mean, I returned to complete 00:15:00chaos. People were upset. There were a lot of questions, there were a lot of concerns. It's that unknown, and that fear of the unknown and what does this mean. And so I myself, and I can kind of talk about how it changed at the cabinet level. But for me, knowing what the staff, I immediately started having weekly restructure meetings with anybody who wanted to come that was in, not just in the student affairs area, but in my physical building area, there's also business services areas. We invited those folks. Anybody who wanted to come and hear about restructure. And I made it very clear with every single meeting, this is what I know to be true right now today at this time. Because when I walk out the door, it could change. And that was absolutely true. This is what I know to be true right now. I would dispel myths and rumors. Because when people are not communicated with effectively, they make stuff up. And what they make up will be way worse than the truth. So any rumor that I heard, I would call it out and say, "That is absolutely not true. That is not what's happening. Here is what we know to be what is happening. And more importantly, here is what it means for you. Here is what I'm doing, and here is what this means for you." And from the beginning, for me it was really you will continue to do the job that you were hired to do, continue to do it exactly the way that you have been doing it, until somebody tells you not to. And we today, even today, we still, and many people's positions have changed and responsibilities have changed. But for the work, it was keep doing what you're doing until somebody tells you not to. But I had, I had a staff member walk into my office in less than a week of this announcement happening, and said to me, "I have been doing the same job for twenty years. I haven't updated my resume for twenty years. I don't even know where to start. I don't know what to do." And for me, I mean, I have many colleagues and friends that are in the corporate world who have been through mergers and acquisitions countless times. And the first thing that happens when they lay people off is they bring in a career coach/advisor, a career planner. A something. And even though it was decided very quickly people on a 00:18:00branch campus would be transitioning with their receiving institution, their mothership, their four-year comprehensive institution, central people, which is me and about, I don't know the exact number, but I can get it for you, it's sixty to seventy people, centrally, those people's jobs would be eliminated. And they gave us a two-year notice. But I asked at the cabinet level, I asked at the human resource level, more times than I can count, what are we going to do for these people? How are we going to help these people transition? What are we going to do for them? Are we going to help them with resumes? Are we going to help them, the people that haven't interviewed for a while, are we going to let them know positions that are open within the system? Are we going to give them preference? Are they going to get an interview just because they're part of a group whose jobs are going to be eliminated? How are we going to help these people? And Isaac, this is one of the things that I am the most disappointed about this entire restructure. The response that I got repeatedly was, "We have two years left of work to do. We need them to stay here and do the work." And that's the wrong answer. That's the wrong answer and it's the wrong attitude. Yes, we have work to do. But I saw that as my responsibility as a division leader to figure out how to get that work done when these people leave. That was my job. And even today, a year and a half later, the people who are left just in the last month have finally been given a career momentum partnership to help with career coaching. And it still wasn't colleges' HR that did it. It was system that made that happen. Thank God for Rob Cramer. Thank God for Rob Cramer. Because he has been a really stable and good person to be running the steering committee. But colleges, colleges' upper administration and human resources, I'm really disappointed in how that was approached. And it should be known that, let the record show that staff members, no matter what level, whether they're a director or an administrative assistant or whatever, they can see right through that. And you can come through and say thank you as many times as you want, but the actions speak way louder than the words. And if you're not showing these people appreciation when they know their job's going 00:21:00away already, what's keeping them coming in every day and doing the work? And so for my areas, which it's my, it's the student service areas that really had to keep functioning, I really took it upon myself to have these meetings with staff, to keep them informed, to let them know that I absolutely, positively support their future. Use me as a reference. Let me know what you need. I forwarded open positions to them that I saw all the time. I gave reference checks. I had mock interviews with people. And we made it clear when you're here, be here. When you're here, be here and let's do the work. But I ultimately I need you to have a job. I need you to have a job. I need you to have a place to be. The ambiguity, the ambiguity is awful. And it makes it hard to come into work every day in that ambiguous environment. And so I made it a point to do that, to check in with people regularly, to send, you know, don't forget there's EAB? EAB? P. Employee Assistance Program. I knew that B wasn't right. But the Employee Assistance Program. And use it. If you're struggling with this and you need to talk to somebody, that service is available to you. Go talk to somebody. Because this is not, this is not normal. So busier times, they did keep doing their jobs. But we had lots of conversations about if you're, you know, take care of yourself, too. And if there's a day that you can't do it, then let's talk about that don't do it. And that's okay. Because there were, in the blink of an eye we went from being strategic leaders and thinking about the future. You know, in education, you plan a year and a half ahead. You're recruiting a year and a half ahead of time. And then we immediately went to now that's not happening anymore. And we went to, I mean, it's a mentality shift from being a strategic leader to I have to deal with the fires that come up today. We do that anyway. I mean, we do that anyway. We deal with fires on a daily basis, and we put them out. But we try to plan to be more proactive than reactive. We were 100 percent reactive all the time, and we were no longer in control. So I think the one thing that I found very interesting in the beginning, when we had 00:24:00our very first cabinet meeting. I mean, cabinet meetings in particular we shifted from being strategic and really talking about the future to what does this mean now? And it was, I think Chancellor Sandeen did the best that she could in this situation that she was put in. But one thing that was odd to me was it was said to us, "We will continue to do our jobs. We will continue to do the best at our jobs that we can. However, we must make it very," it's not that we must make it clear, "we must do everything within our power to not make anything look as though we're trying to sabotage this initiative." And I remember that word very clearly, "sabotage this initiative." And I thought to myself for a minute, I spent a minute thinking about that. But I thought okay, first of all, I'm a little insulted, because as way over-educated professionals, we would never do that. I would never do that. I would never, I would never sabotage anything. That's not even in my DNA to do that. So why did that have to be said out loud? And a year and a half later, I think I've just come to realize that that was completely a political, self-serving statement. And I think that was more of a personal issue, perhaps, for the individual that said it. But I just thought that was very odd. Why, we mustn't do anything to sabotage, to make it appear as though we're sabotaging this. To have the perception be that we're sabotaging this. And it became very clear very early, not one person in colleges was in any control. We were going to do what we were told. And we were not allowed to do anything. And we are the people that are dealing with the students on these campuses. We are the people that understand the two-year campuses are different. You recruit for them differently. The students are different. And that doesn't mean that they are less ready for college. They chose the two-year campus because they don't want to get lost in a much bigger campus. There are reasons those students are there. And nobody wanted to hear those reasons. Nobody cared about those. We were the failing institution who didn't know what they were doing and therefore had nothing to contribute. So that was very demoralizing. It was difficult to try to be helpful and be shut down 00:27:00time and time and time again. And I think that was really hard. Again, I can only speak for myself, I can only talk about this from my perspective. But what I witnessed--what I witnessed--a situation like this brings out, people's character comes to the surface. And I saw a lot of people act less than professional, become very self-serving, very much look at what does this mean for me, as opposed to how can we help make this a smooth transition for the students. IL: Right. MS: And so we really, you know, here in student services, we really took, everything was about the students. Every single thing was about the students. And even though there was something that came up every single day--and there was things that came up every single day--we would stop, we would look at it. And the first thing we would say is, "How does this impact students?" And if it didn't, then it was a different mindset. If it was, this is something that's happening that impacts students, having students read that there's a restructure happening impacts students, they want to know what that means. We had to tell them something. And so from the beginning, we said we're getting questions. We have to tell students something. And we weren't allowed to tell them anything without system's approval of what we were telling them. We had to say, "I'm sorry, we don't have that information right now." I mean, we even drafted communications to say, can we please send this out to students now? Can we send it out to them now? And this wasn't just about, I mean, this is part of retention efforts. We just went through a regionalization. We lost a lot of students in that. We don't want to lose any more. We don't want the receiving institutions to lose any of these students. We don't want to sabotage this. That wasn't even about that. This was, we don't want this to impact the students. And we were, it didn't seem to be as much of a priority to those that needed to tell us how to do it as it was to us. And maybe it wasn't. They weren't the ones having to say to students, "I don't know what this means." And okay, even if we don't know, can you tell us the right thing to say? Tell us the right way to tell them we don't know what this means. So that took a little bit of time. And I think that was very, very difficult for administrators that are used to making decisions on the fly to now be told, you have to wait. You have 00:30:00to wait. Even though we know what to do and we know how to do it, you have to wait. And so it took time to get used to that. But that is what restructure from the colleges' perspective was all about. It was all about we are not in control. We didn't have any direction. We didn't have any support. There wasn't a plan. There was no communication. There was no directive. It was completely ambiguous. And for me to watch these people who have been a part of this institution for decades, for them, they went through the same grief process as if somebody died. Because their institution was dying. And for them to see all the work that they've done no longer matter, it was not going to be preserved, and nobody cared, it was painful for a lot of people. I mean, it really was a grief process. I mean, I was here less than a year in this environment. And it's now, I've spent more time in restructure than I did in the job I was hired to do. And it's a wound that will still take a long time to heal for me. And for those who reported to me who spent a long time here, this is something that will stick with them. And so in the beginning, I think we had to get through a lot of just that ambiguous. And it was changed, but it was changed to the nth degree that we had no control over. So we kind of had to embrace that and say, this is what we know today. And you kind of have to almost talk yourself into that. This is what I'm going to do today. And it got to be where you came in and didn't know what you were going to do today. You went from, I mean, my schedule went from planned meetings with lots of people to, I don't know what we're going to do today. I don't know what's going to come up today. So once we did start knowing some things, we were able to at least help things move along a little bit. So for me in particular, it was a combination of okay, let's make sure staff is okay. We're doing what we do every day until somebody tells us not to. We're doing what we do every day until somebody tells us not to. System did put together a frequently asked questions. We were able to help with that. We were 00:33:00able to, they created a website for people to post their questions, which was very helpful. That should have been up immediately. I would say have that up sooner when this happens again so people could submit their questions. So then we could say to students, "Submit that question. Here's the website." We could say that to staff, we could say that to parents. And I think once the big-ticket items were identified. So, the Higher Learning Commission. That's a big-ticket item. Okay, so we have the communication from President Cross. Everybody dissected every single word of that. Everybody dissected every single word of that. And so we, I had to have that in one of my restructure meetings and say, "Okay. Let's talk about this. And let's talk about what it means, and let's talk about what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean this." But the conspiracy theories just run wild. But that's what happens. When you don't tell people things, they do make things up. IL: Do you remember any? MS: I don't. I could get the letter out and probably look. I think the biggest conspiracy theories were Ray Cross didn't like Cathy Sandeen, and that's what this was all about. That's probably the biggest one. He didn't like her, and this was his way to get rid of her. That's kind of ridiculous. This was in the works for years. This was the way to keep the two-year schools from being taken over by the tech schools. Just things that when you think about what's happened now, it just doesn't make any sense. But at the time, I think anybody was struggling with why is this happening now. But for colleges people, it was well then why did we go through reorganization? If this was going to happen, why did we go through reorganization? I mean, we were turning a corner. We were turning a corner in how we were accomplishing things, how we were impacting students. I mean, our processes, our everything that was a product of reorganization, we were turning a corner. And we didn't get to do it. So we'll forever have that what if. What if we were able to do this? What if, and that's neither here nor there at this point. But so once Higher Learning Commission was figured out and accreditation, 00:36:00financial aid. You know, the financial aid piece, I think, was probably one of the biggest pieces. Because when can that be transferred? Students fill out the FAFSA in October for the following fall. Well, this announcement happened in October. So they were already in that process. And aside from colleges, there's no way the receiving institutions would have been ready to take everybody in a year. And the date that President Cross had, we're talking October 17, he had by July first of '18, this is all going to happen. And there was no way that was going to happen. Which is why colleges kind of became a service provider for the following year. So accreditation went away and we had to have that MOU. So colleges has an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, with all seven institutions. And I was a part of creating that MOU. We really went through all functional areas. All, I mean, there's probably 36 different points on that MOU. And we had discussion with each of the seven institutions. I was a part of all of those. I was a part of creating it. And then that was our service agreement. Because of a million different reasons, we couldn't just have the receiving institutions take over everything on July 1, 2018. So colleges needed to continue to function for another year, which we're coming to the end of the summer of that year, in order to help the transition happen. And that's what we've been doing for a year. And so that memorandum of understanding is really going kind of department by department to say colleges will continue to admit students. It will be colleges courses. The colleges will admit students. The colleges will award financial aid. And then here are these other pieces that we could transition early if we had to. For example, conduct. My entire conduct team got another job. We couldn't do that anymore. And so we had to, we kind of then started to get into an area. Because that's what happens. You take people's jobs away. They need to find another one. And so we have all of these functions that we're doing. This was a function that after conversations, and we had to go function by function to say if this function, if colleges are no longer able to do it, is 00:39:00it a function that can be transitioned to the receiving institutions earlier? And with a plan. And this was me making this plan. Remind me to come back to the project management office. And if you need to interrupt me, interrupt me at any time. But, so it was making a plan and having conversations with all seven institutions, with the right people. With the appropriate colleges people, the appropriate people at each institution, the people doing the work. So the deans of students at all institution. But then also making sure there were people aware. And so the steering committee that was created, I think, was to get involvement of all the receiving institutions, as well as non-receiving institutions. This restructure impacts those other non-receiving institutions just, maybe not as much as it impacts the receiving institutions, but they still had students from those now branch campuses. And how was it going to impact their enrollment and their function and things like that? So in the beginning, we were told there would be consultants that would be coming in and managing the project and helping how things go. That was Huron. My personal perspective was that was a waste of money. I still don't know what they did. I still don't know what they're doing now. And perhaps my expectations of what a consultant should do were unrealistic for what this was. But I found them to be exceptional meeting organizers and note takers. And we could have had more competent graduate students from Madison that would have done a much better job in my, Melissa Stutz', personal opinion. I found that to be one of the most frustrating parts early on. Because I did want this to go well, I did want this--and I do. I still want it to go well. I want the students to--I don't want the students to see how the sausage is made. I want the students to come and sign up for courses and get the education they need, and not even care about any of the back stuff, because that's what's the most important thing. But how, how we made some of that easier, I was really expecting this team to come in and say, "Here's what we're going to do. Here's our plan to do it. And here's how you can help." And that's not what happened. I did all of it. I had to, I had to give 00:42:00them the information so they could put it in a pretty spreadsheet. Lots of pretty spreadsheets and PowerPoints. That's fantastic. I don't know what they spent on that, but wow. We could have downloaded a template and had it much easier. So I discovered very early on that if I had to wait for them to do something, I'd still, a year and a half later, be waiting for them to do something. So I didn't. I had people leaving. I needed to get this done now. I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to wait for you to tell me how to do it. I'm going to do what I know needs to be done to make sure this goes smoothly for the students. And conduct was the first one to move. And they ended up using the process I did for everything else. The process I created, the checklist I made, everything I did as an example of what you--why am I not getting consulting dollars? Why am I not getting consulting dollars, because I did all the work for that. So, not bitter about that at all. IL: Where did the Huron Group fit within kind of the, I guess chain of command, you would say, of how kind of directives are being given about this restructuring process? Are they just as responsive to UW system, or they're working under UW system directives as well in trying to help you? I guess where do they kind of fit within the organizational structure in this project? MS: That's an excellent question, and I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer that. I think there are better, the consultants came in and then I'm not exactly sure when after that system created a project management office. And so the project management office, we came to find out there were system employees that were part of that. Those people were the most productive people and still are. And so that is when things started to get better. So I do think that someone at system said this isn't working, we have to pull this together a little bit. So, Stefan Fletcher, who I really kind of see him as like Rob's right-hand man, he started to oversee the project management office. And as there became more system people in that office, they were system employees, it wasn't just a consultant. And I had to literally ask for a list. Who are the project management office people and who are the consultant people? And the consultant people had a revolving door. And so when I had to start all over with a new person and tell them everything, and then yet tell another consultant and another--the consultants didn't talk to each other. The consultants weren't talking to the project manager. I was a broken record all the time, saying the same thing over and over and over. And it just 00:45:00didn't feel to me like they were talking to each other. I think they do now, and I think they've gotten better about that. But you know, simple, I would discover, I would start copying everybody. I would just copy all of them. I can't assume--don't assume anything--and it's an unrealistic expectation for me to think that you're going to speak to the person that sits next to you. So I would just include them all because then I knew I was covering all of my bases and not having to continue to do that. But in answer to your question, I think once the project management office was created and there were, you know, there were kind of some key people. But by the time they got key person to me, we were a year into restructure. And it's like, dude, I needed you a year ago. (IL laughs) Because we were doing things so far in advance. And so asking questions, and asking questions, and not getting answers. And I found the project management office, the consultants in particular, to be six months behind where we needed them to be. You know, there needed to be that transition checklist and that transition procedure. I had to do it all before it was created because there were people leaving. And maybe it was okay to sort of have, we were a pilot group, and okay. And I was glad they were able to use that for other transitions. But in the beginning, just complete disorganization and frustration. And I have yet to have one person on the campuses, I think, consultants that were on the campuses, I think were probably helpful to the people on the receiving institution campuses. For me centrally, I found them to be completely useless. Now, a year and a half later, the people that are still with the project management office, I think it's much better. I think they are, I think they are purposeful. I think they are useful in helping things sort of come to a close and things like that, but it took them a really long time to get there. In, again, my opinion. IL: What was, so, and this kind of maybe brings up the question of how communication is working during this whole process. Since apparently the consultants aren't doing it amongst themselves very much. But where are you receiving kind of your marching orders, so to speak? As you said, like every day there's something new that's coming up that you and your team are having to address. Like I guess where in trying to kind of understand 00:48:00the day to day kind of efforts in this, kind of like where are your instructions coming from? Where is this something that you're kind of, or is this a lot of things that you're recognizing need to be done on their own? MS: I'm trying to think of the best way to answer that question. So, Chancellor Sandeen left in September of '18. So we had, but we knew she was leaving before that. So by July first, actually, we can kind of consider her gone. That, I mean once she left, I mean, I don't think I ever had, you know, even after she left, it was like well, who do I even report to? Who do I even report to? And it wasn't, for me, it wasn't ever anyone telling me what to do. It was me keeping people informed of what I'm doing. And it was me figuring out this is what we're going to have to do. I leave next week. I wish you had seen my office before I was leaving. I had giant post-it notes on this wall. I had seven, one for each institution, to help me keep track of who the key people were that I needed to talk to. So there's the campus administrators, there's the campus relationship lead. There's that key person on that campus that you should keep informed. That's their restructure person on the campus. And each institution had a different number of teams. But for me, and they're working with us. For me, I'm working with seven schools, ten teams on each school, in different areas. And it was how I kept it straight. And so on our end, it was really a matter of we, I mean, and then people were leaving and leaving and leaving. So, who's left? And who do we still need to talk, you know, who's left to still be here? So I still, the central team, I still met with them the way I did once a week. But our conversations became very different. It was really what's going on in your area, what's left to do and what conversations are you having? They all became 00:51:00restructure conversations. I still had my restructure meetings. I still had the team meetings, but were bringing in other people. And like now, the bursar and the controller, they're not a part of student affairs, but I include them in everything. Because what's left, and their AVC knows that. Like they're here in the building. I'm not leaving them out. We started having potlucks once a month, just to have some kind of morale and something to do and something fun. We included every single person on this side of the wall. But the day to day directive, I didn't ever have anybody saying, "Melissa, you're going to do this today." Because my job was 100 percent strategic. We're planning for the future. We're planning for enrollment. What are our initiatives? Every single thing we were doing stopped. Every single initiative we were doing stopped, and no longer happened. And it became we are a service provider on behalf of the receiving institutions. We are literally day to day functioning and helping services transition to them smoothly. That became our job. And that was very challenging, too, on many levels. I think for this, you know, you look at the work part and you look at how was the work being done, as people leave, what do you do? Again, I think that's my job to figure that out. I had a registrar leave. I found an interim registrar who will be here long after the summer. That was a really good find. But there's that emotional part, that psychological part, that mental/human part that needs to be a part of a restructure plan. Because when you are completely demoralized and you're no longer doing the job that you were hired to do, and you know your job's going away and you have to get a new one, it's really hard to do that. And so you have to talk about what your job was when you were functioning at the job that you were doing. But to have to get yourself pumped up enough to sell yourself in an interview when you sometimes can't even get out of bed, that's really hard to do. And when we're not helping people through that, I think that was a disservice to the human 00:54:00beings that were still there. So for me, it was an awful lot of I need to figure this out. So it was me having regular conversations with my people, being very honest about please let me know when you're interviewing. And then me planning what that means. Because I was very supportive of everybody. I'm still supportive of every single person getting a job. I would love them all to just get one at the same time. We have to figure out what to do that. We have to figure out what that means for the work. Which we can. We can figure that out. We're very smart people. We can figure out how to do that. And we celebrated when every single person got a job. We celebrated their accomplishment. We celebrated what that meant. But then that, even that, needs a transition plan. That needs a, for colleges as each person leaves, what does that mean? Not only what does it mean for the work they were doing, what does it mean for what they have on their computer? What does it mean for their out of office on their email, their phone, the information in their office? That was never discussed. It's being discussed now. It's June of 2019. It's being discussed now. But those were things that I had to figure that out as each person left. What does that mean? What does it mean for now? What does it mean for six months from now? What does it mean for when everything is going away? So that plan, we often say we're building the airplane as we're flying it. Because that's what this restructure has been. We are building the airplane as we're flying it. And sometimes we got pretty close to the ground, to crash, as we were building those pieces together. So this, there's a lot of things that have been thought of along the way. There's things that have been missed along the way. And I think that's expected. You know, you can't anticipate everything. But we should have anticipated some of the stuff that ended up coming up. IL: Are there any moments that particularly come to mind where the airplane got pretty close to the ground, as you would say? MS: I think one in particular was, it had to do with accreditation. Because we are, because the colleges are operating on behalf of the receiving institutions, I mean, the college's accreditation is 00:57:00gone. And in conversations with the Higher Learning Commission and the Department of Ed, and system navigated those conversations very well. They did very well in navigating those conversations and I think keeping people informed. The receiving institutions needed to be approved, if they weren't already approved to offer the associate degrees that the colleges have, they had to get approval for that. And we also have a bachelor of applied arts and sciences degree. They had to get approved for that, too. They didn't all get approved for that in the timely manner that we needed them to. And I don't know why. I have no idea why, and I don't think anyone's at fault for that. I think it's just something that happened. But because we're awarding aid on behalf of this accredited institution, if they're not accredited for that program, we can't award aid for that program. And it came up while doing, so there were a couple of institutions that we couldn't award aid for that we didn't find that out until days before we were supposed to disperse that aid. And it came up, one institution in particular, their financial aid department was also on probation. That was never discussed. That never came up. But that was an additional step that institution had to take in order to get this approval for the accreditation. That was something that, had that been known, system probably could have helped them in navigating through that a little bit better. So it was something that, I mean, that's something, you can't anticipate that, and you can't plan for that. And so that was a kind of situation where we had to deal with it, we did deal with it. We came up with some whatever, creative ways of dealing with it. But that's where we all are now mentally. Something happens. And we don't panic. We go, okay, who do we need to talk to? How does this impact students? Who needs to know this right now? Who needs to know this right now? Is it the head of colleges? Does system need to know this? Who needs to know this right now? What's the communication plan? Who's going to do what? You know, we go through all of those things. So, I mean, I don't know, I can honestly say I don't think there's anything anybody could walk in here and say to me that's going to put me into a panic. Because we've had so many things, so 01:00:00many times, where even if this is what we're planning to do, oh, now they're telling us this. Okay. Because we know we're not in control. And I think that that was a little hard to get used to. And I don't want to say we're used to it. But it was, you know, we had to constantly say this is not normal higher education. This is not a normal year. This is not what we do every day. And even the people on the campuses--and remind me to come back to that and talk about people on the campuses--had to definitely continue to say to them, this is not a normal year, your life will not always be like this. The receiving institutions are not used to multiple locations. They're not used to multiple locations. They're not used to a branch campus. You know, whereas at colleges, when we went through regionalization, I mean, over a hundred people lost their jobs. There is not one person in this institution that has one job. Not one. Everybody wears multiple, multiple, multiple hats. Because we have to, because that's how we're structured. So we're used to operating at a 120-capacity level all the time because there's so many things to do. And now as the branch campuses, and because there's fewer people--we all talk to each other, because we have to. You're the person that does A, B and C. I've got to talk to you about A. But oh, yeah, I need you for B, and then here's C. Whereas at the receiving institutions, that's three different people. So the communication from the receiving institutions to the branch campuses is not as often or much or informative as it was in colleges itself. Because we had to work, and it's not so much working collaboratively, it's one person does ten things. You're not going to have ten things in one conversation. The receiving institutions, a lot of them are much bigger, much more conglomerated. Communication maybe on their own campus isn't that great. But the branch campuses were feeling very left out. And they're not telling me anything, they're not talking about things. Sometimes it was me sharing the restructure email with them. And they would say, "This is the first I've heard about it." Okay. Talk to your receiving institution. Talk to your receiving institution. But those receiving institutions, they'll get there. They have to get used to that. So I don't know, they have to be in a place to receive the information. And that's something we've 01:03:00absolutely learned. So we would say things to them to be helpful. And we would say them again and again and again. And not get frustrated by that. I absolutely, I could see the lightbulb go off when, it would be like ah, now you get it. The tenth time, you get it. Because it had to be completely overwhelming for them. I can't even imagine on their side, what that must be like, to have to now be responsible for these campuses and these people and these students. They have to wrap their head around that. And that's going to take longer than when colleges is even gone. And I am a little fearful that--not fearful, I'm hopeful. Next year, when we're not here and they do have to do it, that's really when they'll start wrapping their heads around it and trying to understand it a little more. I'm fearful that they will have questions for colleges, people who will not be anywhere to be found. Because when we were here to give them that information, they weren't ready to receive it. And although, I don't think that they don't care, that's how it feels internally. That's how it has felt with colleges people. They don't care what we did. They think that we failed. I think it's more they weren't ready to receive that information. They were looking at we have our own problems, and now you want us to take these campuses that have a deficit. Who's going to pay for that? And the money piece has always been the topic of conversation. The money piece. Who's going to pay for this? And that has seemed to, I think, overshadow some of the human pieces and the personnel pieces. It's a ginormous project. It's ginormous to even have one campus to one campus. This is thirteen campuses to seven. It's huge. It's huge. And I think what kind of conversations that have taken place with the department of ed with regards to financial aid, I'm not sure they know what to do. I don't know that they've ever done it like this before. They've merged campuses before. It's usually one to one. That's a lot easier. We're going to transfer. How do you do one to seven? You know? So, yeah. Okay. What else? IL: I think one of the things, on the subject of staff, I remember reading the HLC report. And one of the things they noted in the report was low staffing levels, and that that was a concern. Is that, I think from your perspective, what is most missing, I think, within this now, particularly on the staff side, as they kind of try 01:06:00to really make this restructure work? I mean, a lot of institutional memory has seemingly been lost. MS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's so much institutional information has gone out the door. You know what's I think really hard to understand is colleges, I mean, colleges, it was different anyway. And I think from the receiving, actually just the four-year perspective, there was no need for anybody to understand it. Because it was there. We got students from them. Students are prepared. That's great. Okay. But when you start looking at the functionality, I mean, I have my hands interlocked. And this is how colleges operated was an interlocked, well-oiled machine. And when you start separating it piece by piece, finger by finger, and you look at it individually, it doesn't work. It worked as thirteen institutions together under one umbrella. And to piecemeal that out, I think from a receiving institution perspective, it's very confusing. And so with regards to staffing, after regionalization, I mean, we brought so many services centrally. So where there used to be an accommodations person on each and every campus, there was now one fulltime director with a contact person on each campus who also had advising responsibilities, student service responsibilities. You know, we created a solution center, a one-stop shop on each campus that had an advisor, a student activities person, and information specialist. And that information specialist was really a generalist that was supposed to help students answer all of their questions. But these were, I mean, there are three positions. There may be more than one advisor depending on student capacity. But they were all by student headcount. And so if you had more students, you had more staff in that center. If you had less students, you had less staff. That's logical. It makes sense. But one director of Accessibility Services, she wrote every single plan for 450 students. The student went to their person on their campus to initiate the process. 01:09:00That person know enough about Accessibility Services to start the process. But they weren't decision makers. They weren't, they were intaking the information and handing it off to someone else who was not at that location. Of course it's not the ideal situation. But it worked. Did it work well? No. Did we need more staff? Yes. But it worked for what we had at the time. And to try to divvy that up to seven different places? I mean, that area in particular, Accessibility Services, that completely blows their minds. That's an area where on all seven of those institutions, it's already understaffed. And now they have to figure out how to do that at different locations. And you know, I go back to saying they have to get their heads around how to do that. We did that because we had to. We had to, thirteen different locations. We had to do that. And to try to explain to them how we did it, they immediately go to "I have to have a person on that campus. I need an accessibility person on that campus. I have to have that." Well, you don't. You don't. And here's how we did it and here's why. But with Student Services, those branch campuses, again, you unravel it, you take that one person away and they don't have capacity to do that. It worked the way we were structured. We've been unraveled and unstructured now. None of it works. So in every single branch campus is understaffed for Student Services. And it will be up to the receiving institution to figure out how do we accommodate for that? We had regional associate deans. So let's say we have a region that has three campuses, okay? You have a regional associate dean of student affairs, a regional associate dean of academic affairs, and a regional associate dean of administration and finance. Each one of those three people has a dual role. They are each a campus administrator at one of those three campuses. That's half their job. And the other half is their either finance, student affairs or academic affairs for all three campuses. And so part of when they regionalized, they factored in travel. They all got paid for travel because they 01:12:00had to be at multiple locations. That was part of the budget. That's not a life in the receiving institution's budget. And so that's why they're not grasping multiple locations. Branch campus people are expecting to get paid to travel to other places because that's what we did. That's not what's happening with the receiving institutions. I mean, they have to get their head around if you're expecting a person to be at multiple locations, how are you doing that? Are you paying them for travel? Or are they completely Skype, you know, Skype talking to each other. Skype was another thing. Skype is a part of our world. We have had many Skype meetings with the receiving institutions where it's their very first Skype meeting ever. IL: Oh, wow. MS: So that's kind of funny to us. (IL laughs) They've gotten really good. They've gotten really good at it. But the first ones have been kind of funny. So it's been interesting. I think a year and a half later, we at colleges, the central staff that are still left, we're kind of all over the place. We're getting to the end. So we're getting to a point where we're used to that this is not normal, and this is not what it's like. I think there are staff members panicking that November's going to come and they're not going to have a job. I think they are all eligible for unemployment. So I think they have that, and they do have this career momentum that they're working with. There are a few people who do have appointments longer than November, because there is still work to be done in closing out business services and financial aid closeout things, records, that kind of thing. But it's, we would normally be up to our eyeballs in getting ready for fall. IL: Right. MS: We're not doing that. The receiving institutions are admitting those students for fall. So we really are on a closeout and winding down. So now it's really looking around the offices, what things are here, what needs to go where. I'm more concerned about everybody finding a job and a place to be while still making sure the students that are here are getting what they need. But it's a very different world right now. Yeah. IL: Kind of on that note, you look at some of the earlier stories about the news of the restructuring. One of the things that was, I think, perhaps in contrast to the regionalization effort was this isn't 01:15:00about losing jobs, this isn't about cutting down on staff, was one of the kind of earlier message that was floated out there. How soon did it become apparent that that wasn't true? MS: Immediately. I'll say from the perspective, well, I mean, internally within the colleges, I know that the message was this will provide opportunity, accessibility, affordability. Are those the three pillars? Accessibility, affordability, opportunity. And I sent that message. I conveyed that message. And I said that to staff. This is the message that system's saying. I was never sarcastic about it. I was never, you know, this is a crock. I never said that. I conveyed the system message. And there's not one person that works here that believes that message. And I would even say that message to my neighbors, to people at the receiving institutions. To people at colleagues at non-receiving institutions. Colleagues in other states. Why is this happening? And I would say, this is what the message is. Nobody believed it. Nobody believed it. From the beginning, nobody believed it. And I would have to say that I hope that, I would genuinely say, "I hope that this creates incredible opportunities for students. If this means that the four years can incorporate some of their baccalaureate programs on those branch campuses in some of those locations, that will be great opportunities for students." And what if they could bring some of their master's programs to some of those locations? I think there are opportunities for this. What absolutely breaks my heart is the accessibility of the two-year campus and what it means. I don't think that will ever, I don't think that will remain from this restructure. And I don't think that will ever be the same. And I think that will be gone. And that's unfortunate and that's something that the tech schools will 01:18:00absolutely capitalize on. So I think the, I think it's too bad that the story was leaked before they had a really, there was opportunity to make this, to start this off on a better foot and to have it have a way more positive message. And to me, I feel like the whole restructure project has just been trying to catch up with that, trying to make up for that. And I don't think it's ever gotten there, you know? And I do wonder if, you know, if you're not in it, if you're not a part of colleges or a part of a receiving institution, or a part of higher ed, what is kind of the buzz out there? And we get some interesting, we've gotten some interesting things have happened. So colleges was operating for a year. But the transition was starting to happen. The movement was starting to happen. Stevens Point changed the name of Wausau, it's Stevens Point at Wausau. The application from Marathon County says Marathon County. To apply to University of Stevens Point at Wausau, it says Marathon County. That's kind of a big deal. If I want to go to that campus and I can't find it on the application, how am I going to go to that campus? You know, so there were, it seems a little bit like there was a disconnect in some decisions being made that impacted other areas, and then those changes didn't quite happen. And I mean, and that was initially. You know, they were applying, where does my application go? Where do I send my materials to? We're still getting, students are completing the FAFSA for colleges for fall. We won't be doing financial aid in the fall. I mean, those are things that we can work out on the back end. But those are some things where you know, it should be anticipated that there will be confusion. And although there's nothing that can be done to prevent, to make sure every single person in the state of Wisconsin and surrounding states knows what's happening, so give us the language to tell people when they don't do it right. Tell us what you want us to say to them. And have a plan for what that means and 01:21:00how we get them to the right place. And so you know, there's little things like that that I know it's going to impact enrollment. It's going to impact enrollment on every single one of those branch campuses. Because it's those little kinds of detail things and that personalization and that customer service. And it pains me to not give a student customer service. And that's how we have tried to operate in the colleges, but particularly in student services. And when we don't have the right information to give a student and we can't help them, it's awful. And we're very kind about it, but we don't have all of the answers. And that's been, I think, really hard. So going way back to your question, that feels like three hours ago, about staff, student services on the branch campuses are definitely lacking. And I know the receiving institutions feel that. And so, you know, working out how they do accessibility services and how they do conduct and how is everybody being trained and things like that, student services are absolutely lacking. And I think advising is a huge, key piece. System's done this wonderful thing in getting, contracting with EAB and navigation, and that's outstanding. I really, really hope that they're including their branch campuses in part of that setup and those discussions and things like that. IL: Well I think, this has been phenomenal. I think it would be good for our next session to maybe have a little bit more time to just kind of reflect on where we are now. MS: Okay. IL: I'm going to ask one more question that is a bit of a leading question, given our conversation before we started recording. But as you were speaking just now, kind of about the kind of, you know, things that weren't considered. One thing that was striking for me as I was kind of reading news stories around the restructuring was, there's a story that Chancellor Blank kind of found out maybe about the restructuring effort, from UW Madison maybe like a day or two before this went through. And there's open records email requests that she said, well, this seems like kind of an open secret that this had been something that had been thought about and discussed for a long time. But that that point, that this has been talked for a while, seems very counter to what we've kind of talked about today thus far. And so my very leading question is, what do you think the plan was with restructuring? MS: You're so funny to do that to me. (IL laughs) So I will go on record to say when I hear the word "plan" of restructure, I have a visceral reaction to 01:24:00that. Because if there was a plan, it was a really bad plan. Having been hired less than a year before this announcement came, why was my position even filled? The fact that I had just moved, relocated my family here six months prior to this announcement, why, why go through all of that if it's just going to get taken away? And if they wanted to hire me as a consultant to do restructure, I should have gotten paid a hell of a lot more money. So I don't, I will never, for the rest of my life and the twelve lives after, believe that there was a plan. And if they're talking about a bunch of old white guys in a corner of a boardroom having a discussion about how this could happen, if that's a plan, that's a fucked up plan. Completely fucked up plan. This was not a plan. It was someone's idea. And I'm not saying it was a bad idea. I'm saying no one should ever call it a plan, because it's not a plan. And if it's a discussion that turned into a plan, they needed the right people in the room to actually make the plan. And should have had the plan in place before the wheels started moving. And even if it, being leaked as an idea or a secret or a whatever, okay. But don't start that actual implementation process until it's been thought through. And maybe somebody thought they did think it through. That person should be fired, because that person didn't think it through well enough to, and I don't know anybody could have thought it through well enough to have it, to have anticipated all of the things that have happened. But to go one institution to seven, that's a huge undertaking. And perhaps, you know, we can would have, should have, could have. We can reflect, we can say maybe they should have started with one campus merging with another campus, and see how that went, and learned some things from it. So we can't go back and fix it. But I will never believe that this was a plan. I think it was an idea. I think it was, clearly it had to have been discussed among some people for quite some time. It 01:27:00couldn't have just been, "Hey! I got an idea! Let's do this!" But the people having those discussions weren't the right people to implement what this actually meant to do. So, yeah. When I, anytime I hear or see the word that this was a planned restructure, I have PTSD reactions to that. Because it wasn't planned. And I suppose if I could find that person who says that they had this plan, I'd like five minutes alone. And it won't be pretty. Like two people go in and one person's coming out. And it will be me. I mean, literally like it makes my heart pound faster. It makes my face turn red. It makes my blood boil. It makes me want to scream and scratch things. It's a visceral reaction because this was a poor plan. IL: Sorry. MS: It's okay. (laughter) It's okay. It's okay. Makes for good entertainment. (laughs) IL: Well, I thought that would be a good thing to have on the record, to be honest. Because the previous, I think, about all of our conversations attest well to the fact that, to this sentiment here. Now that I've thoroughly, I think we'll wrap it up for the day. MS: Okay. IL: I'm going to put pause on the recorder. But before I do, I just want to thank you for your time. So that's on the record, and this was, I think, phenomenal. All right. End First Interview Session (June 5, 2019): Digital File Begin Second Interview Session (June 12, 2019): Digital File IL: All right. Here we go. Today is June twelfth, a rainy Wednesday day. My name is Isaac Lee. On behalf of the oral history program, I'm here with Melissa Stutz for this second session of our interview talking about her career and the UW restructuring project. As I kind of alluded to in the first session, I wanted to spend a little bit of time today discussing your career and how you came to Madison. And maybe in the second half, we can kind of have some time to reflect on where things are as you're getting ready to leave us in Madison. So I'm going to start off with just a very basic question that we try to put into all of these oral history interviews. Like, where did you grow up? And what was your kind of early educational experiences like? MS: Okay. Let's see. Originally, I'm from Nebraska. I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. IL: Me, too. MS: Get out of town! Were you really? IL: Lincoln General. MS: So I was born in Lincoln. And when I was two, we moved to Omaha. But Bryan Memorial Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. That's where I was born. That's hysterical. See, I knew I liked you right away. And lived in Omaha until I was fourteen. Millard, the Millard North area. And then when I was fourteen years old, my parents moved me to Texas. Which was like moving to another planet when you're a teenager. I don't think I spoke to them for two years. So I spent ten years in Texas and then got married and moved back to the Midwest. And spent a lot of time in the Midwestern area. IL: And so you went to, you started college in Texas, correct? MS: I did. I'm sorry. I forgot you asked me that. Actually I went to the University of Texas at Austin. Austin is the Madison of the South. IL: Better barbecue, though, I hear. (laughs) MS: Oh, way better barbecue. But the two towns are so similar in culture and people and mentality. It's the capital plus a college town. And I mean, they're both just great cities. So as a young person in Austin, Texas, I had way too much freedom. Had way too much fun. Accumulated not three years' worth of credits in the three years that I spent there. So I went back to Arlington is where we were, which is between Dallas and Forth Worth. And I finished my bachelor's degree at the University of Texas at Arlington. But it took me a long time because I stopped. I had five classes left. I stopped. I got married. I had kids. And then I went back. And so finished those five classes and then kind of kept going to school kind of forever. So got my master's at Webster University because they had a campus in Crystal Lake. So Webster's in Saint Louis, Missouri, but they had an extension campus in Crystal Lake. Got my master's degree there. And 01:30:00then got my doctorate through North Central University, which is a, it was an online program. They have campuses in Arizona, but it was an online program, because it was easier for my life. My kids were little. And I took my time doing that. You know, one class at a time. And took forever to write my dissertation. That's how I did that. Yeah. IL: And to backtrack slightly, so at Arlington, you studied communications. When you started at Austin, did you have a sense of what you kind of wanted to go into? MS: I didn't. I didn't. And honestly, I wish that I had gone to a community college, to be honest, Because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. (IL laughs) But I took a myriad of classes. And I liked the, actually in Austin, I just took gen eds. And then when I went to UTA at Arlington, which is because my parents lived there, I mean, I went into an advisor and I said, "Look at the credits I've accumulated. What can I do to get out of here quickly?" I mean, that's literally what I said. And the communications major is what was recommended to me. So I took a couple of classes, and I really liked it. And at the time wanted to actually kind of get into broadcasting. It's broadcast communications. Wanted to be a sportscaster. I wanted to be Ahmad Rashad on the sidelines with Michael Jordan before there were women in broadcasting. I mean, I was even a deejay at a radio station. A very small country-western radio station in Weatherford, Texas, where I think only my dad and the owner of the station listened to me, I'm pretty sure. That was kind of a fun experience. But then got married and had kids. And at that time, and probably even now, in order to be successful in that industry, you had to be mobile. Very, very, very mobile. And I just wasn't willing to do that. So I was actually a stay at home mom for seven years. Which is the hardest job in the entire universe, a stay at home mom. And then my life circumstances changed and I needed to join the workforce. So actually I went to a temp agency. You know, I had a bachelor's degree, but my only work experience was bartending and waitressing and retail. That was it. So I went to a temp agency that after a couple of very short-term kind of office help while people were on vacation, they put me at a community college. They put me at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, Illinois, as a, I was the human resources floater. Like the switchboard person and just kind of the 01:33:00office floater. And I was in that environment for an hour before I went oh my God, this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be, this is what I want to do. Because the energy on the campus, and the students. And it was so great. So I did my six-week temp stint. And I applied for literally the only position they had available in the entire campus, which was a part time person in HR. So I did employee, I was the employee relations assistant. I was the person that helped set up interviews and hire people. So I started in HR, which is why my master's degree is in HR, because I was working in HR at that time. And then I just stayed there. That was a part time job. And then a fulltime came open. And I just stayed and was actually recruited to almost every other position I had there. You know, somebody would come to me and say, "Hey, I have this opening coming. I think you'd be great for it. You should apply for it." And I did have to apply for every single one. It was never handed to me. It was always earned. And then I just kept doing other jobs. I did not go to school for student affairs, which is different than a lot of the professionals that are in student affairs. They went to college for student personnel and student affairs issues. And they've started in student activities, and dean of students. And mine didn't quite go that way. I was always kind of, always student-centered. Me, myself. My philosophy is always a very student-centered person. So I took that into all the positions that I had. But it was a very different, different approach than-- IL: Yeah. Yeah. So like as you're in these positions, do you notice then kind of a difference in philosophy between yourself and people with that kind of training? MS: Yes. Yes. I do, and I do. And I think I get criticized a little bit by my colleagues because of it. Because to me myself in my mind, I call it a student affairs mentality. And I'm doing air bunnies. And I don't mean that in a derogatory or bad way. But my experience with, and I'm going to be stereotypical, and I don't mean for it to be. But I have had experience with a number of student affairs people that were trained in student affairs that were, that that's the only jobs they have ever had were in student affairs. 01:36:00And they are very, very student-centered, which is great. But only student affairs thought process. Every single thing is fighting for students, fighting for students, fighting for students, but almost in a defensive way. Almost in a combative way. And not in a collaborative way with academic affairs. Not in even trying to understand that area. And I do think that, I do think that when you are in student affairs, it's your job to be the voice of the students. That is your job to be the voice of the students. I've read all the top student affairs books. I've read them all. I go to the conferences. I feel I'm educated enough in that area, or experienced in it. But when you only stand on a mountain and shout, "Students, students, students, students!" without saying okay, how can we go about, first of all, understanding the situation and understanding it from all sides, to make it, to make a situation be better for everybody? I see that it's just butting heads. And then you get into us and them. Academic affairs and student affairs. And not working together. And it's not an approach that I've seen be very successful. And I'm generalizing when it's been a few people that I've experienced that have been like that. But when I go to the conferences, I see it a little bit more. And I think where I know some presidents that have come from the student services side and I think to be in that kind of position and have that kind of experience, but you still have to have that understanding of faculty and where they come from. So I think I do sometimes get a little criticized for not having been brought up in the student affairs track. But yet, I think there's an appreciation in how I get things done and how I can collaborate with other areas. So it depends on who, where the mindset's coming from, a little bit. IL: Mm hmm. At what point did you decide you wanted to get a doctorate and go back? So you were looking for a program that you 01:39:00could do kind of online. MS: Gosh. Let's see. I think when I started to get into administrative positions. And that's when I really knew that I did want to stay in higher education. So to me, if I was going to stay in it, it could do nothing but benefit me. But what pushed me was my dad was sick. And I started the program before he died. And that's actually what kept me to finish it was it's a promise I made to him. So that's what kind of, so it was more, it was professional but yet it was a personal drive to do it. So, yeah. IL: It sounds like a really interesting dissertation you wrote, just from the title. MS: Thank you. Thank you. If you need help sleeping, you can read it one day. And I think that's what took me so long. If I were to go back and do it now, I would want to go back and do a program where the dissertation is embedded in the courses, so that you're doing it from the beginning. IL: I see. Right. MS: Because I did the traditional, you take all the courses, you do your comps, and then you start your dissertation. And for me, coming up with a topic was actually really, really challenging. And when you--do you have to write a dissertation in your program? IL: Mm hmm. MS: Have you started it? IL: No. I have ideas, but-- MS: But because of the amount of research that you do, and because of how life-consuming it is, it needs to be a topic that you're passionate about. And so I was very passionate about mentoring. I knew I wanted to, and my master's thesis was on mentoring. So I knew I wanted to do something about that. And it was a couple of things that made me choose the topic that I chose. One of the, I got to take students to Paris when I was at Roosevelt, and I see that's one of your questions. I got to take graduate students to Paris. And I was with a group of five African American women. And they let me be one of them for a week. I often had to say, "I'm white and I don't know what you're talking about." And they would have to explain the culture things that they were talking about. And I was fascinated at how one in particular said she wanted to go to a historically black college and university, and I don't remember which one and I wish that I did, and her mother talked her out of it. She said, "If you ever want to be successful in a white man's world, you need to go to a white man's school." And that just kind of stuck with me. And I asked her often, how did that make you feel? Because I can read about it, but I can't, as a white 01:42:00person I won't ever really relate to it. And then I met an African American female president of a community college in Illinois. And she was the most fascinating woman ever. And then I just started thinking okay, there's women. About half of the presidents in the Illinois community college system were women. But very few were minority women. So I just started looking at that. And I had to fight really hard to be able to do the topic, because my sample was so small. And so I expanded it to Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, the surrounding states of Illinois, because I was in Illinois at the time that I did it. And there were none. There were none. And I kept saying, that's why you have to let me do this study, because there are none. And I think one of the most interesting things, so I did an individualized case study with each of those women. They let me interview them. And they were just such amazing women. And of the women that I interviewed, only one is still in the same position. The rest have moved on to other places. They were, they all said, and it was about their mentoring relationships on their pathway to the presidency. But they all said that they had been discriminated more for being a woman than for their race. Which the first time, like the first woman that said that, I thought it was really interesting. And by the time the fourth woman said the exact same thing, I'm like oh, yeah, duh. It's still a man's world. It's a white man's world in higher education in many places. But for them, it wasn't that they were black or Hispanic. It was, I'm a woman, and nobody's listening to me because I'm a woman. So that always sticks with me. Yeah. IL: Interesting. I have thoughts on that. MS: Yeah. Yeah. IL: So now thinking about Roosevelt, so Roosevelt was your second different institution, really, in higher education. MS: Yeah. Third. IL: Third. Okay. MS: Yeah, third. Because I was at Columbia College. IL: Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. So I guess, and that kind of fits into my question, what was, as early in your career as you kind of moved between different institutions, what were maybe strategies you adapted to kind of learn new kind of university cultures and kind of find your place in these new places. Even, I guess, you're still within Illinois. MS: Yeah. Well, so, I 01:45:00was at McHenry County College. For three years, I ran the Columbia College nationwide campus in Crystal Lake. IL: Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Right. MS: Went back to MCC because I preferred a bigger campus environment. And then that position was eliminated in a reorganization. And so I was faced with, and so currently, you know, so that's the second time in my career that that has happened. But when you are faced with job elimination, you think of things differently. And for me, I needed to go outside of my safety McHenry County bubble. And so took a job at Roosevelt in Chicago, which was a commute. But it was a train ride commute. Luckily in Chicago in the suburbs, they have great transportation systems. It was a two-hour commute. But it was a train ride, and I made use of my time. And I will for the rest of my life be thankful for that experience to go to Roosevelt, especially to experience the diversity. McHenry County in Illinois is not a diverse area. I think they like to think they are, but they are not. Growing more so now. But Roosevelt, an urban institution, an urban campus, in the heart of Chicago, that was an amazing experience. Even the commute and the mile and a half walk from the train station to the campus every day, especially when it was really, really cold, you learned something about yourself. You learned what given any circumstances, what you're capable of doing. And I can do this. And that was an adjustment. I was not a city girl. I had to learn how to be safe in the city. I had to learn how to deal with lots of different students. And the amount of diversity was so vast that it just became a part of every single day life. And then we took it for granted. Because now I crave the diversity. I like that this office is in Madison because of that. Because the rest of Wisconsin is not very diverse. And not just in shapes and sizes and colors, but in the mindset, too, and in the inclusiveness and acceptance of that, which is different. And we had that at Roosevelt in the most wonderful way. And I got to learn a lot from the students, and how to deal with, how to not assume things about anybody. Not to assume that because a 01:48:00man talks about being married that he's married to a woman. Or that because a white woman talks about her husband that he's also white. You just don't assume any of that, and embrace all of it. So that diversity experience with Roosevelt was fantastic. And so how I got used to, how I always get used to the culture is to put myself on way too many committees, first of all. (IL laughs) I'm the committee queen. But that's how I get to experience areas outside of my work zone. So when I went to Roosevelt, I was in the College of Business. I was the assistant dean in the College of Business. I was advising business students. I was working with business faculty. But I was on all of the student services committees. And that was really how I kind of got into the job titles of students services was by working with those people. So even when I was at Columbia, I was responsible for all of the student services, but it was on a much smaller scale. So again, still had that student services mindset, always. But I appreciate the experience of working in a college within the institution. Because I got to see, it is different. When you're a faculty member, they have a different job. They have a different job and different responsibilities. And not every faculty member is good at, when it comes to administrative things, that's not what they were hired to do. And I think having that understanding in the student services side now, and looking at how can we make things easier for them. Yes, there are administrative tasks that come, you have to submit your grades, okay. Things like that. But how can we make things easier for them? And I think it's helpful to have seen it from their perspective. And you know, seen, and teaching classes, too. I've done that. I know it's not an easy thing to do. And those who can do it well, God bless them that we can, because we're better students for it. IL: Actually, that's what I was going to ask next, about your time teaching. So you've adjuncted a couple of times, it looks like at McHenry and at Roosevelt. MS: I did. I did. And I loved it. And I loved it and I loved that experience and that interaction with the students. So I taught the first year experience. You know, that was a buzz, a while back. And maybe it still is. But that was retention efforts that everybody created a first year experience school to help students acclimate to college. So I taught that. At Roosevelt, helped create it. Helped not create it, revive it. They had many 01:51:00versions. And kind of helped revive that. So also did that at Roosevelt. Team taught it. Team taught it with a professor. And that was a great experience for both of us. And I often had the professor say, you know, "Wow, I didn't know all these things about student services." Where we could say, "Wow, didn't know all these things about preparing for classes and pedagogy" and things like that. And organizational behavior. I taught that at Columbia. And Columbia courses, their nationwide campuses are very adult-oriented. And at the time they were eight-week classes. I think they've changed their model now. So they had five sessions a year, eight weeks at a time. And I taught that class on campus and online. I liked teaching online because I had students from all over the country. Because they have 34 campuses nationwide. So an online class will have students from Guantanamo Bay, and Washington, and Texas, and everywhere. I liked that experience. That was, teaching an online class is difficult. Not difficult. It takes more time. It's more time-consuming and need more thought process. But I liked that I had that experience. IL: That helped, I don't know how they do, does that help prepare for all the Skyping that you have to do now? Usually I guess these online classes aren't quite like-- MS: Yeah, no, they're not quite like that. You don't have to all be there at the same time. Asynchronous. It's, you know, you do discussion boards. I mean, you have a timeline. By this day at this time, you have to have posted this and this. And so you're responding to, you will pose a question and then students are responding to it. And then responding to each other. So it's not the same as in-person discussion. And online classes, I don't think, are for everybody. I do not think everybody automatically has the right disposition. Because they're harder. I mean, you have to read the book. You have to read the whole book. And you have to spend more time doing it. But for somebody, especially the military students. They really liked that they could do it on their timeline. And so I always had a lot of students that were on military bases that were taking online classes, because it worked better for their very busy schedule that they could not, you know, I can't go to class every Monday and Tuesday at two o'clock. But at two o'clock in the morning, I can log on and do this. So I liked that part of it. 01:54:00But, I think for students taking online courses, I think it's important to prepare them. To have that here's what the expectations are. Here's how it's different than a regular class. And don't expect it to be easier, expect it to be harder. So there's the technology piece, number one, because if a student, I see students try to take online classes on their phone. And that's not exactly the best way. It's a way to do it. But you know, for the engaged online courses that have videos embedded and have attachments and things, on the phone is not the best way. So you have to talk about the technology part of it, but then also the discipline part of it. You have to be disciplined. Because it sure is easy when you don't have to go to a class to blow it off. So I saw a lot of that. IL: So maybe since transitioning a little bit into your time at UW, were there specific maybe kind of insights that you picked up kind of along the way to Madison? Things like about your perspective on online teaching or administration that kind of coming to Madison you were hoping to kind of specifically implement, or that you had specific kind of goals as you were starting out here in UW Colleges? MS: Let's see. So when I was hired, I mean, I knew that there were enrollment issues. And my position oversaw enrollment and student affairs. And I was specifically told, it's enrollment and student affairs. But it's really kind of a 60/40, 60 percent on enrollment, 40 percent on student affairs. It was really more like 80/20. And thank goodness there were strong directors in the student affairs part. So I honestly, because it was so different, because there were campuses all over the state and the main central offices are not on a campus, I really didn't have any, it wasn't really expectations of I'm going to come in and make this better. It was, I'm going to come in and understand this. And they had just gone through regionalization, and I was told that. So it was really coming in and trying to learn a different culture very quickly. And get acclimated so that I could help things run smoothly. And the goal was increased enrollment. They had severe enrollment declines. So my goal was really get acclimated as quickly as possible, identify where there's gaps, and 01:57:00see how we can move things in a more positive direction. But I didn't come in thinking, I'm going to do this. It was really, and I won't ever do that in a new culture. Because you have to get used to that culture to see how things, to be able to do what I need to do. I can't just come in, guns blazing, we're going to do it all my way. Because I don't know that my way is the best way for this environment. I have to see what this environment is and then see how best to approach what to do. That's how I operate. Everybody doesn't operate that way. But that's how I have to do it.

IL: And so you kind of, so you mentioned a couple of times now the low enrollment is kind of a consistent topic that comes up with the UW college system. I guess I'm curious first just kind of what your impression is of the way these enrollment issues are discussed. Particularly, I think, amongst administrators. And kind of what the thinking tends to be on causes and maybe just the ways people kind of talk, the possible solutions and-- MS: So I think we've known for quite a few years now, and it has at least been acknowledged by administration that enrollment is a nationwide issue. Enrollment in higher education, whether it's a two-year or a four-year, or a public or a private, enrollment in higher education is an issue nationwide. And I can attest to this, having now interviewed all across the country for positions, enrollment is an issue everywhere. And I think when I came on at the end of 2016, I don't know that that was fully acknowledged in the state of Wisconsin. We were just starting to have those conversations. Yes, the colleges are having enrollment issues. But it's not just the colleges. It's not just Wisconsin. It's everybody. And you can attest that to a variety of things. In the state of Wisconsin, demographics were part of it. The high school enrollment was declining. You know, the age population in Wisconsin, over half the population, I think, is over the age of fifty. I mean, it's an aging population. There aren't as many high school age students. And we have way too many higher education institutions in the state of Wisconsin. So we're competing against each other. So I think it's a combination of there aren't as many high school students anymore. It's more so, to me, students are asking a lot better questions. Students 02:00:00are a lot smarter now. So are their parents. And it's not just an expectation, you graduate high school, you go to college. It's not that way anymore. And it's what's in this for me? What's the return on investment for this education? And if, in the state of Wisconsin, there are many of the rural areas where we have two-year campuses, where an education is not seen as value. What job is this going to get me? Having this much debt when I'm out of school, where's the guarantee that I'm going to get a job, and I'm going to be able to make this education mean something? And I think for a long time, the way higher education institutions operate hasn't changed in 150 years. And the students have massively changed. Technology has changed everything. How students learn has changed everything. But the value of that education, we haven't done a good enough job in keeping up with the demands of the consumer. And when you don't look at students as customers, that now becomes a problem. The for-profit institutions messed everything up, because they were able to run it like a business. And so you know, you go to any for-profit institution and just type in an inquiry, boom, right away there's a chat thing that pops up on your computer that says, "How can I answer your questions?" Somebody calls you within ten minutes. "Let's get you signed up." They're selling you their product. And that then became the norm. And when you're not treating students like customers, well, somebody else will. So it went from, I've had numerous faculty say to me over the last twenty years, "Students are not ready for college. These students coming in are not ready for college. Too many developmental courses, they're not ready for college." And now, as institutions, we have to say how do we get the college ready for the students today? And that is where the shift is coming. That's where the shift has to be. Because it's not how do we spend all this time making sure we have the students ready for college, which we can't. We can't. How do we as an institution make sure we're ready and operating the right way for the students of today? And I don't think Wisconsin has done that fast enough. So I think we've known for almost 15 years that the 02:03:00enrollments have been declining. That the demographic high school population has been declining. And really nothing's been done about it. And where the colleges, two-year campuses, really had, the drop off is when enrollment numbers started to decline across the state, and the four-year institution changed their admission standards to, I don't want to say they lowered them. I'm going to say they changed them, and were now accepting students that would have gone to the two-year school. Probably would have been better served by the two-year school. But that also had a huge impact on the enrollments of the colleges. So there's no, you know, and now everybody's looking for the magic bullet to fix enrollment issues. And it's not just one thing. It will never just be one thing. And so it's really a matter of looking at everything, everything. How we operate as an institution. And that includes courses. That includes how are faculty teaching. Where institutions have had, and there's tools. There's tools up the wazoo. The system just purchased the EAB navigator to help with retention issues. Which it has the potential to do that. But a tool is only as good as a tool when it's used properly and what it's meant to be used for, and when there's institutional acceptance for it. Otherwise, it's the treadmill in the corner gathering dust and holding the laundry. If you're purchasing a tool and you're expecting faculty to use this tool to help retain students, if you haven't engaged the faculty in that conversation, that's never going to happen. So it's not, aside from identifying the tool, identify the problem first and then see what tools are available to help you with your problem. And yes, we have retention issues. We have enrollment issues. But it's not just purchasing this that's going to make it better. It needs to be an institutional approach to how we deal with students. IL: Mm hmm. And this is somewhat related, then. I think in previous discussions you've mentioned how kind of the importance of grasping the differences between the two-year institutions and the four-year institutions. And I'm wondering if you could maybe say a little bit more about your thinking on that. And just now, even kind of the ways in which there are just different students that fit better into the two-year campuses, for example. MS: Sure. So you know, some of the differences with a two-year institution, 02:06:00smaller class sizes. Closer interaction with the faculty. Not being just a number. Individualized attention. And especially, especially with, and I say individualized attention, particularly from an advising standpoint. And that was almost essential because we were offering fewer classes because enrollments were going down. And so it was important for a student to have to work with an advisor to stay on track. For the advisor to be able to say, you need to take this class now, it won't be offered in the spring, in order to keep you on track. And so not being just a number, being an actual student and having that interaction with everybody on the campus. And aside from other reasons that students choose to go to a two-year school, cost. Cost is a huge reason. Students as consumers are being smarter. If I can get my general educations done in a two-year school and save tens of thousands of dollars, why would I not do that? Location is also a factor. And the open access, open admission. You know, there's a lot of students that come to the two-year school that they didn't do well in high school. And they can't get in. They don't meet Madison's pretty high admissions standards. But they want to go there. And so they can come to the two-year and get that more individualized attention. I think the two-years do way better with the developmental courses than some of the four-year schools. And that's a generalization. The four-year schools, many of them do an excellent job with the developmental math and with the English courses. There are others that will say, that's what the two-year's for, to help those students get to the level they need to be for their education. And so when I talk about the, it would have been nice for the four-years to have time to learn about that, that's part of it. That's part of learning more about the kind of student that comes to those institutions. And there's a lot of part-time students and commuter students and adult students. And the tactics used to recruit a traditional-aged student don't work for those students. So you know, just having the four-years have had the time to maybe learn a little bit more about that might 02:09:00have been helpful. And yet they have to be in a place to receive that information. And I'm not sure that more time would have made a difference with that. Maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn't have. Because we tried very hard to explain all along the way that the students are different. And the perception I often got from the four-years was that the students weren't as smart. They weren't as ready. And it was now a burden that they had to deal with these students. So that was kind of not fun to deal with. But they need to recognize that it's different, or enrollments will just continue to decline on those campuses. If they're choosing to keep them as access campuses and if they're going to repurpose them for the space, then good for them. IL: So, I think another kind of reference to our last interview, you talked about the regionalization efforts that had been undertaken a couple of years prior to your arrival. And you'd alluded to the fact kind of in part that this was starting to make sense within the system where people were starting to grasp it, at least. We can of course never know this, but was regionalization working? Could it really have helped solve some of these problems? In enrollment in particular, but even help balance the enrollment issues with the ability to allow the two-year institutions to kind of maintain some of their identity? MS: So I think there were parts of regionalization that were working. I think, I mean, they cut 5.2 million dollars from the budget. So from a budget standpoint, sure. On paper? Totally worked. In reality, they cut way too deep. Cut way too deep. And I think there were pieces of it that absolutely needed to happen. There were campuses that were overstaffed and shouldn't have been. So in that respect of kind of having some things that were centralized, having kind of a model of, we have this many staff when we have this much headcount, that kind of a thing, I do think that that was working. But how, the model that we were using was not sustainable. Having people be 50 percent campus administrator and 50 02:12:00percent regional associate dean, that was killing all of them. That was not a sustainable model. At least for student affairs, it wasn't. And we were looking at that. We were looking at how can we get them some additional help. How can we reinvest resources to make it work. Because it wasn't working. That was way too much. So I think there were pieces of it that were working. And I think that being able to look at, it is possible for a regional model to be successful. You don't have to have a director of accessibility services on every single campus in order to serve the students. So I think things like that that we were doing were working. Can work. With some, a bit more research and a bit more thought process into how it can work just a little bit better. But with regards to being resource-conscious and looking at things a little bit differently, I think there were parts of it that absolutely were working. Yeah. IL: Interesting. Were there, I guess without, maybe without too specifically, were there places where it seemed to be working better? MS: Well, and that depends on who you talk to. I think that bringing some of the services centrally, like the financial aid, which I think always was kind of central, but admissions and things like that. It worked for consistency. Because you had thirteen different campuses all running like a fiefdom. Doing things their own way. Much like the four-years now. (IL laughs) And having different standards on how they did things. There needs to be some consistency with that. If you're under one umbrella, there needs to be consistency with that. So bringing those things centrally so that every student being admitted, or every student going through an appeal process, every student going through those kind of things, there was consistency with that. That was working to the benefit of the student. It wasn't to some of the staff on the campuses who used to do it a certain way, which was the 02:15:00wrong way. So I think in bringing some consistency to those things, I think that was working with regards to better servicing the students. But I think there's, you know, it just says to me that there wasn't enough attention paid to how things were happening in the past if there was that much discrepancy, that much inconsistency, that much change in how things were happening. So to me, from an operational standpoint, that's something that needed to happen. So I think that was operationally working better. IL: So that, I guess, the kind of administrative diversity let's say just kind of across these different campuses I think kind of maybe speaks to just the challenge that the restructuring method ended up being. And you mentioned a little bit previously that more time would have maybe helped with some things. I'm curious your thoughts in terms of basically how much time you think was needed, or particularly your sense of what was driving the timing of these kind of phase one, phase two. MS: Gosh, Isaac, that's a great question. I don't have any idea what was driving the timeline. I don't. And I think Ray Cross is the only person that can genuinely answer that question. Because he put a timeline out there and we responded to it or had to deal with what that was. Given that institutions recruit a year to a year and a half out, I think taking that into consideration might have helped a little bit in alleviating some confusion for the students and having the appropriate campus be able to recruit in a timely fashion with the right marketing, with the right recruitment strategies. I think that might have helped. But it's impossible to say that. And I think that even, I don't know that there's enough time to realistically prepare for something like this. But having an entire recruitment cycle to have prepared might have helped. And then yet, had we not done it as quickly as we've done it, maybe it wouldn't have gone as well for some of the pieces as it had. I don't have any idea about that. But I do think that it's important post. So colleges will be done doing their services after 02:18:00this summer. It will be really important for the next year to assess how things are going still for that year. Because how is it all of them on their own for the first year without any colleges, anything? How is that happening? And so I don't think it's done in July of this year. I don't think it's done when colleges are done. I think there still needs to be another year of assessment. And then even more coming back to how is everything working, and that kind of thing. And I think it will be nice for the receiving institutions to have it themselves. I think they're looking forward to that, to be able to do things their way and have those branch campuses be, you know, now they have to think about them because they're the ones that are doing everything for those campuses. So I think that that's going to be welcoming for them. But it will be really important for there to be some kind of assessment over the next year, too. IL: To your knowledge, is there anything-- MS: I don't know. I don't know. Talk to the project management office. I hope so. I hope so. I think, they're smart people. I'm sure that they'll be looking to do an assessment for another year, at least. Yeah. IL: Regarding just kind of like the pace of the transition, were there ever moments I guess from the steering committee or people higher in administration that are involved in this process where there was pushback against the time limit? That we need more time or we need more resources? MS: I think everybody pushed back. I think everybody. I think in the beginning, I mean, not the steering committee, I think there was pushback to the steering committee. I think there were requests made by multiple administrations on multiple places, colleges and others, to say is there any, is there any way we could make this happen July first of 2019? Is there any way that--and I'm sure there are very valid reasons that perhaps had not been made aware. Or it could be the conversations they had with the Higher Learning Commission that said nope, let's do this now. So I'm sure that there are very good reasons why it happened the way that it did. But I do think, especially with regards to recruitment and the recruitment cycle, there was definitely pushback from all the admission directors to not have it happen so quickly. Because it was a matter of, you know, it's not just okay, we decide this and it 02:21:00happens. It's we have to recruit for them. We have to get our student information systems set up to receive those students. The EAP, the way everybody applies. I mean, the announcement came in October. And students had already applied their FAFSA for the next year to the appropriate institution. There was so many things. So would another year of planning have helped? Maybe. It's easy for me to say that now, after the fact. But I think if this were to ever happen again, that there should definitely be more planning time before there's implementation time. IL: Mm hmm. Where is the UW system today, from your perspective? MS: As far as what? IL: I guess, without being too leading, but in particular, I think, in reference to kind of your, the earlier part of our conversation where, in serving students. And assuming, I think, as I do, that that's the core mission of the UW system. How well is it succeeding at that? MS: Well, I think that depends on who you ask and what day you ask them. I think there are things to be hopeful about with the UW system. I think that this, I think that this restructure, I'm hoping that it has brought quite a few things to light about the system and how the system operates. Or lack of system operation. You know, it calls itself a system, but compared to some other systems, I'm not sure it operates as a "system." Again, air bunnies. But I think that this restructure project has brought some things to the surface that we'll be cognizant of moving forward. And enrollment issues, I mean, we know that that's happening. But getting down to why, and how system can help institutions with some of those needs, really looking at how institutions are operating, how they're functioning, where resources are going, I think had this 02:24:00restructure project not happened, I think the system would be in a worse place than it is now. And I have to believe that. I have to believe that this happened for some kind of reason. And I hope that reason is to genuinely benefit students and create opportunities for students. But I think in a bigger sense, I think the system is a little bit behind compared to other things that are, compared to how other institutions around the nation are addressing the needs of today. And I think they know they're a little bit behind and now they're desperately trying to catch up. So I think there's good things happening with regards to the restructure and looking at some more shared kind of service things and how they can operate better, smarter. Not harder, but smarter. And keeping, I hope, keeping the students at the forefront of decisions that are being made. And being smarter about why they are making the decisions that they're making. Identifying the need first before spending millions of dollars on something that we don't even know if it's going to work or not. So I think they're in a hopeful situation and a hopeful place. And there is some good leadership within system administration. You know, Rob Cramer, the vice president, and Karen Schmidt and Sean Nelson, I think they're all very smart, conscientious, student-centered people, Karen in particular, that will make it their responsibility and purpose in their job to make sure they're doing right by the students. And that's where it needs to be, by the students. It can't just be about money. It can't just be about the institution or the people that run the institution. Yes, that needs to be considered. But it has to be what are we doing for the students? Because without the students, there will be no institution. And the branch campuses are going to have a lot fewer students in the near future. IL: On that note of kind of it's not all about money, I think one of the things we haven't really addressed but is always in the background of these discussions about everything that is happening with the UW system is the budget and the cuts that continue to happen to the system. But on the other hand, you speak to the fact that this is a much more complicated problem. To what extent is this just an issue 02:27:00created by budget cuts? And what gets lost in the focus on just that? In what ways is it more complicated than that? MS: Gosh. Well, you know, having tuition freezes for a number of years, you know, that, yes that benefits the students. But as, if you're depending on that increase to function and if your costs keep going up and your resources keep going down, there does have to come a time where what are we going to do? But I think from, now I came into the colleges post-regionalization. I mean, they had just implemented it. So they had already made the decision. They had already done the work. Had the horrible conversations, made the decisions. But for me as a person coming in after the fact and looking at what happened, it felt, it felt very much to me like the majority of the decisions were 100 percent financial decisions and not no thought to functionality, no thought to the people. And I'm sure that there was thought of it. But when money, when the money, when money drives all other decisions, there needs to be a lot more thought process in what the decision means. So if it means we're going, and I think you have to look at other things. I have said a couple of times we have too many institutions in the state of Wisconsin. Nobody ever wants to see a campus close. And yet, where is the determining factor of the level a campus needs to be at in order to stay open? Where's that criteria? Where are those metrics? Because if that campus isn't meeting that, and yet we're still keeping it open forever, just to make people happy, how is that a good budget decision? So the politics, politics plays a part in everything. Everything. And it sure plays a part in higher education. So what, in the state of Wisconsin, I think, for sure. In every state. But at what point did some of the smaller campuses need to no longer function in 02:30:00order to save the rest of them as opposed to merging them all with a four-year campus? I still anticipate, if five years from now all of those branch campuses are still functioning, I will be pleasantly surprised. IL: This is changing gears a little bit, but it's maybe trying to connect this second half to the first part of our conversation. And you discuss this a little bit. But what, are there parts of your career, things that you learned along the way that you were particularly, experiences that proved particularly useful as you had to undertake this restructuring process? You mentioned you had gone through it before once. MS: So I did have a position, I did go through the experience of having a position eliminated before. And I will say, I don't want to say that was helpful, but it was, in understanding what that was like and the other side of it and the outcomes. I think for me in particular, having already experienced that, it helped me when I came into the colleges and had to deal with a lot of people whose positions were eliminated and they were doing something else. But it also helped with restructure with all of these people whose positions are being eliminated maybe again. And unless you have experienced that, you don't know what it's like. You can be empathetic. But you don't really know the emotions that go along with that. And it's a roller coaster of emotions. I mean, these people went through the grieving process. They're grieving the death of an institution. And there's anger and sadness and frustration and fear. And sometimes all in a day people are going through those emotions. And at some point, we have to be hopeful about something. I would try to, we would always focus on the students. We still have a responsibility to the students, and that's why we're here. And that's why every single person here. We're not here to get rich. We're here to help the students. And I think everybody genuinely believes that. So that's what kept everybody going. So I think having experienced that helped me to lead the people that were going through it, too. I don't know that there's really anything that could prepare you 02:33:00for restructure other than having gone through change at other institutions before, and having been on teams where there were huge projects. I think maybe that has helped. I don't know. And I'm sure it will help in the future when I have to go through other projects. I hope to not ever have to go through another restructure like this. But if I do, and for me now, anything that comes up now, we just deal with it. We don't panic. We don't freak out. Because of all the things that we've had to deal with on a daily basis already. It's just what's going to come up today. And we're able to deal with it. So that I will definitely take moving forward. Because whatever happens, we are able to figure it out to where it's the least impactful to the students. It's the least impactful to the employees. And we're just able to move forward. Yeah. IL: I hope restructuring like this isn't a general trend in higher education these days. But I am curious what your, looking ahead a little bit kind of, given kind of what you've gone through now, what you see as kind of I guess like how higher education is changing right now, and your sense of that. And this can be reflecting kind of on your career more broadly even as well, just kind of how higher education is changing. MS: I think that these restructures are actually more common in the country than anybody would know. Not like what we have done. I don't think there's anybody that's doing a one institution to seven. But the colleges were a bit different, also. But I have to tell you that as I was interviewing, I can't tell you how many consultants I would talk to. Because one of the questions they'd ask you is, why are you interested in this position? Why are you looking? And I would say my position is being eliminated due to a restructure in the state of Wisconsin. And how many people would say, "You're the third person that I've talked to who the reason someone's looking is because their position's being eliminated in a reorg." And so although it may not be a restructure the way the UW has done it, there are definitely 02:36:00institutions all over the country that are reorganizing how they're functioning because of budget cuts. And so where there used to be a vice president of enrollment and a vice president of student services, when one of them leaves, boom, they're putting those two areas together. Or they're putting it with academic affairs. Gosh, I met a person that got put in charge of student affairs. He was the athletic director. I mean, institutions are being very creative in how they're structuring themselves because of budgetary reasons. And I think that has the potential to be disastrous. I think if they're making those decisions based on budget alone, do you have the right people in the right places to do the right things for the students? And that may not always be the answer. It may be, in some cases. But I think institutions have to look at themselves as a whole and start being more preparing the institution for the students, as opposed to expecting students to be prepared for college. And it's an institutional conversation and collaboration. And if that's not where institutions are headed, then I think they'll just continue to have more restructures and reorganizations and schools closing and things like that. So it's an interesting time to be in higher ed. IL: Yeah. Seems very much so. Interesting time in general. This will be my last question. Whatever, take this however you interpret this. But what should the legacy of UW Colleges be? MS: Access, affordability and opportunity. We changed a million lives. We changed a million lives and created opportunities that wouldn't have been there for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of students in the state of Wisconsin. And I hope that it's remembered and that access mission lives somewhere within the UW. Because the tech schools will be the ones to capitalize on that. And there's nothing wrong with that. I personally would have liked to have seen some conversations about the two-years merging with the community, with the tech schools and making true community colleges. And maybe once upon a 02:39:00time that was a conversation. I don't know. But if you're talking about true opportunities for students, that would have been the way to go. So I hope that access mission stays. But that's what the colleges did and made, changed the lives of so many people when there weren't other places to do that in the state. IL: Is there anything else, I guess, you would like to kind of add that we have on the record? And if something comes to you later, we can always add this to the interview. We can talk over the phone and we can record it. But is there anything else that you'd like to add? MS: I think just that it's been very cathartic to go through this process. And I appreciate that it's being done. Don't take anything that I say too terribly seriously. (IL laughs) Know that this is coming from a place of trying to help in the future, but yet there's still a really deep wound from the experience that I hope someday in my life actually heals. And not, that doesn't come so much from me, but just from what I experienced with everybody. I know someday I will look back and be thankful for it. (voice getting very emotional) And I just hope that they learn from it and are able to not forget that there are students that are really impacted by all of this. And just don't forget that. IL: That's a great note to end on. Thank you for your time, Melissa. This was wonderful. I'm going to stop it here. Thanks again. End Second Interview Session, June 12, 2019: Digital File