Interview with Alberto Vargas

Troy Reeves 00:02

Okay, yes, Today is July 7 2021. This is an interview with Alberto Vargas. We are here in his office at 209. Ingraham Hall on UW Madison's campus. My name is Troy Reeves. And I'm with the University Archives. Alberto for sound quality purposes. Can we start by having you say your name and spell your last name?

Alberto Vargas 00:23

Yeah. My name is Alberto Vargas v as in victory a-r-g-a-s.

Troy Reeves 00:29

Great, perfect. So as I said, before we turned on the recorder. There's a list of questions that I gave you in advance. And I just want to start with the first one, it's kind of a broad question. And that's what brought you here to UW Madison.

Alberto Vargas 00:44

Right. So I started working as academic staff here on campus in 2005. But actually, my association with the university goes way back to 1989. When we came here, with my wife, we came to get our PhDs here. A professor in the geography department, Diana Lieberman, who we met in Mexico, she taught us about UW, my wife was interested in doing a PhD in geography. I've found great colleagues here in the Latin American Studies. Actually, that had a different name then but in the Institute for Environmental Studies, the land tenure center, that the forestry department, that's where I focus my studies to get my PhD. So I'm very familiar with UW from that and finished my degree in 1998. Then I work for nine years for the state of Wisconsin, for the Department of Administration, federal pass through program to work with the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior conservation issues. But during those nine years, I was also maintaining close contact with UW. I was an Honorary Fellow with the Institute for Environmental Studies and the Latin American Studies for for all those years. And I by by had, like a lot of colleagues here working in these issues of the with with the Great Lakes with a coastal program. So I've seen my coming to UW at least a long arc of, of different activities and whatever. That's academic staff since 2005.

Troy Reeves 02:55

Thank you for that. So the next question is, again, kind of broad, but it's it's 00:03:00what factors or factors lead to your, to your work interest, but also to your research interest, too. I'm interested in knowing how you, you know, got involved in the research that you did, too.

Alberto Vargas 03:11

Yeah, well, I am from Mexico, and I studied the general agricultural for my bachelor's, then I work in the highlands in Mexico, and then in the tropics to by, went to Texas a&m for a master's degree. And then work for about four years in Washington DC for international environmental organizations who are moving away from or expanding working from agriculture, more work on natural resource conservation, environmental issues. So that's sort of define my my general interest. And my, for my research, I really wanted to put together all these interests in science, in social issues, in economic issues. And I work in the Yucatan Peninsula, on a forestry project that is actually still functioning, it's still actually hard to harvest sustainably tropical forests. So that was my, my interest and that's what I what I focused my my research when I was here at UW after finishing the PhD, as I said, I moved to the postdoc program that apparently it might not have a lot of relation. But for me, it was just like people and resources in Mexico, and it was just like people and resources in Wisconsin and that was a great experience for me to get to know the states moving from international issues to locally choosing Wisconsin was a really great learning experience for me.

Troy Reeves 05:01

And then how did you become involved in the work that you did? How did you become, basically, how did you eventually get the job that you have now here?

Alberto Vargas 05:15

Yeah, that's a great question. As I said, I maintained contact with the university as this been an Honorary Fellow. But I was also a liaison with researchers at the University that were working in some projects with with federal funding, so I was working in that state agency that receive federal funds. So I had a lot of interaction with colleagues here at on campus. But for for my current job, I basically received a call from from a colleague, saying, we have two months to write a big proposal and the person who was working here left, and we wonder if you would be interested in applying. And when I applied, 00:06:00I did I mean, I did immediately because I know the program well, and for me, it was like, like a dream job, like going back to work in Latin America. And with all the training, practical training, we can say that I learned in the Department of Administration, be it prepare me really well to do what we actually had to do to start with this job to write a big federal proposal. So it was challenging, but we succeeded. And we've been receiving that federal grant for several cycles like a four year cycle. This is a program funded by the US Department of Education to basically support learning indigenous languages of Latin America, or what they call less commonly taught languages, some indigenous and also Portuguese, supporting students supporting research, outreach activities. So that's, that's pretty much how I got to got to work here, in the program.

Troy Reeves 07:22

Okay great, thank you. So the next question is, you know, when, when asked, how do you describe what you do?

Alberto Vargas 07:30

I, my job is mostly like three main components. The big one, I guess, is administration, writing these proposals, implementing the activities, submitting the reports, overseeing the budgets, making sure that the money is adequately allocated and reported, not only from these federal grants, but also from endowments that the program has, scholarships for students, outreach activities, so this is a big part of the administration part. And overseeing the office, it seems we're a very small office we're probably three or four people. And but supervising the staff, supervising the language instructors. The other part is teaching, I teach one or two courses per per semester. So some are pretty regular courses that I teach, for the Institute for Environmental Studies. That's what I got my degree from so I'm comfortable with that. And there's usually several students in my seminars that are interested in Latin America. So I sort of covered that, that part. And now I also teach some more general courses on Latin America, and our weekly lecture series, we turn it into a one 00:09:00credit seminar. So I am in charge of sort of doing the scheduling and sort of work with students to the additional activities related to that seminar. So that's the that's the outreach part. And the other I mean, that's the teaching part. And the other part is outreach and networking. That's something that I really enjoy doing is Yeah, basically working with any faculty or any student in any department that is interested in Latin America. So we support their research. We like bringing invited speakers with the film series serve, to, again to support students and faculty but also for the general public that are interested in, in Latin America sort of put out activities that might sort of increase or enhance the level of understanding of Latin America. So I really enjoyed that part, so we I work with colleagues in natural resources that is there, I mean, I was in the forestry department. So I know cows that are College of Agricultural and life sciences, the Health Sciences, all the social sciences and the humanities. So we have, depending on how you count, we can have like about 100 faculty that are affiliated with our program, and different levels of involvement and engagement. But that's a big part of my of my job to maintain that, that connection with with faculty, and also with other other Latin American Studies programs in in the nation, like the I, I was the president of the consortium of Latin American Studies program, sort of work with peer programs in in Latin America. So that's, that's another another component of of my, my work. So that's a long answer for what I do. But that's how that's how I envision it.

Troy Reeves 11:17

Well thank you for that. And so I'm going to ask this question directly, you sort of answered it in your three main components, but what are some of the things you do on a typical day?

Alberto Vargas 11:26

Yeah, there's there's very few like typical days, but they there is always changing. But there are some regularities like, again, the the days that I teach I I spend a lot of time sort of preparing and delivering the lectures and improving every, every semester, what I'm what I do, on Tuesdays, we have our lecture series. So that's something that we do at noon every week. So um, how to make sure that everything works. So that's, that's another another thing of, of a typical day, there is usually students that want to talk with us, because 00:12:00they're interested in the program, either undergrads, and we have undergrad advisor that works with them. I used to teach a course for undergraduates, that I enjoyed very much teaching that but I, I put it on hold when we had to write one of those proposals, and we had another faculty that took over that course, but I still do the teaching, sort of that part of my weekly day. And, yeah, there's usually something to be reported or prepared to be reported. So that's, that's another by another part of, of my my typical days and, and we have our staff meetings, of course, are working with our, with our hourly students. The way our center is structured, we have a Faculty Director that rotates every three years. And I work with the director when they come. And we also have the, as I mentioned, these undergrad advisor is actually her full title, this academic services and programming manager who's been working for many years, and student hourly. So we have our staff meeting, making sure that everybody is prepared to do what we have to do that week. And then depending on the demands, there might be some weeks that we do a little more of some of the other the other things so that's usually what what a typical day is

Troy Reeves 14:03

okay. I'd like there's a couple questions, more questions about that. So what sort of tasks to your student hourlies do?

Alberto Vargas 14:14

They usually focus on the social media, like, like, learning what activities are in different units on campus related to Latin America, and we put that in a weekly, like, newsletter or email that that we send every week sort of to let people know about what we have coming that week or the next few weeks. That's usually what what our student hourly does, or sometimes like specific projects, like organizing some of her visual materials or have like special reports that 00:15:00we have to prepare? Yeah, usually issues related to, to outreach and yeah

Troy Reeves 15:10

Okay. Could you talk more about the the lecture series, like how it got started? And what types of lectures or presentations someone might see over the course of a year?

Alberto Vargas 15:22

Yes, yes, that's, that's actually something that it was already in existence when I, when I came to the program, it was, like, I saw the other area studies here, just across the hall, we have a room set up for that. So we we, each one has like one hour every week to have a have an invited speaker, or it could be from anywhere. Some of that we invite specifically to come to campus to to give a talk or professors or students that are sort of in advanced levels of their study that they want to share their their research. So it's, it's, it's very diverse and different topics and students are enrolled in the program like it. And we have a good audience also have members from the community that some of them are regular that they come, they come to our series. And we cover like a great variety of topics. Like, again, some somebody from a country in Latin America who's working in a specific issue, they present what they do our or political issue that is happening at that moment. We try to invite somebody to sort of present their view on what is happening, we were very open to receive, like, many, like diverse perspectives, like anybody who wants to put some thing forward, they're welcome. And they stimulate debate and discussion. So that's, that's, that's what our what our lecture series consists of. And we record them from when we turn to virtual, because of COVID, then we did all the programming in, in, in, in zoom. So we'll probably get to that later. But

Troy Reeves 17:32

and actually, you know, I think we can probably talk about that right now. First, I'll ask a general question about technology. And that's, you know, I know, you've been here, you know, 15-16 years now. It's a long period of time for changes in technology. So I'm wondering how, or if even the changes in technology has affected the way you've worked?

Alberto Vargas 17:55

Yes, yes. And we've tried to stay current and adapt as we, as we go. Well, the I 00:18:00remember, just the first years when I got into the program, to use, like, common drive in a server to have all our documents there, rather than sending documents back and forth by email, or printing them or just like, like having that that's a problem in itself, because some of those drives can get out of hand, but we try to use them judiciously. We we have film festival that we use and having digital copies of some of the of the films in production, it also is something new that we that we are that we're using. The well, of course, now more and more recently, just the virtual environment to for teaching and for lectures, it's been it's been major. So it was a big adjustment that we'll have to, we'll have to do. But it we discovered it has some advantages, like we increase substantially your audience, because we have more people just connecting rather than having to come here. And I think we're right now I think we're gearing towards to some hybrid model that we have the room set up, we hope to have in person lectures that could be streamed. So that's another another change.

Troy Reeves 19:55

So, so you mentioned COVID in the previous answer, and I think since one of the changes in technology rapidly occurred because of COVID, I think I would like to ask you just a general question about how COVID how this global pandemic has affected your work over the last 16-17 months?

Alberto Vargas 20:16

yeah, we made it work and it was, again, just hit the ground running. We were in the middle of the semester, we had to finish our courses. And we had to have our lectures continue in a virtual format, our staff meetings, make them virtual. It, it was, it was a big, a big adjustment, that I think we made it, we made it work. Well, the, again, as I said, it has some advantages, but it has some 00:21:00limitations is different, definitely not the same as having in person staff meetings that sort of run. After several weeks of doing that in zoom with it. And some administrative tasks that were very efficient before just going down the hall or to the third floor, talk to the person and solve it in 10-15 minutes. Now, it's like sending an email hoping that the person is reading emails, some of many other emails that they're getting, and then waiting for a response. Administrative leave was sort of awkward to, to get some things that before were really easily resolved. Now we had to send some of the documents had to scan the document had to send it had to do all that all those things that, that we just had to learn how to how to make it, how to make it work.

Troy Reeves 22:08

Thank you. So now I'm gonna ask some specific questions about being academic staff. And the first one is, were you involved in any academic staff governance or groups?

Alberto Vargas 22:21

I recently recently, well from since I started I was interested like in the in the teaching Institute, the academic institute that they had, I tried to attend as much as possible to the programs that they put together. But more recently, I became more more involved. Now, I was a mentor last last year, that it was very, very rewarding. Right now I'm in, in a committee of the social sciences, and humanities area review committee for next year. I'm also on the Equity and Diversity Committee of the International division. So I try to respond to all the invitations that I get, I get through that, again, some of them are more general. But I tried to get involved with that.

Troy Reeves 23:28

What do you feel that you, when you become involved in these things? What do you feel like you're able to give? And then what also do you do you get or do you learn from being involved in things like this?

Alberto Vargas 23:39

Yeah having been at a university for years, it gives you certain perspective that you can sort of pass on to people that are that are new, I'm talking specifically about the mentorship. I always learn by talking with anybody in 00:24:00campus, other academic staff, colleagues that are in other in other units, be there at personal level, or just like, like, for some joint projects that we have, I always always learn, learn about that. So it's, it's it's a two way learning and giving the yeah, try to put things into perspective, trying to give some maybe historical context of how things work for some units and that so um, that's, that's what I could do and I could tell it is very, very rewarding for me to do that kind of activities.

Troy Reeves 24:49

Thank you. So the next question is also related to academic staff and that's, you know, has job or your time here, have you thought or reflected about the relationship between faculty and staff? And if you have, what are your thoughts about that relationship?

Alberto Vargas 25:07

Yes, as I mentioned before, my job involves having contact with faculty, because of the structure of the program. I mean, we have Faculty Director that changes every three years. And we have 100 affiliated faculty that work with us. So I'm, I'm in constant contact with, with with faculty that and and well, as a matter of fact, part of our mission is to support faculty, through our endowments, that that we have, for example, one of our endowments, comes from major foundation, the Thinker Foundation. And that's an endowment given to five universities in the US to bring scholars from Latin America, one or two scholars from Latin America per year, to teach a course, and to do the research for that, I have to work with faculty, because faculty had to nominate one of these visiting professors. So we go through the process of nomination, and then we have, we have committees we have that oversee the endowments that we have. So I work a lot with faculty, and these, I enjoyed tremendously working with, with faculty and seeing the variety of the areas that that they cover that so I'm but also been able to teach in a way sort of, your considered part of the faculty in a way. But I, I, I know that structure is quite different not having to deal with 00:27:00with a tenure situation, that's different, I understand that from from that perspective, but I am, I'm very, very comfortable, I'm very pleased with by the relationship between with with faculty, my, I think it's, Wisconsin itself is a great place. That opens a lot of room for that type of collaboration.

Troy Reeves 27:37

So, you mentioned earlier, you just talked about the, the good relationship you've had with faculty, and you talked about that, sometimes it's up to 100 faculty that interact with this center, because of the work that they do relate to the work that your center is promoting. So, what do you think you offer faculty in these interactions?

Alberto Vargas 28:05

I, I mean, I could I could answer at different levels. One one is that I, I often participate in committees, graduate committees, both at the masters and at PhD. levels. So I tend to work with the faculty and with the students. And because I am in these, sort of in between area and I was student here also, I can provide that that perspective, to the to the to the committees. We are very open for any suggestion from faculty of initiatives that they that they have, like some of them want to publish a book or invite a speaker or get a guest lecturer for their class or convene conference. Sometimes we provide, like logistical support for that type of initiatives from faculty. So that's something that that, that we do here as a pro, I consider that part of our part of our mission to support the faculty in that in that regard. Exploring venues or new ideas and sometimes we know of faults or issues should that could be of benefit to the faculty and then we'd sort of make that bridge that connection. I guess that's, that's what I what I could say that I contribute to these relations with faculty.

Troy Reeves 29:53

Okay, great, thank you. So now I want to talk about the reason why we're here is there's an academic staff award winners oral history project. Last year, you won 00:30:00the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in service to the university. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, you know, winning that award from, you know, when you first heard about it, and through the ceremony itself?

Alberto Vargas 30:16

yeah, for me it was was very rewarding, very pleasing to be nominated and to receive the award. I, I knew that I was nominated because my director talked to me. She said, well, we're thinking of thinking of nominating you for an award. The first thing I said is, no, I think we should nominate our academic services or programming manager, some other academic staff that we have in our office, I think we should nominate her. And she said, no, no, I already talked to that person. And we said that we're going to nominate you. But I guess you never know, who or I was not expecting that I was going to be selected, but it was it was, for me, it was very rewarding, it was great, especially for this type of award for service, because that's exactly what I sense and I see my role here of service. So to be recognized for that, it was really, really satisfying, really great. And it also put into perspective, what I've been doing since I was student, but also when I work for the state government. Part of my work was also to be of service to the university, because that was sort of how I saw my my function to be like, in between, like, like, connecting this policy work with research work, supporting students that were doing research, so I did that. So I, I, I consider that that it was part of the service. And, but, and coming here to the program, and we have basically sort of maintain these, these programs to serve students, faculty, and the general public. It was really, really great to be to be recognized it was, that was a big honor for me to, to, to receive that award. And the ceremony was very meaningful with Chancellor Blank, in sort of just like, I've never read the nominating packet, I don't know the letters to that. But I, I, I know, that some folks that I respect a lot they, they wrote letters, like the the Dean of the Institute for Environmental Studies that I that I work with quite a bit. He was really, really great to, to see that he wrote a letter for me, and on my behalf, and also colleague in the College of 00:33:00the Menominee nation that in the previous two cycles of these federal grant, these federal grants, sometimes they have like what they call competitive priorities, things that you you do, if you propose activities, in that with that priority, you will increase your chances of getting that. And in the past two cycles, and each cycle is four years. Those one included, like work with minority serving institutions. So with Wisconsin the minority serving institutions in Wisconsin, one of them is the College of of the Menominee Nation. And I just happened to have some contacts there. Because one of my seminars, I had one student who was working with the college. I, I, I, I, I visited the college. So but when the time came to write the proposal, it was like natural for me to take the lead of all the areas studies programs to establish these connection with the College of the Menominee nation. And the President of the of the college now wrote a letter on my behalf, also that I, that I was very honored that that he did. So it again, I'm just seeing snippets of some of the things that I do that somehow ended up in a packet that the committee saw that it was worth giving me their word. So that's how I yeah,

Troy Reeves 34:47

I wanted to ask you about that work with the College of the Menominee. Because in the the website that lists all the winners, you know, it said about you, you know, it said, that's the center, that's the center is always invested in justice equality and human welfare. And one of the quotes was, these are Alberto's values, and they became the foundation of our center's excellence. So I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about, it's kind of like looking sort of back and forward about your interest and the center's interest in justice, equity, diversity, inclusivity, and things like that?

Alberto Vargas 35:25

Yes, well, we try to foster understanding among students all the way from the undergrad level, the graduate level, to a region that is very complex, very diverse, diverse, with a lot of challenges and problems. And also that, that the relation between Latin America, and the United States is also loaded 00:36:00historically in there. So some issues, domestic issues that had to do with that long history. So doing everything we can to provide accurate information, broad context, historical analyses, so people are better equipped to interpret what they read in the news. And the way they sort of go about what to how to respond to these issues of equity, diversity, social justice, is, is very important. And it's not, is not easy to do, because you got just like, there are some misinformation or things that are inertia of legacies that are just there that require, like, like, some clarification on that. So that's, that's sort of what we try to we try to do, we have a very good working relations with the Chicano Studies program here. That, in a way, there is like a gray area that we share. But the like, you know, the way, these centers were defined historically, as we work south of the border, and they work sort of domestically. But again, these distinctions are getting a little more blurred and and sort of intertwined. So those are some of the things that we're seeing that require some collaborative work on that.

Troy Reeves 38:02

It also sounds like there's sometimes collaborative work and maybe not direct, collaborative work with some of the other centers on this floor. Do you ,why do you feel it's important to to not only connect, you know, maybe with CHICANX/LATINX Studies, which does have kind of this blurry, but some of these other centers that geographically don't really have a link with with what your what your geography is?

Alberto Vargas 38:28

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a great question. And we work together quite well. I mean, the eight centers that that are here in the, in the international division, depending on what is happening, sometimes we work closer with other other centers. Like, years ago, for example, that was the interest in the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, and China. So, so we had like, advanced lecture series 00:39:00that sort of follow these, these countries have, and it's still going, it's still going. So the, for example, right now, we we are doing some collaborative work with the Center for East Asian Studies, particularly because of the importance of China and Korea, in Latin America. Some investments that so we tried to, to, to cover that, that part. This work that we're doing with the College of the Menominee nation, we as a as a group, so we we would like we visited the college at the time that there was a delegation from Southeast Asian scholars here on campus. So we went to the college and we presented what we were doing in in in unified way. Right now we are sharing a project to respond to the needs of the Coalition Menominee Nation to enrich their library collection. So we are, like, that's all the area studies we're sort of responding to their requests, like, what would be the most important book or materials that you would like to have in your library that explains that particular region. So that's some of the some of the things that we that we do. And we, we get together periodically. And of course, when when there is a time for proposal writing, we were even though we compete with each other in a way, we see that as, as a way that that is that is better to work work together. And and the same. I mean, Madison is one of the universities in the US with the highest number of areas Study Center. So that that reflects, in a way, the way we work.

Troy Reeves 41:07

Was that affected in the last 16 months with the global pandemic? The collaboration with other centers?

Alberto Vargas 41:13

No, not major. I think it's just like change the format but the collaboration continues.

Troy Reeves 41:19

Okay. There's one more thing I want to ask, before I see if there's anything you want to say. And I just found out about this as I was doing research, and that's that you had a role in launching the Mexico chapter of the Alumni Association. I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about that.

Alberto Vargas 41:37

Yeah, yeah, of course, that that's one of the maintaining relations with with alumni who come to campus and they return to their countries. The Wisconsin Alumni Association, of course, is very active on that. And I, I participated in 00:42:00the launching, also the Chilean chapter of students from from Chile, that they're very, very, very active. So the idea came, like, why don't we try to promote the creation of a chapter in in Mexico. And being from Mexico and alumni. I mean, it's something that I that I wanted to do so, well, we had a couple of trips and talking with developing a list of who are the alumni, sort of gearing some interest among the alumni to participate in this in this this group. We have chat, Whatsapp chat that has quite a bit of traffic, I mean, not a lot, but it like, like weekly, several people can comment on that. One of our, we can say distinguisehd alumni, Professor Carlos M. Urzúa from received his degree here in in economics. He's coming next semester now in fall of 2021 to teach a course, a graduate course for the lafollette Public Policy Program. He, he was the keynote speaker in the lauching of the Mexico chapter of the the Alumni Association, because he was the Secretary of the Treasury for Mexico. At that time, he was, so people were really interested in in hearing what he had to say. And we're happy to maintain that that connection with the with the students we have, we have great, we have alumni from UW that are doing wonderful things. We have a very close connection with the University of Guadalajara with several programs that are ongoing and we have one of our alumni from Mexico who is also like, affiliated faculty teaching courses for wildlife and ecology. So we try to follow interesting things that are happening in the in the region. So that's all, so that that was with with the Mexico chapter. We started some conversations with Colombia to set up