Interview with Steve Wildeck

LEH: All right. So, this is Lena Evers-Hillstrom. I'm here with Steve Wildeck for the UW System restructuring project. Today is May twentieth. All right, Steve, could you say your name and then spell out your last name?

SW: Sure. I'm Steve Wildeck. That's W-i-l-d-e-c-k.

LEH: All right. So it looks like the mic levels are good. So why don't we get started with just the first question. So what brought you to the UW Colleges and Extension?

SW: I came to UW Colleges in 1993 as the campus business manager. I responded to a newspaper ad. I was working for Andersen Consulting in their Chicago office at the time. And had worked for UW Madison in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s. I never quite left higher education in my heart and wanted to return. So that's what brought me back to UW Colleges. I worked at the Rock County campus for seven years as the business manager, and then came to Madison as the interim vice chancellor for administration and finance for UW Colleges. Became permanent several months later. And then in 2007, with the integration of UW Colleges and UW Extension, became the vice chancellor for administration and finance for both institutions. And as far as I'm aware, that was the first time that any senior officer of an institution formally was asked to lead two institutions, other than the chancellor of UW Colleges and UW Extension and actually the chancellor became an integrated position the year before. That's what brought me to UW Colleges and UW Extension.

LEH: All right. So I guess after that, how long did you hold your position before, well, I guess that's sort of answered by the first question. I guess sort of how did your position sort of change as restructuring started?

SW: So it was in my eighteenth year as a chief business officer and a vice chancellor when the restructuring process was announced. At that time 00:03:00I'd say two things happened. Some things were business as usual, because the work of the Colleges' campuses and the Extension Division certainly needed to continue and that needed to continue without disruption.

The other thing, though, that happened when that was announced pretty profoundly is that the strategic vision that we were following to lead the two institutions in many ways just came to a screeching halt. The sunsetting of those two entities as institutions was made very clear with the formal transition date of July first of 2018. And so all of a sudden your runway and your field of vision becomes very short. And so you're no longer putting together strategic plans, you're no longer putting together long-range goals, because the future of those entities now belongs to someone else. And your job is to continue to manage day to day and collaborate in the transition and the handoff of those futures to another party. In this case, other institutions.

LEH: Hmm. Yeah. I'm curious, I guess, did you see, so I guess this is sort of like a before restructuring even question. But in terms of like those long-range goals, did you see any changes at all after regionalization?

SW: After regionalization, the year and a half before?

LEH: Yeah.

SW: Within the UW Colleges.

LEH: Yeah.

SW: In early 2016, the UW Colleges was administratively reorganized by us, by the chancellor, to accommodate some pretty substantial state funding cuts in the 2015-2017 biennial state budget. The question is, had it, did that regionalization and centralization project create any changes in the strategic approach, strategic vision, for UW Colleges as an institution? And I would say not. Because the strategic future, the strategic plans of an institution, are based overwhelmingly in program. Academic program, outreach 00:06:00programming, and so on. And the restructuring in 2016 was mainly about administrative support. Now even though student services and advising and services that are very central to students was part of the administrative restructuring, the goals were the same: to strongly and adequately counsel students and guide them on their way to their academic goals. And the administrative restructuring was all about reducing the cost of things that are not central to mission, so that we can invest those resources in the classroom and in the services that are directly supporting students. So I would say that with the regionalization and centralization project in the UW Colleges did not alter course from our strategic plans and our strategic goals. If anything, it bolstered them.

LEH: Hmm. Could you expand on that? Like in what ways did it bolster those goals?

SW: Well, when you take five million dollars out of the funding abruptly of an institution whose base resources for its core program is only about sixty million dollars, that's an enormous chunk of funding all at once. So the goal in that case is to not affect your core mission. And in the UW Colleges, it's all about delivery of instruction to freshmen and sophomore primarily in their academic program. So as an administrator and as the chief administrator of the institution, my goal was to take that budget cut and reduce cost everywhere else in the institution other than what affects its core mission and instruction. So even though the result of that was the full or partial elimination of 20% of the administrative positions in the institution, we had 110 positions that were fully or partially eliminated out of an administrative workforce of less than five hundred. Even though we did all of that reduction elsewhere in, 00:09:00outside of instruction, we didn't cut a single course section. We didn't take a single course out of the classroom by virtue of that state budget cut. That's a real commitment to the mission of the institution.

LEH: Yeah. So I guess with restructuring, could you expand on how that changed?

SW: Well, what restructuring did was it dissolved UW Colleges and UW Extension as institutions. It's not a perfect comparison. I put it in the form of a holding company in the corporate sector. But UW Colleges had thirteen campuses which executed on the mission. And the institution itself was responsible for the planning and the administration of those activities. The central office is kind of the nucleus of the running of the institution as a single entity. The same comparison could be made with UW Extension with its four programming divisions. There also is a central office that coordinated the activities of those divisions and served as the administrative support function to the entire institution.

The restructuring really in itself, what it did was it removed the institutional office and assigned the component parts of each institution elsewhere. So the UW Colleges campuses were then assigned to seven different, seven different four-year universities around the state. UW Extension divisions were assigned to both UW Madison and the UW System administration. So the central offices were then dissolved. And those responsibilities were picked up by other institutions. So while the UW Colleges campuses had a single vision for the future and a single mission and a single strategic plan forward, each of those campuses now became part of another institution. So the single focus, those thirteen campuses, became seven different directions once those campuses were 00:12:00assigned out. And the same comparison could be made with UW Extension.

LEH: Hmm. Yeah. It's interesting because like looking at some of the materials, I see this like emphasis on trying to like retain that vision, even as branch campuses. So, hmm. Yeah, I guess from your perspective, how, what were sort of like the business-related components of that, and the goals from your end?

SW: Well, are you asking what the goals were of restructuring?

LEH: I was thinking more of the goals of like the teams that you were involved with. But, yeah. It's up to you. Yeah.

SW: Well, I wasn't a part of any teams, per se. Restructuring was announced by the president on October 11 of 2017. There had been no public discussion prior to that. There had been no discussion that the leadership of Colleges and Extension were a part of prior to that. So it was largely viewed by those involved as a project without a plan. The planning for restructuring came about after it was announced and after it was acted upon by the board of regents. And it began by the formation of a steering committee that had representatives from all of the receiving institutions, those other institutions that were going to be receiving the Colleges' campuses and the Extension divisions. And it also included some officials from Colleges and Extension themselves. I served as a member on that steering committee. The steering committee identified very broadly the major clusters of work that needed to be done. So there was a financial aid group, for example, that worked on financial aid 00:15:00issues. There were curriculum groups that worked on issues around the academic program. There was a student affairs group that dealt with student affairs issues. I was not a member of any of those committees, but I did serve on the oversight committee, which was the steering committee.

The steering committee met for oh my gosh, I want to say well over a year. Although I didn't track all of those individual meetings. And there would be report outs by the individual committees that were meeting. And they would raise issues, raise high-risk issues. And were generally responsible for the resolution of those issues and recommending solutions to the steering committee.

LEH: So going back to what you were saying about the rollout of restructuring, would you sort of talk more about how you found out about restructuring?

SW: How did I find out about restructuring? I attended a regent meeting at UW-Stout on October fifth of 2017. And upon arriving at the regent meeting, I was approached by multiple colleagues of mine, other chief business officers, who asked me if I had heard anything about reorganization discussions that were taking place. And the elimination, if you will, of UW Colleges and UW Extension as institutions. I had not heard anything at that point. I quickly interacted with the chancellor and the provost. The two provosts at the time, one for UW Colleges and one for UW Extension, who also had not heard anything formally.

There were many people throughout the course of the day who approached me and asked how I was doing. When I said, "I don't know what you mean. I'm doing fine," they also alluded to things they had heard about imminent action that would be taken to eliminate UW Colleges and UW Extension as institutions and assigning their parts to other institutions.

I decided to leave the regent meeting after the Thursday meeting was over. And we were, we, the leadership of UW Colleges and UW Extension, the two 00:18:00provosts and the chancellor and I were called to the president's office the following Tuesday on October tenth we were called there at eight o'clock in the morning. And were told by the president that he had made the decision to reorganize the system. And he had made the decision to eliminate UW Colleges and UW Extension as institutions. And he provided us with a map of how those campuses and divisions would be reassigned throughout the system. And that's how I found out about restructuring.

LEH: I don't want to sound like a therapist here, so I hope this question doesn't sound, I don't mean it to sound patronizing at all, but how did that--

SW: Oh, don't worry about it. No, just ask questions.

LEH: Okay, yeah. (laughs) I was just going to say, how did that make you feel? Yeah.

SW: We had absolutely no formal information that came forward prior to that October tenth meeting at eight o'clock. And so as leaders of the institution, we found out at that time that this had been discussed with certainly all of the chancellors involved, the other chancellors involved. Clearly they had discussed it with their leadership teams, because, and that explained the people coming up to me and my Colleges and Extension colleagues several days earlier at the regent meeting, saying, "Gee, do you know about this?"

In all candor, we felt very blindsided and unprepared and, frankly, disrespected when we found out that the future of our institutions had been determined. We had nothing to say about it other than we pledged our cooperation at that moment. We pledged our cooperation to make this transition a success. And we would do everything we could to make sure that the campuses,' the programming divisions of Extension and all of the participants and students get those programs were well cared for and did not experience disruption in their experience with the UW.

And I should add that the public announcement followed about 00:21:00twenty-four hours later, on October eleventh. We met in the president's office on the tenth. I don't know if I had that date right. And the public announcement by the president through a press release went out at about ten o'clock in the morning on October eleventh, 2017.

LEH: Hmm. Yeah. Because I know there was also, there was a newspaper article about it before it was formally announced. Yeah. So I guess, could you expand on sort of those, that early decision making process? And like decisions coming down from System, sort of the conversations you were having with people about those? Your reactions to those. Yeah.

SW: You mean the conversations before we formally met with the president or after?

LEH: I was thinking after. But either one, or both. Yeah.

SW: I'd say that once we were formally informed on October tenth that restructuring would be presented to the board and that it would move forward, as I said, we pledged our full support and cooperation. And the first step that was taken was by the chancellor at that time, Cathy Sandeen, issued a formal communication to the UW Colleges and UW Extension employees communicating what would take place. There was, as far as I can recall, there was no negativity in that whatsoever. So I'd say that the chancellor and her team of vice chancellors put a very forward-looking face on this despite our personal feelings of not being involved in this decision. And we moved ahead pretty confidently in communicating out with our campus leaders, our divisional leaders and, I hope, and recall, that we led by example on that. We scheduled a series of video conference meetings with each of the receiving institutions to give a, I think it was an hour and a half or two-hour basic history lesson on UW 00:24:00Colleges and UW Extension. So those campuses, such as Eau Claire and Oshkosh and others that were receiving Colleges campuses, we gave a complete background presentation on the history, the finances, the academic programs, the student support structures, facilities planning and so on to those receiving institutions. And it served as only the beginning of a series of knowledge transfer activities to follow.

I specifically was involved in a system-wide facilities planning conference that took place. In fact, it was at UW Fond du Lac, one of our campuses at that time. And we spent an entire day conveying to the facilities planners and the physical plant directors of those receiving institutions how we planned for facilities in the UW Colleges, their relationship with counties and cities, and all other aspects of our capital planning program and construction program in the UW Colleges, which is unlike anything that the four-year campuses had been involved with. Because remember that the Colleges campuses buildings and grounds are owned by local governments. No other four-year institution has that experience. They're all owned by the state. So they had to learn a very, very different way of managing and planning for those facilities.

LEH: Could you expand on that? Like where were some of the like questions that people had about that? How is that process when the counties or cities are involved different from what those universities were used to?

SW: Sure. I'll just give one really solid example. In the state building program, the capital budget for facilities, here is the process for the operating budget to pay people and support the state's programs. Every two years, the legislature and the governor pass a budget. It happens in the odd years. And the capital budget gets approved at pretty much the same time. So for a four-year campus that's UW Platteville or UW Whitewater or UW Madison, they have to prescribe to the state building program process. And sometimes those building projects take many years to come to fruition. It can very 00:27:00easily take ten years for a project to move through, the process ultimately be approved in the state budget.

The UW Colleges campuses are all owned by local governments. In most cases, they're owned by a single county. In three cases, there is a county and a city. Yes, three cases, there's a county and a city that partner to own a campus. And in one case, two counties partner to own a campus. The processes for renovations, additions, etcetera through local governments is very, very different. First of all, they work on annual budget process, not a biennial one. They still have capital budgets and operating budgets. But it's all about educating county board supervisors, city council members, because eventually you need their votes when they pass a budget late in the calendar year. And you have to build those relationships at the local level.

So now these four-year campuses that are partnered with two-year campuses, they have to know the state process and have all of those relationships. But now they also have to have all of the local government relationships in order to take care of those two-year campuses, too.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's really interesting to think about.

SW: Sure.

LEH: So I guess that kind of relates to questions of like these relationships, these local relationships, with the colleges and like, I don't know. I don't know where I'm really going with that. I guess like the structure of the former Colleges versus this transition. What were some of the things that you found were easiest or more difficult in that transition from central operations to branch campuses?

SW: I'd say that it was, the transition to the new model. Is that 00:30:00what you're asking about? The transition from the Colleges, from the single institution to the campuses as branch campuses of the four-year institutions?

LEH: Yeah.

SW: You're asking about that transition?

LEH: Mm hmm.

SW: I would say that this was probably a bit more difficult than it needed to be. Because, remember, there was no deep plan that was being followed. The announcement was made late in 2017. And that is when planning began. Planning did not begin to assess the feasibility of restructuring, or the benefits, the likelihood of achieving those benefits. There was very, very little data that led to this decision, other than the overall decline in college-bound student populations in the state. And the planning was all put together after the announcement was made, with a deadline of completing the transition or the--I'm sorry, let me get that right. The transition being effective on July first of 2018. That is about seven months, less than seven months. About seven months. From the date of the announcement to the effectiveness of the responsibility for that change.

To say that that's lightning speed in the public sector is a gross understatement. Especially when there was no plan existing to do it. So a lot of smart people had to figure this out. And July first of 2018 was simply when authority transitioned. So July first of 2018 is when the chancellors of the four-year institutions took the reins of authority for the people and the programs for the campuses and the programs that were being transferred to them.

The completion of the administrative part of the transition, the finances, the facilities, the technology, the student records, that all continued well through the 2018-2019 fiscal year. And some of those things today, as we sit here on May twentieth of 2020, still are not fully transitioned. There are some technology aspects that still are not fully transitioned. But student records 00:33:00took another entire year to fully transition. Facilities transitioned pretty quickly. Finances took I think a second year to fully transition. And so on.

So this was not a turnkey operation. This was a series of mini handoffs that occurred and required a great deal of attention and coordination to keep track of these things.

As we stand here today, almost everything's transitioned to the four-year institutions. But it is two and a half years after the initial announcement was made. And almost two years since it was supposed to be effective on July first of 2018.

LEH: Hmm. Yeah. And it's interesting that you say the point about there not being data beforehand. I guess from your perspective, being involved in the business side of the Colleges, it just, it kind of seems like restructuring, I don't know. I guess do you have any thoughts about like the timeline of restructuring after like regionalization? Because from just like an outsider's perspective, it kind of seems like okay, there's regionalization. And then there's not that much time between regionalization and then restructuring. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that?

SW: Sure. Sure. Regionalization occurred in the Colleges as a result of the legislative and governor's approved budget in the 2015-2017 biennium. That budget was effective on July first of 2015. We knew in February of that year after the governor presented, in his budget address, that this was not going to be a good budget. And with all of the three parties, the governor, the assembly and the senate, all of one party, there was little chance that that proposed reduction of funding was going to be changed.

Well the brand new chancellor that that time, Candy Sandeen, commissioned a group to make recommendations on how we should respond to that 00:36:00budget cut. And she quickly approved those recommendations and they started being put into place shortly after the new biennium began on July first of 2015. Regionalization, most of it became effective on January first of 2016. Which also was lightning speed. But a lot of that work had been done already by prior chancellors, task forces and so on. The concepts were there; we simply had to make plans to put a regionalized structure in place.

At that time, January of 2016, I don't know that anyone could have envisioned the announcement in October of 2017 that would then dissolve UW Colleges and UW Extension as institutions. If it was on anyone's radar screen, I certainly didn't hear about it. And the System president, I can't say with any certainty when it became apparent to him that he would be making these changes. And I'm really not in a position to speculate on that.

But, true, about a year and a half later, after restructuring was put into place, or, excuse me, after regionalization was put into place in the Colleges, the announcement of restructuring that would end Colleges and Extension as they had come to be was made.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I guess that goes into another question about sort of the timeline and communication.

SW: Sure.

LEH: Which is, you had a question about the board of regents and what level that was discussed with.

SW: Sure. I can just comment on that a little bit. So the president made the public announcement about restructuring on October eleventh. That was a Wednesday. And we were, the Colleges and Extension leadership was informed about 24 hours before that, on October tenth.

Less than a month later, on November ninth, the board of regents has a resolution in front of them to approve the restructuring of the UW System that would dissolve Colleges and Extension as institutions, assign their campuses and programming divisions out to specific other four-year 00:39:00institutions. And that the effective date of the restructuring would be July first of 2018. That was on the regents' agenda on November ninth.

There was, of course, more discussion about this. But unlike major organizational change within the system previously, the board of regents took very, very little time and approved the resolution at that November meeting. So that date, less than one month since the public announcement of restructuring, the board of regents took formal action to approve the restructuring as it was described in the resolution. And that set into motion all of the steps to follow to actually make it happen.

As opposed to the merger of the state's two major higher ed systems previously, in 1971, that process between the legislative action to approve the merger and the actual execution of the merger, took about two and a half years. With quite a bit of public debate and discussion around that. And the notion of merging the two systems, the Wisconsin State University system and the University of Wisconsin at that time, that had been discussed in the public under previous administrations. So that was not a new idea. It had been publicly discussed. As opposed to the system's restructuring to dissolve two institutions, to my knowledge had no public discussion around it. There was no public listening sessions that preceded the board's decision to restructure. So that was the major different here is that there was not an opportunity for public policy discussions.

And, unlike an institution when it changes its mission, each institution has a mission statement. And in order for that institution to change its mission statement with a substantive change, not only does that have to be approved by the accrediting bodies, but there also has to be a public hearing on the mission change. And that public hearing is attended by every {one who wants 00:42:00to attend}, to give the public an opportunity to weigh in on the change to that institution's mission. What was unusual in this case is the board voted to abolish two institutions through restructuring. And hereby dissolved their missions and make those, elements of those missions a part of the receiving institutions eventually. But there was no public hearing. There was no public policy discussion. There was no public discussion, really. A pretty significant action. That was the significant difference in this action that was taken, restructuring.

LEH: Yeah. Could you expand on that? Like do you have any like personal thoughts about whether that public hearing should have taken place?

SW: Sure. Well, the requirement to hold public hearings on mission change are part of standing policy. To my knowledge, they're part of standing policy. And yet to eliminate two institutions and their missions somehow, there were no processes that were followed in this case. No formal processes other than the board action to approve the resolution.

When UW Extension was created as an institution, it was done in 1965. And in 1965, that was before the two systems of higher ed were merged in this state. And the responsibilities for Cooperative Extension, Continuing Education and Public Broadcasting were all a part of UW Madison. And the University of Wisconsin at that time consisted of UW Madison, UW Milwaukee, the two new institutions at Parkside and Green Bay, and UW Extension. As well as a few two-year branch campuses of UW Madison.

And when Extension was created as an institution, it was created as a separate entity to include Cooperative Extension and Continuing Ed and Broadcasting, because those are statewide outreach and educational programming activities. And the regents at that time pulled those units out of UW Madison because 00:45:00of a statewide interest. And they wanted those programs to not be beholden to the priorities of a single UW institution. So they put those units together as a single entity called UW Extension, gave it institutional status and appointed a chancellor to lead it. That's a pretty significant organizational change. And again, the public policy reasoning behind that was so that the interest of the entire state would be taken into consideration, and not just through the eyes of the flagship institution at Madison. It was a way to ensure that the Wisconsin Idea, of making sure that the boundaries of the university become the boundaries of the state, were placed front and center.

When the president and the regents considered undoing that through the dissolution of UW Extension and placing those entities, two of them--Cooperative Extension and Broadcasting--back with UW Madison, and Continuing Education in the more recently formed Business and Entrepreneurship Division were placed with UW System Administration, there was not an open public policy discussion about what the results of that might be years down the road. There was no public acknowledgement that these are the reasons those entities were put together. And now, fifty years later, we feel good about undoing that and we know, we've acknowledged those public policy issues and this is why we're comfortable doing so. There was no public discussion around that. And so while I'm not disputing that the regents had the authority to do that, I'm not disputing that they had their reasons for doing that. And I respect both of those. I'm simply pointing out that there was, there were longstanding public policy impacts as to why they were put together that way in the first place. And there was not a discussion that I could observe about what the impacts might be by undoing that.

LEH: Yeah. I was wondering, you made a comment of sort of making sure 00:48:00that Extension wasn't beholden to four-year universities. So I guess, with the change in restructuring, yeah, I guess how do you perceive that mission of what the Colleges and Extension were?

SW: Um, well--

LEH: I guess sort of how--sorry.

SW: Again, I think the answer to that is we shall see. UW Madison is a very different institution than it was in 1965 when the Extensions function were pulled out and assembled as a separate institution called UW Extension. I think that UW Madison has an extremely expansive reach throughout the state. And I think that by inheriting Cooperative Extension, which exists in every county of the state, UW Madison has certainly shown to me that it has taken this responsibility seriously, that it's going to leverage those assets to reach every corner of the state, and I'm impressed to see that. I'm glad to see that. And that kind of commitment has to have staying power. That has to be a long-term commitment to support the Extension programming in every county of the state. That's got to be intentional. And when budgets are cut in the future, the temptation has to be resisted to cut those Extension programs. So I feel pretty confident about that. And I think that UW Madison has certainly taken it seriously.

With regard to the Colleges campuses, I think that the future is dependent on a very different set of variables. And has to do with the shifting demographics in the state of Wisconsin. The number of high school graduates in this state has been on the decline for years. It's going to continue on the decline. And in 2025, the economic recession of 2008 finds its way through the public 00:51:00school system and results in the seniors, the number of seniors who are graduating from high school. And we're going to see a substantial drop off in the number of graduating seniors. What happened in 2008 with the economic recession is that people stopped having kids. And it created this huge gap in the birthrate that will come to fruition through high school senior classes in 2025. This state, Wisconsin, is going to have to brace for double-digit percentage reductions in the number of high school graduating seniors. There are a number of population studies that will bear this out.

And this is not just a Wisconsin problem. That's part of the bigger issue, is this is a national phenomenon that hits the Midwest, the upper Midwest, very hard. And the Atlantic coast states very hard. And the problem is, there will not be places you can turn to to generate student enrollments. So the entire system is facing a future where it will be shrinking, with a dramatic reduction in 2025.

And the restructuring, in part, was, there were three reasons, principal reasons that I recall for president moving restructuring forward. One was to make student pathways in academic programs, to give students more options for their academic programs. Second was to make transfer easier. And gee, the third one escapes me. It might have had to do with affordability. But sorry, I just can't recall it right now.

UW Colleges, when it existed, had a guaranteed transfer program, and pretty much universal transfer of a freshman/sophomore core curriculum. So you could go to UW Waukesha in the southeast corner of the state and take a core set of general education programs freshman and sophomore year and have those credits automatically transfer to the four-year institutions of the state. That transferability that existed in the UW Colleges did not continue in that form. And now transfer is really up to the determination of the four-year 00:54:00institutions around the state.

So as a campus of UW Eau Claire, UW Barron County's recruitment strategies, credit transfer policies and so on, are determined by UW Eau Claire and they're determined by the other institutions.

So I think that how restructuring plays out years from now is very much yet to be seen. It's yet to be seen. And how the system will deal with the continued decline in high school graduating classes is very much yet to be seen.

LEH: Yeah. I guess, who knows?

SW: I think that's all I'll say about that.

LEH: Yeah. I guess who really knows how things are going to change more now that we're in a pandemic? Yeah. Yeah.

SW: The bottom line here is, the bottom line here is that we have twenty-six brick and mortar campuses in the state. And it's going to be a very deep challenge to keep them all open through what is very likely to be a fifteen-year or so long trough in the number of students seeking higher education. Those numbers have been on the decline for several years. They're going to, if you will, bottom out in five or six years. And then the recovery is likely to be very, very, very gradual. It's not going to be a pronounced bounce back to previous numbers. This is going to take time. And you only need to look at the birthrates in order to see that.

LEH: Yeah. It's interesting, too, because I don't know, I was wondering, do you have any thoughts about like how that works when you're trying to shift like money in a budget around? Like how restructuring sort of changes that process?

SW: Well that's a good question. In order to really discuss that, you 00:57:00have to have a fundamental knowledge of how finances work with in the UW System. And you and I don't have time for that right now. But what it does mean is the system is going to have to be very, very nimble in changing the way it provides funding for institutions. It's going to have to be nimble in addressing tuition issues. Because Wisconsin now has, comparatively speaking, very low tuition as opposed to public institutions in the upper Midwest. That's a great thing for student affordability. But it has real consequences for long-term access, quality, and other types of things. And I do think that the system has not yet begun to really capitalize on its ability to consolidate back office activities, for example, that every institution has to perform. Paying bills. Paying employees. Any number of other things. Authorizing people to drive state vehicles, university vehicles. There is a very long list of activities that take place in the quote "back office" that everyone has to do. And right now, every institution is doing a lot of those things on its own. And the corporate sector squeezed those kinds of inefficiencies out of their operations long ago. And I think the University of Wisconsin System is at least ten or fifteen years behind the curve on taking advantage of those opportunities. But that's another story for another time.

LEH: Yeah. So, hmm. I guess this is kind of a swerve back around. But it's kind of related. The question about the relationship between sort of this culture of the UW Colleges that emphasizes transfer and the administration of the former UW Colleges. Yeah. So I guess the question would be, can you talk more about the relationship between the culture of the Colleges and administration?

SW: I can speak to the culture as it was previous to restructuring. Is that what you're looking for?

LEH: Yes.

SW: The culture within the UW Colleges previous to restructuring was quite, I hate using this cliché, but it was almost like a big family. Administration and academics always has its friendly debates. There are healthy tensions that exist there. But in the twenty-five years that I worked in the UW Colleges, there was always a culture where the institutional leaders spent a lot of time on campuses. We were always driving all over the state. To meet with faculty, to meet with governance committees and so on. And there were rarely issues that we could not resolve together. I think that on average there was a fairly high level of respect and trust back and forth. There were always exceptions to that, of course, as in any family. But I felt like there was very little distance between the soul of administrators and the soul of those who are teaching in our classrooms and supporting students out on campuses. And at the end of the day, I think that people really did trust and respect one another.

There was a, the mission of the UW Colleges was very simple. It was the advancement of undergraduate education, for freshmen and sophomores primarily, en route to a bachelor's degree. That is a very, very hard to confuse mission. It's very straightforward. So everyone in the institution could understand it and rally around it. So I think that drew everyone who worked for the UW Colleges closer together. Because there was a common goal. Whether you were a custodian or a vice chancellor or someone advising students, or a faculty member in the chemistry lab, everyone could understand and rally around that mission. So UW Colleges, I thought, was a much closer culture than probably existed in other institutions.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. So like going into communities that people were in, 01:03:00so as sort of restructuring was announced and began to be formulated, what was sort of the input of communities impacted by restructuring? What were you hearing from people in communities? And to what extent do you think they were involved in this process?

SW: I can point to two examples. That's a good question. Thank you. I can point to two examples. One is communication I received from local government leaders. And secondly, communications I received from campus foundation leaders. I received some contacts from local government leaders. County executives, county administrators and those kinds of folks. None of whom said they had received any advance communication about this. So they, again, they own the buildings and the grounds that our university programs are delivered in. And none of them who reached out to me--and I have relationships with most of them on the facilities planning front--none of them that reached out me had said that they had been informed or consulted. And some of them were not very happy about that.

In terms of the foundation directors who contacted me, there were several. They were not as friendly as that. They, too, had not been informed or consulted before the public announcement. They were generally very upset that they had not been consulted or had an opportunity to weigh in prior to a decision being announced on this. And so, and foundation boards, each one of the Colleges campuses has its own private nonprofit foundation. They're generally very small. Might have assets of a million dollars. One of them is unusually large. It had assets of about fourteen million dollars. That was the largest one. And they're made up of community members who support their local campus.

UW Extension has a couple of major foundations. One is the Friends of Public Television. And the Wisconsin Public Radio Association. And also the 4H Foundation has another very large, not very large, but larger foundation within UW Extension. And none of these entities that I'm aware of had received any information prior to the public announcement on October eleventh of 2017.

LEH: Hmm. So, I guess having like, having only heard about this like a day before it was announced, what were you sort of saying to these people about the restructuring when they were asking you questions about it?

SW: So when I would get these phone calls, and I would get phone calls because I was someone that they worked with and felt they could call and trust and get a straight answer. What I was able to do was recite what I knew. And that was the publicly stated goals of the restructuring process. When asked if I had known about this, or some of them just assumed that I had known about this, but they asked me, I said, "Well, I found out a day before you did. I knew nothing about it prior to that. But here we are, and so we're going to have to move forward and make this work."

And to be honest, some of these people were very, very angry. And in a couple of instances, I did advise that they call the president directly. Because there really was no one else that should be fielding those calls like that. And I gave the president a heads up that I was doing that. And the answer was yup, that's appropriate. So it was, it was, these were some pretty uncomfortable exchanges and a very uncomfortable period of time.

LEH: Yeah.

SW: I think as we stand here two and a half years later, each of the universities that now has responsibility for a former Colleges campus is doing 01:09:00everything that they can to make this successful. In some cases, they've made new degree programs available to students on the former Colleges campus. They've been able to provide some services that maybe weren't there before. I have every confidence that every one of these institutions is doing everything they can to make this successful. Whether or not restructuring has accomplished its goals I think is a very unanswered question. It is probably too early to answer it in some cases. But I think that those questions need to be asked. Not so that it would be undone. That ship has sailed. There's no opportunity to undo this. But to learn from our decisions and our actions so that we can make better decisions and actions going forward.

LEH: Yeah. And I guess, too, that there's sort of, I mean that that measure of involvement between the colleges and these local leaders, that, yeah, that seems like a huge stake to me. (laughs) I don't know. Yeah. I guess, do you recall at all like specifically what people's concerns were when they were calling you?

SW: I think they varied. "Gee, why didn't I know about this? I'm the landlord for the university, so why didn't I know about this?" To, "Does this mean that the state is now going to buy our campus? Our buildings and grounds? And make it a part of a four-year institution? And that the state will then be responsible for the improvement of buildings going forward?" That was another question that I got several times. To, "What does this mean for us? Does it change the relationship fundamentally?"

And because there was no advance planning for restructuring, none of those questions could be answered. All we could say was, "Well, we're looking forward to getting the answer to that as well. And for the time being, no change."

So I think foundations were overwhelmingly concerned that their money was going 01:12:00to stay local. They wanted to make sure that the funds that they raise in Sheboygan, and in Richland County and elsewhere across the state, that they were going to stay local. And that this restructuring activity that was about to take place was not going to pull funds to Madison or something like that. So that was the major concern.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. How do you think, when you were at the Colleges, that people working within the Colleges and these community members that are involved viewed themselves in relation to the System, if at all?

SW: I guess I really can't answer that. People in communities around the state tend to view the System as, you know, for lack of a better term, the ivory tower in Madison. It's kind of similar to the way people view the headquarters of the state government around the state. As this big entity in Madison. They love their local legislator, but they hate the political process.

And in the case of people around the state in our former Colleges campus communities, they love their local campus. But they don't like the System. Because it's a big, administrative, bureaucratic entity. I'm using words that, very generalized words that people sometimes use to describe centralized bodies of power.

And so when a decision is made from far away without their knowledge and that is not easily explained to them, they tend to suspect this is not a good 01:15:00thing. So in this case, looking back at restructuring, it would have been very important, and very helpful, to identify those individuals with whom we would need to reach out and have a phone conversation to explain the decisions that are coming forward and some rationale for why they're coming forward in the way that they are.

We unfortunately, because we were not informed of what was happening, we could not help advise on that. And Colleges and Extension are the ones that have all of these local connections. We were unable to advise on that and we were unable to do it, because we didn't know. I think that would have helped smooth the relationships at the local level.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I guess there are a couple of your questions that are sort of left, which would be, well, I guess we've talked about the goals of the restructuring process. And sort of your opinion on the goals as of now. Do you have any other thoughts about that?

SW: No. I really don't. Except this was a statewide reorganization that affected almost every institution. And the speed with which this was administratively moved forward did not allow for the kind of discussion in public that this state has been, has been used to for, since it was created. That's a tradition in Wisconsin. So that's one observation.

And secondly, I think that there has to be accountability and measurement of what this has accomplished relative to the goals that were set out for it. So I'm not opposed--this is the first time I'll introduce my opinion into this, rather than my observations--I'm certainly not opposed to reorganization. It's absolutely necessary. These are very rapidly changing times. They call for bold solutions. The regionalization in the Colleges was a very bold 01:18:00reorganization of the administrative side of the institution. The reorganization of Cooperative Extension in 2017-2018, a very bold move that was overdue and needed to occur. So you know, not to speak of the decision to do it, but I think we have to be critical of what our actions have done. Positive and negative. We have to measure those things and see if we moved the dial at all in the way that we're able to serve students throughout the state. And whether or not, what we've done has increased access, increased the movement of students throughout the system, and improved academic pathways. Those were kind of the three reasons that restructuring was put into place.

I'd like to see the board of regents require accountability on those three points at a point in time after restructuring when we should be able to measure them. I don't know if we're at that point yet. But I think it's really important that the regents put that on their calendar. Because presidents come and go. The president who put restructuring into place is about to leave office. Memories will be short. New priorities will be put on the table, and restructuring will be a thing of the past.

Board of regents members come and go. They cycle on and off every seven years individually. And those who voted for restructuring, some are here today and some are not. So I think the regents really need to go on record requiring accountability for restructuring going forward. So that those people who are then in the position of decision making don't repeat decisions that were bad, and learn from those decisions. Whether they were bad or good, learn from those decisions to make better ones going forward. History has to inform decision making going forward.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see, I guess. Yeah. So I guess before I let you go--

SW: Sure.

LEH: --do you have any other final thoughts you'd like to add?

SW: I don't think so, Lena. I appreciate the opportunity to talk through these things with you. And I look forward to seeing the result of what you're able to put together and talking about how it might be used.

LEH: Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciated the opportunity to talk with you. Yeah, 01:21:00thank you for doing this. So, yeah.

End First Interview Session