00:00:00LEH: 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.
01:00:00
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.
01:06:00
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