Second interview with Joe Corry (November 17, 1999): Tapes 3-4

Joe Corry (#539) Transcript BT: This is Barry Teicher of the Oral History Project. Today is November 17, 1999. I'm at the University of Wisconsin Foundation on University Avenue with Joe Corry. And we're going to continue the interview that we began a few weeks ago. Joe, today we're going to talk about your work with Academic Services. And we went over a little bit of this last time, but I'd like to go into a little bit more detail. So if there is any redundancy, that's just too bad. When I spoke with Jim Churchill a few weeks ago, he said it's very important that we look at the context of the times in order to understand what was going on in the area of Student Affairs, Student Services. Let's talk about the context of the times. We're talking about the late '60s, early '70s. Tell me a little bit about the mood of the campus. JC: Well, when we organized Academic Services in '71, we had just come through this period where there had been all this turmoil on campus, starting with the Black Students Strike. BT: That was 1968. JC: Yeah. Actually even going back, Art [Hovey?] and I were talking the other day about some of the protests that came up about issues in Latin America. And we were remembering some of the grad students that talked out on the front steps of the Memorial Union, trying to stir up activity. So there had been a be]ginning back in the early '60s as well. But 00:01:00 from the Black Students Strike until all the Vietnam concerns, you know, and eventually the bombing of Sterling Hall. But included in that, clearly the TAA strike, which set an enormously different tone in terms of the relationships, grad students to students and grad students among faculty for a while. And that really, I'm sure you're picking up through other interviews, faculty feelings about some of that. But I can remember crossing the picket line. Because that was really the first picket line on campus. The protests were different sorts of things. but honest to gosh union picket line to go across. BT: How did you feel doing that? JC: Well, it was difficult. I mean, I'd always grown up being sort of pro-labor. But my job said, "Come in." And the TAs weren't fully recognized yet at this point, or anything else. And I can remember crossing the line and having several young ladies use language that was--[laughter] BT: Not the kind you were used to ladies using. JC: No. So it was really a moment when you had to figure out what the heck was going on, and how that was going to impact on the university as well. BT: It was ratcheting up at that point. JC: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, when the bomb comes, it sort of puts a 00:02:00 crush on things. BT: Where did you hear about the bomb? Let's talk about where you were. JC: I was actually out of town. And so I didn't hear the bomb, as such. But I came back the next day to see the debris and devastation that was there. It was a [unclear] war zone, is what it was. BT: What about, we talked a little about the faculty and students. The faculty were definitely getting into new dilemmas here. Crossing the picket line is a real example. JC: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And some didn't. BT: Oh. Yeah. Well so the faculty started to split up. JC: Sure. Some chose to teach their classes elsewhere, rather than to cross the picket line. BT: How was the Board of Regents through this? What were they, how were they handling this? JC: With great difficulty. BT: Was it a fairly conservative board at this point? JC: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. And they had a lot of difficulty understanding why if Chandler Young, who was then vice chancellor of student affairs couldn't just put a lid on this thing. BT: Oh, really? they sort of expected the miracle of the magic wand. JC: Yeah. BT: And the Cardinal was becoming more radical at this time. JC: Oh, yeah. BT: It hadn't really started out terribly radical. Didn't it sort of-- JC: In the war? BT: Yeah. JC: Well, that's true enough. But I mean, the Cardinal had always had a reputation for being out on the liberal left end of things, for the most part. BT: With this backdrop of very, very difficult times happening at the university, let's go back a little bit to really the beginning of this one. Robin Fleming, okay, we had a little mic problem there. When Robin Fleming became provost/chancellor in 1964, he was here for three years, '64 through '67, one of his first appointments was Joseph Kauffman to become dean of student affairs, I believe it was called. It had been the old dean of students. Tell me a little about what you knew about Kauffman's being 00:03:00 appointed. Do you know why Fleming had turned to him? JC: No. I think Joe was in Peace Corps, as the training officer for Peace Corps. And Wisconsin had had a lot of contact with international activities. So he certainly would have been known to a number of the people from the administration through that route. But there really was no, there had been no kind of high level presence in student affairs up until this point. So they did have to go outside. There was no one immediately visible on campus to be promoted into this job, because there just wasn't any ladder-like kind of way that people would have moved up through the ranks into this. BT: When he came, he appointed some assistant deans. And this was interesting to me, because I really wasn't familiar with these names. One of them was [Gene Klingum?]. Another was Jane [Mormon?] and Patricia [Topfest?] was the third. These are names that have been lost to me from the historical record. Could you tell me a little bit about each one of those people? JC: Well, I can only tell you a little bit. We need to turn to [Jack Ciprali?], I think, for more information on it. Gene came from outside as well. And I'm not remembering where he came. Pat [Topfist?] was in the dean of women's office. Jane [Mormon?] might have also been there. And that would have reflected, in large part, the role Martha Peterson was playing, no doubt, in helping recruit Joe Kauffman in the first place, from her position as system head of student affairs, and the fact that she knew these young ladies as people who would be good helpers for Joe in getting started his activities. BT: How did Joe develop as a dean? Was he pretty effective? JC: Yeah. He wasn't here all that long. BT: Yeah, right. He was here just a little bit longer than Fleming. JC: And he had to spend time trying to pull some things together. But it was clear that he quickly established himself on campus. It's one of those deals where the outsider gets heavily analyzed, though. Joe came seeking for, I'm not sure whether he personally wanted it, or the administration wanted him to have tenure. And it was a difficult battle in the counseling and guidance department at the time. Because 00:04:00 he'd been an activist, not a publisher. But I believe in the end they finally did, he did get tenure. BT: He did get tenure. JC: I think so. BT: Now he and Fleming, I assume, formed this division of student affairs. It was interesting to see what units were placed within that. It wasn't just the registrar and things like that. It was areas like Memorial Union and Division of Housing, things like that. Why was, was theory to just place everything associated with students under one person? JC: Yeah, this was, the people in Student Affairs had always looked in hope that there would be somebody who would be the central leader right amongst the president's or chancellor's cabinet, as it were. So Kauffman is really the first person to bring that kind of presence. And obviously the thinking is if you build a base with a big budget and you have the people who are really dealing with everything affecting the students outside the classroom. This is the way things are discussed in Student Affairs back in this period. Everything outside the classroom belongs to Student Affairs. So that part of it was-- BT: Kind of made sense. JC: Yeah. Yeah. BT: In the context of the time. BT: Kauffman left a little after Robin Fleming, to assume the presidency of the University of Rhode Island, I believe it is, believe it was. And F. Chandler Young replaced him. What had Chandler Young done before on campus? JC: Oh, he was the assistant or associate dean, probably had both titles at one point, in the College of Letters & Science in what they've always called their Student Academic Affairs unit. So he was the head of that unit. And he would have been very well known to H. Edwin Young, who became chancellor in this same time period. So Chan Young must have been Ed's choice. Kauffman's gone. You've got a lot of crises going on on campus. And it's preceding the period where you had to have nationwide searches. So it would make sense 00:05:00 to appoint someone internal, try to get someone in charge. Why they went to vice chancellor at that job, at that point, I'm not exactly sure, except it's a further elevation of this whole standing for Student Affairs. BT: It's also putting it more in the public eye, in a sense, which is interesting. JC: Yeah. Yes, it is. BT: Everything that is, the backdrop that we have. Again, his office included [Klingum and Topfest?] Did they essentially do the same? Were they essentially serving as the deans of students throughout this period? JC: No, I would have thought that Chan could not have not still been seen in that sense. The idea of having, of going back to a dean of students really comes later, when the vice chancellorship goes away. I think they were just carrying on additional duties that associate vice chancellors would assist on. I'm not sure they got those titles in that time period. At some point there is a whole set of titles that are created, just prior to the breakup. BT: Following this trail is very difficult, because there are lots of changes-- JC: Yeah. BT: Especially 00:06:00 until-- JC: And they don't last very long. BT: And they don't last very long. As a matter of fact, speaking of the fact of not lasting very long, Chan Young didn't last very long on the job. He was there from '69 to '73. When did he leave? JC: That was part of the legislature's slashing of the university budget, in effect a strong hint that Student Affairs had failed him. BT: Failed him in the sense that there was all this unrest? JC: That was very clear from the regents, as well. I mean, Chan got some very rough treatment during regent meetings, if you were listening to tapes of regent meetings from that period. He took enormous grilling. BT: So you shoot the messenger, or the person-- JC: Yeah. BT: Where did Chan go after he left? JC: He went back to the same job, same job that he'd had before. And eventually you're going to ask me about Blair Matthews. Blair Matthews had taken his place as the associate dean in L&S when he became vice chancellor. So then a spot had to be found for Blair. He'd done nothing wrong. [laughter] But Chan had the seniority to go back to that job. And so Blair came and worked with us in Bascom at that point. BT: 00:07:00 Okay. Now at that point, we have Young going back to L&S. JC: Chandler Young. BT: Chandler, yeah. We've got to keep our Youngs straight. There are a lot of them associated with this university. I've fallen into that trap, the Young trap, before. There were cuts in the budget. There were layoffs and things like that. Now this is when you guys, you're working for Shain at this point. Ginsberg is working for Young at this point. JC: Yes. Right. BT: And you guys both went out and did separate-- JC: Well, [Scornica? Joel Scornica?] and I were asked by Shain to try and figure out what to do. Ed Young had asked Paul Ginsberg and David Hanson to do that. Young and Shain had just started working together as chancellor and vice chancellor. BT: Right. JC: So it's one of these cases where they probably hadn't just discussed, but within a day or two we found out that we were all working on the same thing. So then they got together and said, okay, the four of you go out and figure out how we're going to make these mandatory budget cuts and what pieces of Student Affairs, where should different pieces go, what, if anything, has to go, and that sort of thing. BT: What did you decide in terms of where the budget cuts should go and how things should fit back together again? JC: Well, the primary cuts were in three areas. One was in the fairly large administrative structure that had been created in Student Affairs. A lot of those jobs simply went away. Another was in a form of housing, it probably seems strange today, but prior to 1971, the university had had a cadre of housing inspectors. If you 00:08:00 were a private landlord in town and wanted to list your room or rooms for possible student use, they had to be inspected first by the university. BT: It is astonishing. JC: So there were a corps of people like this who went out and did this job. And then there was a counseling operation. And it was one of those deals, I mean counseling, could you ever get enough or what not, the background for all this is the students are bombarding the university and everybody else, saying "Get the heck out of our lives. In loco parentis is dead." BT: Dead. Yes. JC: So all right. The university is saying well, we're not going to bother inspecting your houses. And we don't need to provide counseling for you, either. You know, and if you get out of your [unclear] you'll get counseling wherever. We'll just not stay in that business. And basically so counseling was cut back to just a couple of individuals, who then reported to Paul Ginsberg. In the meantime, the units like housing left the Student Affairs thing and went back to being a financial management, reporting to the chancellor and his budget designee, or the vice chancellor. Same with the Memorial Union. BT: And 00:09:00 then, Ginsberg got the, more or less the dean of students stuff. JC: Right. BT: And you got the-- JC: The registrar, admissions, financial aid and a few other units, which we called the Academic Services. BT: And again, this was to take the, you had to have Academic Services. JC: Services. BT: You wanted to, not camouflage it, that's the wrong word. But you wanted to-- JC: Define it as an academic service, not a student affair. I mean, "student affairs" at this point is a bad name, rightly or wrongly. So to try to prevent any further erosion, both from outside and also to define it for faculty who were also raising all kinds of questions, you know, what had gone wrong and all the rest of it, saying, you know, you can't get by without registering students. They've got to be properly admitted. And lord knows, we've got to get them financial aid and so on. These were defined, then, as essential academic services, basically. So it's interesting. BT: How did you and Ginsberg get along? Had you worked with him before at all? JC: Yeah. I was actually a house fellow trainee under Ginsberg. BT: Oh. JC: If you go back to the tape, from the first interview. Ginsberg was the head of all the house fellows and so forth out in the dorms. And when I was a head house fellow, I was working directly with Paul in that period. BT: So you had no problems with-- JC: Oh, absolutely not. I had learned in that 00:10:00 period that I did not want to do that kind of student affairs work. I just wasn't cut out for worrying about students day in and day out, and hour after hour, and that sort of thing. BT: How did Ginsberg ever do that? JC: Amazing man. BT: I mean, he sort of lived that. JC: Yeah. BT: You can't even call it a career. It's a calling or something like that. Did you keep, were you guys in pretty close contact in your-- JC: Well, we were both operating in Bascom. And we met, when the student affairs group was gone, we actually had a small ad hoc group that got together on a weekly basis, or every other week, informally in Paul's office, and just kept lines of communication open. BT: Initially, academic affairs, Academic Services, excuse me, had a very small staff, which included Jim Churchill. Let's talk for a little bit about Jim Churchill. I met him for the first time a few weeks ago and he's a very, very interesting person. When did you first meet him? JC: Well I met him, he was on one of the activities that was transferred to Paul. I've got it here somewhere. In the student organizations group, and he was the assistant director and financial advisor for all the student organizations. They had, remember the university used to make the 00:11:00 student organizations keep their budgets. And we helped them with all their books. That was Jim. He would work with them, make sure they were not running away with money and all the rest of it, but show them how to spend it right, and so on, and that's where he got his training. Well then that activity, the student organizations, stayed with the dean of students. So Jim kept that, and he was in the process of working with him and sitting in on these ad hoc weekly meetings that we talked about a few minutes ago, that I met him and figured well, this is a guy that knows how to do accounting, and I need to have someone like that. BT: So you hired-- JC: And so Shain made it possible to put him half time with me, and half time with Paul. BT: Which is, again, increasing your association with Ginsberg. JC: Oh, yeah. BT: Because you're essentially sharing-- JC: Sharing some-- BT: He's obviously telling you, I mean, you guys were just in constant, constant communication. JC: Right. BT: What were his functions? Just all the budgetary stuff? JC: Right. BT: You said to me when we had a discussion several weeks ago, off mic, you said he was really more than a budget director. JC: Oh, yeah. Well you know, here we're starting in '71, two, somewhere in that period. And he and I stay together as a team not the late '80s. BT: That's a long time. JC: That's a long time. And I hope we both grew in the job and that we, I learned more about budgeting, and he learned a lot more about programming and other things. And so I very much valued his opinions in areas other than the budget. BT: Blair Matthews. He was listed, and we talked a little bit about him. JC: Yeah. Blair had a long background in working, a PhD in psychology. And he had a long background in working in Student Academic Affairs in the College of Letters & Science, which put him in contact with a huge proportion of the campus through that. And there were other kinds of groups. There was a student personnel association, for example, that got people interested in student affairs together on an informal basis. And there was also something called the Associated Administrative Council. Well, this is a key group. The Associated Administrative Council is made up of the representative, closest thing to a student academic affairs advisor. The number one person of this ranking in each of the schools and colleges. So George [Sledge?], for example, whom you've interviewed, 00:12:00 was one of these. So he would represent Ag, for example. And when Blair had the job during the years with Jim as the vice chancellor for student affairs for L&S, Blair's representing L&S. And so on. So you had a whole cadre of these people meeting. And they were responsible for trying to, they were joined, then, by people like the registrar, director of admissions and so on, with the idea of being, even though we have huge chunks of school and college autonomy in terms of rules toward the degree, how much can we understand, at least, what each other's doing, or what degree of central rules should we have. And this group would periodically make recommendations along those lines. I think we talked last time a little bit about the creation of Special Students. BT: Mm hmm. JC: It's the people who served on that Associated Administrative Council who formed this ad hoc group because they saw these different students, these housewives and others coming back and wanting to get in. And so they said, well how should the university treat these people? So they were sort of the conscience of the students in the administrative voice. BT: That's interesting. Did you sit in on that/ JC: Ultimately I did, yeah. I sat in on that council for a number of years. it was always chaired by, well, George [Sledge?] who chaired it for any number of years. BT: Sounds like something George would have done. JC: Yeah. BT: How large was it? JC: Well, every school and college, what are we talking about? Ten to twelve, anyway. And then key people from admissions and so on, so we're up around twenty people. And they'd get together once a month and just review things. The most spectacular thing to come out of that is the Special Students. They'd review the various rules 00:13:00 in effect, or, you know, how are math courses handled across campus, for example. BT: Yeah. Another person who was a long time person in Academic Services was Virginia Marx. She started out as an administrative secretary, and later became an administrative assistant. Tell me a little bit about Virginia Marx. JC: Well, Virginia was a graduate of the institution and had gone into secretarial work, as was not uncommon for women. She was probably a generation older than Jim and me. But she worked in other offices in the university, and she just knew her way around. And she was, I'm groping for a word here. But her human strengths were enormous. So eventually, because of that, she grew into kind of like our personnel officer for all Academic Services because she would be able to explain retirement rules and all kinds of things to people. BT: Oh, boy. JC: And that kind of thing. So it was a chance for her to grow. And that's why you saw her title changing. Ultimately, for instance, on the continuing ed side, she'll actually run Elderhostel in four or five years when we have it. She goes out and lives with the students during that period. BT: That's great. JC: So she grew in the job. BT: Where did you get her from? JC: I'm not sure exactly where, how we found her. But it was a terrific-- BT: Yeah. that's great. Lee Wilcox is listed as the associate director of Academic Services for '75-'76, '76-'77, and '78-'79. What were his, what did he have to do? JC: Well, Lee was director of admissions. And the first year, he retains that job well. We see whether in fact there 00:14:00 is enough to challenge him. He was looking for challenges, he wanted to grow, and eventually he would leave the institution to go on to other challenges. But at that point, we brought him on board to get some experience and to help Jim and I out. And then he will also, it doesn't show, the way the directory is put together, you can't pick that off. But in the second and third year there he will be an associate as well to Cyrena Pondrom. BT: Hmm. In the affirmative-- JC: Mm hmm. In her activities. So he sort of splits his job half with us and half--and I think the last year he's here, he's full time with Cyrena. And we've searched and found a successor for him as director of admissions, which is Dave Vincent. We'll talk about him. BT: We'll talk about him. JC: And Lee then eventually goes on to be either dean of students or vice president for student affairs and [Rancileer] Tech College. And 00:15:00 he's now at Georgia Tech. BT: And after you left Academic Services in '84='85, Tom Hoover took over as acting [director?]. What's the story there? JC: Oh, I think, when you pose that question, I think that's because that's the year we're trying to solve all the integration questions for the Extension faculty in the other half of my live on the continuing education side. And Bryant Kearl has stepped down as vice chancellor and is made dean of continuing education or outreach, I'm not sure. We went back and forth on those titles. BT: Confusing people like me to no end, I might add. JC: Yeah. Yeah. And so he and I are working almost full time to finish the agreements that will provide for Bryant Kearl and I, that is, will provide for the integration of faculty and staff that will move over as of July 1, '85. So I think that's the reason. And the town took over so that I could work. Tom was the, we haven't talked about, Tom was the registrar and the most senior of the officials within Academic Services. BT: Yeah, we'll get to him in just a couple minutes when we get into the various units in Academic Services. Where was your office located? JC: Several different places in Bascom. Part of it was there was a big remodeling, you know, that north end of Bascom got remodeled. BT: That's right. I forgot about that. JC: In awful battleship gray. And so we moved around quite a bit within the building. I think ultimately I figured out I had sixteen different offices in Bascom. BT: Oh my God! [laughs] It's the building I never fail to get lost in. I suspect I should have you as my guide. JC: Oh, and there's a wonderful 00:16:00 story about that. Do you know the story about the--you know the group the New Christy Minstrels? BT: Yes. JC: And that there used to be a program called humorology? BT: Yeah. JC: Well, okay. So every spring there was a, largely fraternities and sororities, but other groups would get in the act. They'd try to put on humorous--well, did not try to put. They put on what they hoped would be humorous skits. BT: There we go. [laughs] JC: In the Union Theater. And they always had some kind of an inter-act group that entertained while they were changing scenery and all of that for the next skit. And this one year, a group from the dorms had pattered themselves after the New Christy Minstrels. And they were terrific. They were great singers. And the popular song at that time was about Charlie getting lost on the MTA. BT: Oh, will he ever return? JC: Will he ever return? BT: Kingston Trio also did that, yes. JC: So they created a song about the freshman who got lost in Bascom Hall and never returned. But you know, people hearing this would need to know that that was so much more appropriate. Because we're talking about the admissions office, the registrar's office, the grad school, history department, English, all these are within Bascom Hall at this time. We're not talking about it's spread out like it is now. And it is a peculiar building. BT: Oh, it's like a city! JC: This went on for several verses, about the freshman who got lost. And of course the audience loved it. Because they knew! I mean, they had to go up there. Everybody, whether they were grad or undergrad, they wandered around Bascom. They knew exactly what it was. It was a wonderful thing. BT: They should put in a verse about the oral historian up there. [JC laughs] I always give myself a few extra moments when I'm going to see someone in Bascom for the first time, because it's incredible. BT: One of the people you steered me toward, and I thank you for doing this, was Mercile Lee. She was appointed, we're going to talk a little bit 00:17:00 about her position, and about affirmative action. Now she was appointed assistant to the assistant vice chancellor in Academic Services in 1980-'81. This was later changed to the assistant to the associate vice chancellor. JC: That's [me?] BT: The assistant to the assistant vice chancellor sounds kind of-- JC: Yeah. BT: So you were assistant, you were both of those. JC: Yeah. Yeah. BT: And then she changed it-- JC: When my title went up, so did hers. [laughs] BT: Um, she held the position until '85-'86. So she was in there, starting with the early '80s, up until you pretty much left that position. JC: Well, Mercile was actually working for Paul Ginsberg. And I'm not sure exactly what her activities were, but that's how I got to be aware of her presence, because she was then housed right there in Bascom. We got to know her pretty well. And it was clear we needed to do something in Academic Services for employee morale. Later on you're going to ask a question about things that I think were important. But we had, in the late, in the late '60s, when the momentum was there to create the Student Affairs deal, there was sort of a feeling that if you came to this institution, wanted to work here and got yourself a PhD, there was nothing, no barrier to stop you. You would just move into one good job after another. Well, um partly that was a false sense of security because of the growth of the university at that time from, but when the growth relatively stabilized, and Student Affairs was, in effect, put down for a while, the growth stopped. And you really had a morale problem with a lot of people who were now cast in jobs that they hadn't expected to work for their entire career. And there was very little movement on campus. And they were all young. They were all of an age where there weren't going to be a lot of retirements. So they were looking at long term careers, or unhappiness, if they, that sort of thing. As you'll discover about Mercile, there's a human 00:18:00 relations quality about [unclear] BT: Oh, yes. JC: --that made her an ideal choice to try and help us do cross training, and just run programs. We had some programs, for example, we'd give people time off to go do CPR training, just to give them the sense that they were part of a community of workers, in the event that they had to use that activity. So I mean, we tried to address it from the standpoint, how can we build a sense of a unit of Academic Services by at least helping people get some lateral experiences or whatever. BT: Oh, that's very interesting. So she was, she did more than just affirmative action. JC: Oh, yeah. She didn't really do any affirmative action for me, other than to keep me well sensitized to the need for doing that sort of thing. BT: What was your sensitivity at that point? What was, you said that Cyrena Pondrom was on campus, obviously working with affirmative action. Was it a big issue on campus in those early years in Academic Services? JC: Well, it was a big issue, late '60s, early '70s. And like a lot of other things, for whatever reasons, I'm not sure. BT: Well, we had the black strike, first of all. JC: Yeah. Well, 00:19:00 that's what brought it up. And we got the five-year program started, and a number of things going. And a certain amount of needs of people of color were met. And then interest moved in other directions. And there was a sort of quiet period. And that's going to change just before Shalala comes in as chancellor. You begin to have another surge. So she insists that there would be a study committee presenting her with things on minority matters even when she's only named as chancellor. And then she has this report on her desk when she comes in. And you deal with a number of problems right off the bat. So it's sort of the cycle of things here. So part of the period where Mercile's working with me, it's not as though there's a lot of outside pressure. It's all a matter of our own consciences as to how much effort and so on we're putting into this activity. BT: What about the entire unit of Academic Services? Did you encourage people to hire minorities in any of the positions? Was that something that was talked about? JC: Well, we had a fair, a pretty fair ratio of minorities, mostly blacks. We did have some Latinos. And as far as women were concerned, we had, that was never an issue, really, in Academic Services. A wide dispersion of women in posts, although they could say quite rightly, not in the directorships. That we begin to take care of, at least in the latter promotion, in associate directorships. BT: And she said she did training programs, and training programs as well. JC: Mm hmm. BT: So there was sort of awareness, there was an awareness there, and she helped keep that awareness on the front burner. JC: Yeah. But we're dealing as much, I think, in her training with how you as an individual, regardless of color, think of improving yourself as we are in terms of the color. BT: I can see her being very effective doing it. One of the things she talked about was the chancellor's scholarship program. And this started, I believe, while she was working for you. The idea was terminated. JC: Yeah. Right. BT: Could you give me your interpretation of that really very interesting and continuing story? JC: Well, although the momentum wasn't all that high, we were dealing in the unit with this first called five-year program, and then called academic advancement program for minority students. It was labeled, if not overtly, certainly as a sort of second-chance program. I mean the majority of students in there were not directly admissible to the university. They were there because through personal observations, interviews and so on, they were seen to have sufficient motivation that with the kind of help the five-year academic advancement program would provide them, extra counseling and so on. And obviously the five years is an indication, just like the athletics, that you've got an extra year to work. You don't necessarily need to drive quite so hard. And there would be 00:20:00 enough financial help during that period. And it was a modest success. But it wasn't achieving any enormous breakthroughs. And you weren't going to get out of that group of students a huge number of peer role models in the high competitive part of the undergraduate deal. And I think that what Mercile could see coming better than a lot of people, the pressure on this institution to become somewhat more selective in its admissions. It had gotten so out of control. And that would be one of Shalala's big things is to cut back on undergrad enrollment, therefore making it that much more difficult to get in here. She wanted to be sure that there were role models of the very best kind of students, and that we therefore should go out and compete for great scholars, just like we did great athletes. Now the feelings by the predecessors running the University Foundation, in whose building we now sit while we talk about this, believe that you could not raise money for scholarships. They'd had very little 00:21:00 success in doing that over the years. Therefore, doubly so, you would be not successful in trying to raise money for minorities. BT: Interesting. JC: What wealthy whites are going to give money for this purpose, you see. Well, Mercile said that isn't true. You could get this. And coincidentally at the time-- BT: Now the time we're talking about, like the early '80s? JC: Early '80s, right. One of the faculty members, would-be faculty members in the School of Human Ecology, by whatever name it was called then. BT: Home economics, probably. JC: Home economics, maybe, or whatever. BT: Family [unclear] JC: Or consumer resources. At any rate, decided that she wasn't going to make tenure and that she didn't want that for her career. But Mercile said, "This is a talented woman. We can't let her leave town. She would be ideal, the kind of person who could go out and persuade people to raise money." But, you 00:22:00 know, the foundation didn't want it, she had no track record in this. The foundation didn't want to hire her. And Mercile had been banging on my head, and Bryant Kearl, the vice chancellor, and [unclear] if she could get a hold of him, to say, "We should create this undergrad program with these kind of scholars that come." Well, you couldn't do it without money. We had nothing, really. we had such a weak scholarship program here to begin with that we just didn't have the money to pull together to offer the scholarships. So we went out and got new money. And finally, well, she persuaded me, and between the two of us, we managed to persuade Bry Kearl that we should try it. And what we should do is get enough money from the administration to put this woman, Marion Brown, on our payroll. If the foundation would put up the other part of the money for her. And she'd work full time for the foundation, but she'd give us a lot of feedback. And so that's what happened. BT: And her job was to raise-- JC: Raise money. BT: --money for this scholarship program JC: Right. BT: --that was geared specifically toward minority students? JC: Minority students. It was called the Chancellor's Scholarship Program. BT: Just out of curiosity, how did one define minority at that point in time? Was it strictly African American? Or was it-- JC: Oh, no. Oh, no. BT: It was Native American, the whole-- JC: Native American, Asian. BT: Okay. JC: Yeah. The whole ball of wax, really. Latino. So she started raising money. And I don't know that I can remember the dollar kind of things. But in fact, she was having success. BT: Much to everyone's surprise. JC: Much to everyone's surprise, yes. In part, of course, because once people like Bry Kearl and Irv got committed to something, they knew some people who might be approached on this kind of thing. And Bry himself went to some old friends and said, "You've been looking for something to memorialize yourself at the university 00:23:00 for years. come on, get on board, put some money in this thing." And so money did, enough money came in so that the first year they had six students here, I think it was. BT: Oh, really? Oh, my. JC: And it became apparent to the foundation that this woman was successful. So they took her full time. BT: Oh, really? JC: Yeah. And she's still on staff here. BT: Really? JC: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. BT: I didn't know that. I guess I'll have to talk to her now, too, won't I? JC: Yeah. Yeah. And doing a terrific job. Out there raising money. Not only for this, I mean, she raises money for lots of other foundation programs, as the way it should be. I mean, she's a fully integrated member of the foundation. BT: Started out with this, and then worked her way into that. JC: Yep. Yeah. BT: A question. Scholarship up until that point was internal, and it was pretty much need-based. Was there a problem getting it changed? Changing sort of the structure of how scholarships were given and that kind of-- JC: Well, that was 00:24:00 our own rule. In setting up this program. BT: So you just changed your own rules. JC: We raised separate money. We didn't necessarily change what money existed. I mean, we didn't turn around and say we're going to move that existing money into this program. We said, we're going to fund it by getting entirely new money, for which the givers understand that it is going for this purpose. So you know, we're being honest both with the money, and with the people giving the money. We're being honest with the people who gave the money fifty years ago, too, in terms of whatever they did. So there wasn't any deviation in that. BT: I am chagrined, because I just heard about this program. I talked to Irv about it a while ago. But a few weeks ago from Mercile, when she informed me that they had had their fifteenth anniversary just last month, wasn't it? JC: Right. BT: Did you attend that? JC: Oh, yes. BT: Tell me a little bit about, has the program pretty much remained the same, only grown? Have there been any major changes in the way things are organized or structured? JC: Well the major change is this has become Mercile's sole activity now. She's so busy with it. There are over a hundred students in the program every year now. And she plays this very unique role as the director of the program. And in the best sense of the term, the away-from-home mother of these students. And she sets extraordinarily high standards for them. I mean, she expects them to come to every meeting. They need reasons why they don't come when she has meetings. She brings in people like the chancellor for what she calls a fireside chat kind of program one evening a month or something like, where they learn more about life than just what they're immersed in. And they have to 00:25:00 come in at least once a semester to review how they're going on in their program, in addition to her encouraging them to be sure they're meeting with the official advisors of their respective schools and colleges. It's just been exciting to watch. You know, she set up the deal so that every one of those students has a mentor. Somebody on the faculty or staff who just acts as a place the student can turn. I've had two such students. And we stay in touch after graduation, that sort of thing. BT: That's great. She said the fifteenth anniversary was really something. JC: You know, it was really a dramatic occasion to see the numbers of students come back. BT: From the very first class, I guess. JC: Yeah. And the graduation rate is wonderful. The [unclear] Have there been a few failures? Of course. I mean, that's human nature, right? But the success rate is very high. One of the people who addressed was a PhD in history from Purdue. He's now teaching at UW LaCrosse, that sort of thing. BT: He has a job! JC: Yeah! He has a job. How about that? [laughter] BT: Nice to hear those success stories. What does the fund stand? Does it have a large endowment at 00:26:00 this point? JC: I don't know. That's really not, but we just did raise enough money to endow a scholarship in Mercile's name. that was part of the surprise for the fifteenth anniversary. BT: Yes, yes. She said it was a mighty surprise, too, because she's pretty well connected. And she said there were a lot of things going on behind her back, and she never smelled even a hint of what was going on. That's a great story. I'd like to turn now to the various units within Academic Services, and talk about each one, and talk about some of the people within them. These are the people who in many ways run this university. And a lot of them toil anonymously on their day to day routine. And I'd just like to talk about each one of these units, and let's identify these people and talk about what they do. Maybe the place to start is to just finish up, actually, on the Academic Advancement Program, since we've been in that area. JC: Okay. BT: The person who served as program director was Bob Murphy. What can you tell me-- JC: Well, we need to back up a little, actually. BT: Okay. JC: Because the first director of the program was a man by the name of Jim [Baw?]. And you'll find Jim [Baw's?] name in the list of people in the vice chancellor for student affairs. And Jim was a very charismatic kind of guy. You know, he'd go into high schools and give stirring speeches. He was an athlete, had been an athlete as 00:27:00 well as a scholar. So he sort of had that Vince Lombardi kind of approach to things. And he'd go in and recruit kids and get them here and go on, but um, Jim was meant to go on to other things. And eventually he went, um, I can't tell you exactly whose administration it was, but it was one of the Republican administrations in Washington, and had a job in Housing and Urban Development, actually, when he left us. And his, his, his associate director during those years was Bob Murphy. So when Jim left, we promoted Bob to be program director. BT: Now when you say "we" promoted Bob, who's "we?" JC: Well, Jim Churchill and I, I guess. BT: You guys. JC: With the approval of the vice chancellor. BT: With the approval of the vice chancellor. Okay. JC: And this in part, Bob, I think, is a victim of the stagnation in the interest level that we talked about before. I mean, there's no new money. He's, he's running a program that a lot of people perceive as dealing with marginal kids. Whether that's a fair perception or not, you begin to get the label. So you change the label from the five-year program to the Academic Advancement Program, to try and avoid some of that But he's also competing, what you need to know about what's happening on campus is almost every school and college created some kind of a minority program. Because there was this sort of groundswell. Okay? BT: Again, going back to the -- JC: '68 strike. And the immediate years beyond. BT: Right. JC: [Bollinger?] goes out and gets big bucks for an engineering minority program and he staffs it. L&S has a small minority program. And different places. Nursing has one, the med school has one, 00:28:00 and so on and so forth. And one of the problems in this time period is, we're, at least in Wisconsin, and in Chicago, we're all going after the same kids. You've got every unit from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, showing up at Lincoln High School in Milwaukee. They're saying, "Help, for cripe's sake, can't you guys get your act together?" And all this sort of thing. You have every other school in the UW system doing the same thing, too. so we really had as a system, and an institution, no organized, coherent program on how we were dealing. And part of the problem was that, you know, these two or three minorities working for John Bollinger, you could bring them to a meeting and talk about campus coordination. But that wasn't where their paycheck was coming from. It was coming from engineering. So if they didn't like-- BT: Oh, gee, hold on. So if he didn't like-- JC: If he staffed it and didn't like the outcome of the coordinating group to try and put, they'd just ignore it. BT: Well, they're also under pressure from-- JC: Of course! BT: From Bolinger, saying, "Hey-- JC: Sure. Sure. Sure. BT: I'm not paying you to court, to help them." JC: Right. So year in and year out, we have these meetings to talk about it, but we never really brought the stuff together centrally. So now you have this particular program, particularly identified as with the most marginal students on campus. And eventually, most of them are L&S students. And the decision, we have a review committee with Professor Jim Jones and a number of other people looking at it. And we decide the only solution is to move the thing into L&S. BT: Now, had L&S had one? I thought you mentioned the L&S. JC: They had had some efforts at it, but they had no-- BT: But nothing coordinated. JC: Yeah. BT: Nothing permanent. JC: And so that's where, when Murphy leaves is when the thing is moved into L&S. BT: And about when was that? Can you guesstimate? JC: I'd guesstimate about '82. BT: '82. And what happened to that unit, then? JC: Well, it was 00:29:00 still in L&S. BT: And is it still called-- JC: Still called the Academic Advancement Program. And Yvonne Bowen is still there. Now they've moved the head of the directorship of that around quite a bit. So I don't even know who's operating. BT: And Yvonne Bowen had taken over from Murphy at one point? JC: Right. She became the acting director when he left. BT: Okay. And she may or may not still be running it. You're not sure at this point. JC: I don't think she's running it, but she's still there in the program. BT: I'll sniff around a little bit, and see what I can find out. That's interesting. BT: Office of the registrar. Everybody has a registrar, everybody needs a registrar. UW is certainly no exception. You had two people that worked--first of all, describe what the registrar, the functions of the office were on the years that you were in charge. These things change over time, and somebody fifty years from now might be interested in hearing your interpretation of what that office did. JC: Well the thing that is most visible to students is the registration process itself. It's how you get into classes. And the registrar's responsible for putting that together for the campus. And as you will recall, we had an extraordinarily manual system. BT: Oh, yes. JC: Starting first with the days when you got punch cards and you picked those up at a central point, and then you walked all over to different parts of the campus to go through what were called assignment committees of the various departments. BT: Oh, I hadn't thought of that word in ages, that phrase in ages. JC: To see whether you could get into these various courses that you might need in order to progress along the way. And that was always controlled with grad students, seniors, in the order. So the freshmen were last. BT: And frequently, often, speaking as a former enrollee in those things, invariably your last course would be closed. JC: Yeah. BT: Which would mean that you'd have to drop two of the ones that you had 00:30:00 already signed up for-- JC: And go back. BT: Go back and trudge all around campus figuring this stuff out, yes. JC: which was-- BT: An initiation rite, almost. JC: People laughed and treated it that way in September. But not so much in January. BT: Not so much in January, right! [laughter] JC: And in the last years we ran the program, if you'll recall, you started by picking up your materials out here in the stock pavilion on the west end of campus. And you literally made your way back and forth until you arrived at the east end of campus, the old red gym. BT: Yeah. JC: The second floor in what was the old gymnasium, where you turned in these various things. BT: Go ahead. JC: So, every student always identifies with registration, even though they may never know until they graduate and need a transcript, that that's where their official record has, in fact, been kept. And the unique thing about people who work in the registrar's office anyplace, much more so than any other part of Academic Services in most other offices, is their feeling of their absolute need to have 100 percent accuracy of everything that has transpired, because it has to fit. And the job here is a huge challenge, because every school and college has been allowed to create its own rules with regards to graduation regulations and so on. And so they're dealing with different rules for every degree offered on this campus, and trying to keep that all, and in the days before we got the computers, that was an enormous paperwork job. And, in fact, many students might not find out until some way in their second semester of their senior year that they really weren't going to graduate, because they were missing a course or two. BT: Oh, I remember those stories, yeah. JC: Very difficult and painful processes in that. So, on of the challenges facing the registrar was always to try and keep both registration process and records as improved as possible. And you know, we spent lots of time and money trying to computerize that activity. And this university, I think, like many others, had to create its own, entirely it's own computer system to handle that. Because of all these unique functions in each school and college. So part of our success from an Academic Services point of view was how much leverage we 00:31:00 could bring to bear on the Administrative Data Processing group to get the computing needs in competition with other people trying to use the same thing. And how much attention we could get of the administration. BT: So you were trying to get the central administrative process, not people within the registrar's office, but people who worked for that central computing service on campus. JC: For the registrar and myself, that was our constant challenge. To try and get more and more computers. We weren't going to, we couldn't hire many more people, because there wasn't space to put them. If you'll recall going through those buildings, the people were pretty well packed in, anyway, with tiny little dividers. BT: Now where were they? JC: The A.W. 00:32:00 Peterson building. They had been in the small building. BT: Oh, one of those where the [Filus? Was turned on for Vilus?] or humanities JC: Yeah. It was [torn down?] for humanities, right? So that, I think, was the big challenge facing both Tom Hoover and Don [Wermers?]. Hoover had come to us as a result of, I'm pretty sure he wound up his career here with the ROTC. We got a number of outstanding administrators that way over the years, and he was one of them. And he was already registrar when I took on Academic Services. BT: When did, I guess it's called touch tone registration, when did that finally-- JC: Well that comes in about '85. BT: Does that, is there something before that? or is that computers? JC: No. We never went to computer registration. BT: Oh, oh, oh. You didn't. JC: In fact, almost every other school had. And the story, which is not apocryphal, but will sound that way, is that in Tommy Thompson's first inaugural speech, the thing that drew the loudest applause--bipartisan and from all the other listeners--was that there shall be automated registration at the University of Wisconsin by the end of my first term. BT: And there was. JC: And there was. BT: And there was. JC: And it took that, in fact, Irv maybe 00:33:00 never brought it up when you did the interviews with him. But he told me that one of the things that he would have done differently if he had known the degree to which others perceived the problem with registration is he would have pushed harder on automated registration. Now the saving grace, in a way, is that we would have had an improved system, there's no doubt about it, if we'd gone to computer registration. But you know, those early systems involved much of the same process, except that you went and talked to somebody in a computer terminal, one of seventy or a hundred in the University of Michigan, or whatever, who then put in things because you weren't sufficiently knowledgeable about working these programs. So you were standing in lines and etcetera, etcetera. But where we lucked out was this telephonic technique came along just as Tommy made his speech, and as we were prepared to implement something, finally. And Don, we had brought Don [Wermers?] in specifically. Tom had retired, for the second time he'd retired from the army and now from this, because he appeared to be on top of the, he was the best candidate with the technological background to lead us into-- BT: Now, I'm out of the loop for all the stuff with touch tone and everything. How did you touch tone, how did you touch tone register? JC: Oh, you would literally use the keypad. You just followed directions. Type in the appropriate numbers, and that's it. BT: And then you get a little computer sheet or whatever that tells you-- JC: No, you don't get the computer sheet. Well, eventually it will get mailed to you. But we had students registering from South Africa or wherever. As long as you could get to a 00:34:00 touch tone phone, you could call in and register. BT: And that has been replaced now? Or is it still basically that? a variation of that? JC: It's the under girding