Interview with Mareda Weiss

Mareda Weiss #796 (2006)

SP: Today is Friday, August 11, 2006. I am Sandy Pfahler, an interviewer with the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Oral History Project. Today I'm interviewing Mareda Weiss, who retired in 2002 with emeritus status, after being affiliated with the UW, Madison, since 1963. She retired from the position of graduate school associate dean, and director of the Research and Sponsored Programs Office. Hello.

MW: Hello.

SP: We're going to start with questions on your early life. Where and when you were born. If you would talk about your childhood, your early schooling, did you have any brothers and sisters. What did your parents do? Were there other people in your life that were mentors as far as you were concerned?

MW: Boy, that's a broad start. First of all, I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 00:01:00September 23, 1941. And grew up in the same house on the north side of Chicago. And went to Chicago public schools. I was the youngest of three. I have an older sister and an older brother. And maybe unfortunately for me, they were both very good students. So by the time I got to school, I followed them into the same elementary school and the same high school. And the pressure was always on to perform as well as those other two.

I grew up in a neighborhood where we had a lot of kids. I was the younger end of the group. I remember my father telling me at one point during World War Two, he was some sort of warden for the neighborhood. And he told me on one city block in Chicago, there were forty-four kids. And we just always had a ball. There was 00:02:00always someone around to play. There were more boys than girls, and I tended to be a tomboy. Played more baseball than I ever played with dolls or any of that kind of thing. And I climbed more trees. I didn't fall out of any trees or hurt myself in any way.

But probably, it was an accident of location. In Chicago, you walked to school. There wasn't any of this busing kinds of thing, or integration. And I happened to go to a school where there were some very forward thinking teachers and a principal. And I know, I was in an experimental class where they taught mathematics. And they taught us one way, and they taught the other half of the grade, because there were so many of us, a different way. And they found out one was better than the other. And the same with reading. I unfortunately wasn't in the better reading skills, but I was in the better math skills along those ways.

And there were teachers there, I remember, in fact, my brother and sister and I, we talk about some of those teachers that we had that made a mark on you. And the eighth grade teacher was, in particular, she was a Miss, Miss Zimmer. But boy, she had high standards, and she made you work for them. She was very good for all of us. And in high school, some of the same things. I had teachers who thought I should be a teacher. At the time, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

SP: What did your parents do?

MW: My father was an accountant and an officer in the Chicago Northwestern Railroad. And my mother was a housewife. My father's mother had to go and support the family. My father's father was killed by an automobile in 1910. Now that was quite unique then in Chicago.

SP: yes.

MW: He got off a streetcar and was hit by a car coming around. Anyway, my grandmother basically was an undegreed accountant. She kept books, was very successful. My father remembers cars coming to pick her up from companies to take her to work and things. She was successful through the '20s, and lost everything in the crash.

And the other influence, I guess, in my life, was the fact my mother passed away when I was sixteen. And my father, being the youngest, and I was the only one left at home. My brother was a senior in college, and my sister was married. And so it was just the two of us for two years. And he, at that point, he probably 00:05:00had a lot of influence on how I look at things and evaluate things today. I know my sister and my brother both comment on that. That something will, I'll say something and they'll say, "You sound like Dad."

SP: Did you know at an early age that you were going to college?

MW: Basically, yes. Because my sister and my brother went. My father said we were all going to go to college. My mother thought boys only went to college. And I guess, in fact, there was a little family tug of war when my sister, who was the oldest, wanted to go to school. Mother said no and Dad said yes. And she went. And she went away for two years, and commuted to Northwestern her last two years. And my brother found a scholarship so that he could go. And Dad was never 00:06:00rich. We were comfortable, but he was never rich. So my brother ended up at West Point. Spent four years there, and graduated. He spent six years in the military and then got out. He didn't make a career out of it like some of the West Pointers. That was pretty exciting as a kid. I got to go there, and went to military balls, and got all dressed up as a teenager. Because he's five years older than I. It was pretty exciting for a young kid.

SP: So when did you, when did you pick what college you were going to?

MW: Well my senior year, I started looking around, and I looked at small schools and big schools. And at one point I announced I was going to Colorado or Arizona. And my father told me no, I wasn't. This was after my mother had passed away. He drew a circle around Chicago, and told me I could go to school anywhere 00:07:00in the circle. And he had about a two hundred mile radius. And I looked at, I knew I didn't want to go to Illinois. I don't know why, but I just didn't want to go to Champaign-Urbana. I looked at Bradley, which was a smaller school in Wisconsin. And at the time, I really thought I was going to be a math major, and Wisconsin was very highly rated at that time. So it probably was the final thing that swung what got me up here. Dad actually offered me a brand new car to commute to Northwestern if I'd stay home. And everyone in the family said, "Don't do that." And I wanted to go away for a while. I thought I'd go away like my sister for a couple of years and come back. But I didn't.

SP: So you came here in what year?

MW: I came here in 1959 as a freshman, and spent four years. In fall of '63 I 00:08:00came back, was starting a finance program after my bachelor's degree, and needed work. Dad paid for, my father paid for all four years. In that respect, I was probably a cut above some of the people around. Lots of folks have teased me that I was a spoiled brat during that period of time. My senior year, my father remarried, which was the best thing that ever happened to him, and maybe to me. It gave me options for when I graduated, what I would do. If he had not done that, I probably would have ended up back in Chicago to be nearer to him and to see if he needed anything. As it turned out, he and my stepmother were married for twenty-nine and a half years and had a great time.

SP: Now how did you like Madison? Did you have a good time as a student?

MW: I had more fun as a student. And I did not get great grades. I learned how 00:09:00to play bridge. In '59, we went to the Rose Bowl. And you didn't fly then. You took trains. So there was this two and a half day train trip to L.A., which was just two trains full of kids. And we sang. There were guitars, and you sang in the club car half the night. And played bridge during the day, and just relaxed and got acquainted with all kinds of folks. It was a fun experience. It really was.

SP: Sounds like it.

MW: So in my senior year, we went back again. I decided I didn't need to go twice and do that. And I still actually see, oh, three, four of the folks I met in college. You know, you build some wonderful friendships in there. And worked with a lot of them. Continued, because I stayed at the U, I would see some of my 00:10:00professors who were in my major in business.

SP: So when did you decide you didn't want to be a math major, then?

MW: After my first year. I took calculus. And it just eluded me, I have to admit. And I decided that somehow I wasn't smart enough or something to make it through to be a math major. And I thought I wanted to at some point teach it. They said you had to major, they recommended that you major in it, unless you wanted to teach it in elementary school. So that just changed everything. I was a little lost and I thought well I'll try accounting, which is what Dad did. And you entered that your second year, your junior year. You really didn't take, in business, there were no freshman classes that I missed. And I loved it. So I 00:11:00thought well, I think I found it at that point in time. And then I stuck with it and took the rest of the requirements to get a BBA instead of a BS.

SP: And then you, so you went to grad school, then?

MW: I started. And I was the first, in September I came back, and Dad said he'd pay the tuition, which had grown all the way to five hundred dollars a semester for nonresident tuition. When I started, I think it was 150 dollars a semester. And Jim Bower, who was an accounting professor, said go down and talk to Reuben Lorenz or [Bill Conci?] who were down in the admin building at the corner of Park and State Street, the old admin building. And he said, "They're always looking for student help."

So I went down and they hired me immediately. And I remember reconciling bank 00:12:00accounts and doing some work, [build workups?] in the trust fund. Or learning what pre-audit was about. I have to admit, as a student, I had never, ever thought about what it took to run a university. And it was a real eye opener. And they had me auditing some of the student organizations. And in hindsight now, I kind of laugh at that. Because some of them always got themselves in trouble after they started to work.

MW: I was auditing in Chadbourne dorm, and it was the day that Kennedy got shot.

SP: Oh, my.

MW: It was a real experience. And the kids, you know, everybody just dropped. And got glued to television sets and what have you. That was an experience I'll 00:13:00probably never ever forget. And I was really glad I was on campus for it at that time.

SP: Now why did you want to get a finance degree? A masters degree?

MW: Well, I spent my summers working in a bank. And my dad knew somebody who worked at the bank. Dad never wanted his kids to work for him. So this fellow and my father traded kids. "I'll put yours to work and you put mine to work" kind of thing. And I enjoyed that. I have to admit it. And some of the men there encouraged me to pursue it. They thought maybe I'd be pretty good at it.

SP: That's nice to hear.

MW: But that semester I thought well let's see what's out there. And I realized if I went to work in a bank, I had to work six days a week. And that just didn't 00:14:00sound like the best thing in the whole world. And about that point in time, Reuben Lorenz called me into his office and said they would let me continue to take classes, and I could continue to work on any degree I wanted, but I could work full time. And if I would be interested, they would, they were offering me an Accounting 1 civil service position. And it sounded pretty good. And in fact the money that they were offering me was more than any of the banks in Chicago, which is where I thought I was going, would be going back home.

So when I dropped the bomb at home that I wasn't going to come back, I was going to stay up in Madison for a couple of years, after the family war, I got to stay. [laughter] At that time, I was living in an apartment with some friends from the dorms. So I had a place to stay. It was four of us, and it wasn't very 00:15:00expensive. It was a great way to live. So I decided I would take them up on their opportunity. And they told me that Dorothy Climfelter was working there, and that I should talk to her if I was concerned about how they were treating women, and what opportunities there might be. And we did that, which was the first time we'd met. She said she'd been there a year or so and that she had been enjoying the work. So I said okay, I'll try it, too. I ended up in the same office. At the time, called Gifts and Grants, which grew into Research and Sponsored Programs, ultimately.

And they offered me a position, after the grants are awarded, it's called post-award. We did the accounting, and we would check to see if they met all the 00:16:00rules and regulations, particularly from the federal government, before you submitted the final reports. You know, you had your favorite faculty members that always overdrew every account they ever touched. You knew that was always going to be a problem. But we had some fun there.

I remember one time, Bob Erickson and I started the same day, full time. And one of the jobs we had was to build up some detail for a National Science Foundation grant that was down in Antarctica. And they had bought like seven or eight snowcats. And they were driving them into crevices in the ice sheet down there, and they'd have to get another one. [laughter] And we were in the basement of that old admin building with the spiders and the bugs, going through old vouchers. It was a real experience. [laughter] But it was fun. I started in in 00:17:00the old house that was there. I was in there for like three months, then we moved to the A.W. Peterson building. It opened in the spring of '64.

SP: Did you keep taking classes?

MW: Not officially. I don't think I took another class. I took professional development classes in university administration. There was a two-year course offered by the University of Omaha, believe it or not, which was highly regarded at the time. I felt very fortunate the university sent me and paid for it, to have the opportunity. I know Dorothy got to go. There were a fair number of us who went. And I think it was Mr. Cafferty who was vice president at the time, we 00:18:00really thought was beneficial. And it gave you the overview. I always felt that I chose, actually, wisely in which department of the university I ended up in. They talked about payroll, they talked about purchasing, they talked about trust funds. But in Research Admin, you had to work with all of those. You got your accounting stuff from Accounting, and if you had a problem, you had to go to Payroll or Purchasing. And you got a broader view of what the university was all about. And, in fact, I think some of the people on campus began to realize that, because many of the folks actually in Research and Sponsored Programs ended up in dean's offices, because of that view that they had, ability to get your fingers into the Peterson building in each one of those different spots.

SP: How long did you stay, then, with the research, or with Gifts and Grants?

MW: Well, it was Research, it went from Gifts and Grants to Research Admin, to Research and Sponsored Programs. I left in '69. Five years. And after eighteen months of doing just all this detail work, I wasn't real excited about staying. At the time, I think, George [Everson?] was our boss. And he got promoted to the vice president, or assistant vice president who was in charge of the Peterson building. And Len Van Ess became the director of Research Admin. And he promoted me to basically the over-manager of all the people that did post-award. Which kept me there. I got Accountant II and Accountant III. And, I forget, Ed 00:20:00Services Assistant III or IV, I forget.

Anyway, it kept moving. And it got, so it kept me interested. But then it finally got to a point where I thought, if I had to deal with one more federal auditor, or one more federal agency that was going to change its rules and regs, I'd had it. And was talking to some of our friends that we had gotten to know. And they said the grad school was looking for somebody. So I applied.

I interviewed with Dean Bach. He offered me the position. I went up there in March of '69, and I stayed there until I retired.

SP: And what was the position when you started?

MW: It was called specialist.

SP: Oh, yeah.

MW: And I oversaw their accounting. Grad Accounting was what it was called. And we had all the WARF money to account for. I'd seen some of that when I was down 00:21:00at Research Admin because it ended up in a gift account. So I knew something about what WARF was and how it worked, and some of its history. And it was kind of interesting. And they said that would be, and then I would get involved with the university budget, which I hadn't had anything to do with before. There was an office down the hall at the Peterson building that we knew did budget. But we didn't know that much about it. [Dale Horkin?] and, no, it was [John Horkin?]. Anyway, he was head of it. And we knew those people. So I thought, this will give me the ability to learn something different. So I went up there and they were running, they had an accountant that had brought up an individual system. 00:22:00Grad school made a big investment, and they actually had a little IBM computer in the back room, and punch cards going through. It didn't work too well, because they were three years behind in closing their books.

SP: Oh, my.

MW: We really didn't know where they were with the workmen. And Dean Bach wanted to know. [laughter] So they wanted to bring up a new system, and they had started conversations. At the time there was Peterson data processing, and there was the registrar's data processing, and they were separate. And one was clearly focused on the students' end of things, and supported the registrar's activity. And the other one did the accounting and payroll and stuff. And the registrar's group was looking to broaden itself. And they brought in a guy named [Catter?]. I forget his first name. And he wanted to start doing some different things. And 00:23:00somehow got to Dean Bach anyway. They had already agreed that they would write a program for us. And we would give up this machine, which I was not very excited about having to live with this machine and supervise somebody to run it. So I was all for that. I thought that was a good idea. And I spent time with them trying to, and listening to the deans and the famous University Research Committee, that gave away the WARF money internally, on what kind of information they wanted to come back. And a lot of it sounded like what I'd heard from, when I was down in the research office. And then Dorothy already had started to work with a computer program, or to build a new system for Research and Sponsored 00:24:00Programs. And a lot of what she had already built, I knew was there. And so we kind of tried to emulate a lot of it over time. And we came up with ways to put all the funds together that one principal investigator had. You could not sort all the grants the university had by principal investigator. You had to do it by hand. I mean, there were silly little things that needed to be done that were easy fixes. So after about, I think it took me a year and a half, we got current.

SP: So when you're talking about putting together a system, you're talking about had everything pretty much been done manually, or had they actually put it on this little IBM?

MW: It was on this little IBM that was behind times.

SP: Oh, I see. Okay.

MW: And the cards were stacked up all over. And part of it was that it was very 00:25:00clumsy. You know, it took a lot of steps in order to do it. They would then run new reports, and then the staff would figure out how to fix it. And then the fixes would go back, and you had to rerun it kind of thing. This was the advent of the [AD8 card spaces?] and that's what you had to live with, and you had to print them and run them. And there was a keypunch back there. This was all in the basement of Bascom. Kind of back under, oh, there was a lake side and there was a big vault down there. In fact, some of the Elvium Art Center art was stored under there in a vault.

SP: You're kidding. Oh, no.

MW: It was like a bomb shelter. And the grad school had got all this space. It was also the old B3 of the registrar, before the Peterson building got built. And then the graduate school was on the first floor of Bascom, and it went to 00:26:00the basement. They were down there for twelve years, I guess, and then they finally went to the third floor. Second and third floor. It was really kind of neat down there.

SP: Well the business library moved in--

MW: Moved in after we moved out. That's right. But there were some wonderful stories from the riot days. They were there. I was in, I got the end of it. Parts of it in '69, until the bomb went off in '70. But they said there was one day one of the gals went upstairs to get the mail. And she went up there and was greeted by a National Guardsman with a rifle. And they said, "Where did you come from?"

And she said, "Well, down there, there's forty people working."

And they had cleared the building, and they didn't know they were there.

SP: Oh my gosh.

MW: So the colonels and the generals came downstairs and they discovered this wonderful place which was way out, out of the way. And even in '69, when I was there, you would come in and go to work, and you'd find National Guards stored kind of back in the corner. They would be sitting on the floor, waiting to see if they would be needed. It was really wild. The folks involved at the time, they really love to tell that story. "What are you doing here?!" "I came to get the mail." [laughs]

SP: So you were doing system analysis work.

MW: At that point. And I was building up, and I was teaching people that were used to dealing with student records how to do an accounting. I'd say, "This column should add, take this column and add it to this column, and give me a total. And make sure it cross foots."

And they'd look at me and say, "What does cross foots mean?"

So we'd teach them the sum of this column and the sum of this column has to equal what you've got here as a way to make sure all the numbers were right. Because that was partly what was wrong with the other system, was that you did all that by hand. So we brought up, we did bring up a new system. So then when the university took those two administrative units and combined them, then it went online, which was another vast improvement, that you could do something and see the answers almost immediately. And Dorothy created [Esis?] we were [G Esis?] and Ag created their, [Frank Husteroff?] used the same principles for some of the land grant money and he created, it was probably AG, [AG Esis?]. But it was interesting that all these different programs, the bottom line was there 00:29:00was a basic need that all of them had that was about 75 percent of what it was. And we shared it across, you know, across [unclear] Which was really a timesaver, and I'm really glad the university was capable of doing that. I don't know how much of it they do anymore.

And then, in my spare time, I did learn how the university budget worked. And I managed to figure out how to put one together. [laughter] And how the pay raises worked, and what kind of support I needed to give Dean Bach in order to make that function. And he was so supportive, he really was, throughout it all. Because like in '73, I think it was, when the University of Wisconsin was merged 00:30:00with the state universities, they wrote the rules and they created the academic staff then, quote unquote. And he volunteered me to on this system academic staff rule writing committee. And I'd sit there, I'd say, "I'm not sure I know how to do this."

He said, "Sure you do. Go work on this."

I know there were people from Milwaukee and Madison, and I can't remember where else, and we wrote, there were about ten of us, and we worked together, we'd meet once a month, and we wrote the system rules. The first run through. And we would negotiate, you know, "You can't do that!" We'd sit there, and Madison needed this and Milwaukee didn't. And we said, "Well, put it in there. You don't 00:31:00have to do it. But let's not write a rule that prevents us from getting to where we wanted to go. And there was a fair amount of that kind of give and take that had to go on as we went through this. But it was kind of fun. And there were like three of us academic staff and three faculty. [pause]

SP: The first rules for academic staff after the merger.

MW: We got together. Irv Shain appointed the committee and chaired it, and led us through the various steps of it. He gave us a lot of leeway and told us to go away and work on this and then come back and bring him up to date. He did not attend the meetings regularly. But we negotiated with Milwaukee and then new 00:32:00system at the time. They really didn't know exactly what they wanted to do, either. And Madison. Those were the key players. We came up finally with a set of rules that are part of Chapter 36.

SP: What did you start with?

MW: Blank piece of paper.

SP: That's amazing.

MW: I don't know. We knew that you had to have definitions, and they wanted appointment types. I think that was in the law. Some of the fixed term, and the indefinite. And we had to start defining how you did that and how would you get there. And then you need an appeals process, and you needed a complaint process. I don't know, I think some of it just came out of the way they wrote the law in the first place. So we came up with chapter headings. And then we started 00:33:00working our way through, and trying to decide should the dean have ten days or should the dean have a month to think about things before he made decisions about appointments and appeals. It was also desired to have peer review for like indefinite appointments. So that created how those indefinite committees that reviewed those documents got appointed, and who was on them. And of course initially they were appointed, because we didn't have anybody that had indefinite appointments. But gradually it started being filled with the kinds of peers that we first saw that would be needed in those kinds of things. And we got all done and I thought oh, boy, gee whiz, this is great, we're done. And then by then, I think Irv Shain had gone off to the University of Washington. So Cyrena Pondrom picked up, had the problem and appointed another committee. And 00:34:00said, "Well, you folks--system rules have to help us interpret the Madison rules." [laughter] So I ended up on another two-year stint to sit and write those rules. We actually worked hard, we went once a week, from three to five on an afternoon. And as those were coming together, in fact, Bernie Cohen was vice chancellor at the time. And he would come up, and "Where are you, folks? How is this going?" And we would stay, if he was going to come, frequently we would stay till six and bring him up to date where we were, and how things were going to get put together kind of thing.

SP: That's impressive. That certainly was an important thing to have happen on the campus.

MW: Yeah. We were proud of the fact that it worked out as well as it did.

SP: Yeah. Yeah. Well how did your position in the grad school change over the years?

MW: Well, as I said, Dean Bach kept volunteering me and pushing me in various directions. And at one point, I remember him coming in and saying that he wanted to appoint somebody to the position of assistant dean. And I thought oh, shoot, I've got to work this thing up again. And he looked at me and said, [haven't you?] But I was probably one of the few people who had to do their own paperwork for a promotion. [laughs] Because at the time, that was my job, personnel, budget and accounting, to do that. So in, I think it was '74 I was promoted to assistant. And then in, somewhere in '82 or '83, somewhere in there, they promoted me to associate. It always grew.

There was a point in time where the admissions, where people were going to go to an online system, rather than the paper one that we had. And he put me on that committee. I didn't know anything, really, about admissions. I knew the people who did it. And Lorraine. I'd worked with Lorraine [Mikahler?]. And she was the overseer of all that, of admissions and degrees and academic progress and things like that. And he said, "You sit down and work with them," because I had been working with accounting. We had the online systems. I'd worked with Bill Kenyon and Jack Dewey to do some of those kinds of reports. And he also knew that I could get some things done. Because there was a point in time that we had a four 00:37:00million dollar fellowship grant. And I really didn't have anything to do with fellowships, either. But they came to me and said that there's this annual report that she had to do for fellowships, and you needed to take the names of the students and go and find out what kind of appointments they had. And they were doing it by hand. They would go to the personnel office and dig their way through all those little cards that we used to have fill out.

So I talked to Jack Dewey. I said, "You must be able to print me a list of fellows, research assistants, project assistants and trainees."

And he looked at me and said, "I'm probably not supposed to do this." But he did it one night. And he produced, the funny part was, he produced a list which probably was maybe six inches high. He said, "Here's the list." Then he handed me another one which was maybe two inches high. He said, "Here's the error list." [laughter] Took us a while to get to the point where the error list was 00:38:00only a few pages. But it took several years before we got to that point. [laughter] But, so, he said, "Do this." And I would sit there and I was listening to some of what their needs were.

And so I learned an awful lot about the academic side of the graduate school's office. But I think I saved them. The programmer was someone that had only done student stuff. and they would talk about, "Well, you will have to enter this and this." And I'd sit there and say, "But I don't have to enter that in the budget system. It's generated automatically by the computer." And this guy sat there and told me it can't be done. And I said, "Well, why don't you go and talk to Jack Dewey, because it's been done already." And we came up with a system that served them very well. Oh, it ran for twelve years before they started playing 00:39:00with it again, and trying to broaden it and do something different with it. And today it's on the new PeopleSoft stuff. But working with ADP, they brought up a front end to it, which is, I guess, unique to Wisconsin. And it feeds PeopleSoft, but you can actually apply to the graduate school from anywhere in the world, online. And it dumps it right in, it dumps it right into our system.

SP: That is impressive.

MW: In fact, the fellow that wrote it ended up getting hired by the company we were dealing with. But he actually is back at the university. He came back. He said he really didn't necessarily like all the pressure and stuff. He said he 00:40:00could make more money, but he didn't like the work. And he was smart enough not to just let the money drive him. So we feel very fortunate he's back in the grad school leading the info tech stuff. They were very pleased to see him come back. Because he was very creative. So there's twenty years worth, thirty years worth of admissions systems development that occurred. And again, it was Dean Bach. He just kept saying, "You can do this. You can do that." It got so I almost believed it. [laughter]

SP: What do you consider your major accomplishments?

MW: Well, writing the academic staff rules, I think, is one. And bringing the grad school somewhat out of the dark ages into the modern world of computers and what have you. Training, I think a lot of folks that are still there working 00:41:00hard, and giving them some of that breadth that I think I developed. I don't know why I was curious. Other folks sat there and just did their job. But that didn't ever work for me. I had to know why when you got into some of this stuff, and how to do it. And then the last, from '94 to 2002, I think I did help bring Research and Sponsored Programs into existence, somewhat. Bringing it to the grad school. Bringing policy, grad school always did research policy. That was its role. It doesn't have a vice-chancellor. Wisconsin doesn't have a vice chancellor for research. The dean of the graduate school does that job, and did it for many years without title. I understand now that the dean does have the 00:42:00title vice chancellor for research and dean of the grad school. And we brought those two activities together. Before, and I would be kind of a go between, between the old folks down in Gifts and Grants that I knew still. Bob Erickson was there for many, many years. And it was a tussle. It was, why didn't we ask them what their problems were before they made a decision on how to do policy. And in that respect, I think I really helped gel some things for the benefit, to the benefit of the faculty members and the researcher people. And of course it was also around the time when the feds were really crazy, and "compliance," quote unquote, had to enter in. And we had to recheck human subjects, and we got audited a lot more on some of those subjects. Conflict of interest became such a big deal. And you had faculty members that owned companies. And were they doing 00:43:00this for the company, or were they doing it for the university? They were always being very careful. Then every once in a while, you'd find somebody who was mishandling money in that respect.

But we built, Wisconsin has always has a very strong reputation in Washington. It's an ethical position, highly regarded, so that in, and this was just built on that, and improved with it. We've been active in groups like the Council on Government Relations, oh, since the '60s, that group's been going. They work with agencies, trying to streamline rules and regs. And we've had, oh, three or 00:44:00four different people that have always been on the board of directors for that particular organization. We were one of the first to sign up for what was called the federal demonstration project. And that was a way, that's been an attempt to streamline rules with the feds. It has all federal agencies there. And it had sixty universities. Most of them, the big ones. Oh, it did start with the sixty largest ones. That's where it did start. And we did. We ended up improving a lot of the National Science Foundation rules and regs, and some of the NIH ones. And those are the two biggest sources of money at UW that we have. Between those two, they probably represent 75 percent of the money that comes in. And then from there, you have the army, navy and air force. NASA, our space science 00:45:00program's very strong.

And we also got some of the agencies to talk to each other. You know, "Why does NASA ask me this question and NSF never does?" And we started finding out, NASA's asked that question for thirty years and now they don't know why they ask it. But they still ask it. And they ask, we got them there, and started talking to them themselves, and then to each other. I think some of the differences have been streamlined. I was glad to be part of that. And I chaired a couple of committees as part of the federal demonstration group. One was a finance committee. One was a procurement committee. We were trying to simplify the ways that the government writes contracts with the universities. There was another 00:46:00group. The intellectual property, that was another one we were trying to work on. Of course with WARF, everyone looks to us for answers for some of that stuff, because they've been such a leader over time. That's really been, WARF has been an outstanding contribution to this university. And I was very pleased and proud to be part of that interaction, and to facilitate some of that. It's really grown, actually, since I left. We thought the grant was good sized when it was 20 million. Now I read in the paper they're throwing 50 million at this, 30 million at that.

SP: Now you've mentioned a number of challenges. What would you consider some of the biggest challenges you've dealt with in your work?

MW: Well some of the bigger challenges were people. Personnel. No, I don't want 00:47:00any part of them. [laughter]

SP: Isn't that interesting, though, when you think about it? Because you had some major responsibilities and major assignments. And personnel is what sticks out in your mind. [laughter]

MW: It's the most unpleasant. I think that's part of it. You do something and people are unhappy. "I'm going to sue you!" But, well, I don't know. Where would I go with that?

SP: What kept you awake at night?

MW: Whether I was going to get it all done on time, part of it. The, who was 00:48:00going to do what part. Along some lines. And then whether, I hardly ever, I would work to solve a problem. I have the wonderful position, I think it's an asset, not to worry about it and second guess it after I did it. And I think people should not do a lot of that. They say, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that." But you did it. And you're just going to have to run and roll with it. That's something I think my father taught me. Big time. To accept it and do that.

SP: Did you have mentors on campus?

MW: Oh, I did. I was lucky I just had everybody. Reuben Lorenz was a mentor. He 00:49:00was very proud of Dorothy Climfelter and I. Trying, as two professional women who first showed up in the administrative structure. And he was very supportive. We see him, even now, he still is. And he would, if we had a problem, we could talk to him. George Eberson was another one. If we had problems, we could always, I could count on calling George and getting good advice. And he was never too busy. And he always wanted to give you credit. That was the other thing. You know, some folks you work with and they want all the glory. And I was fortunate I worked with a number of people that would always stand there and make sure everybody understood that they didn't do it alone, and that they were more than willing to help you.

Eric Brudy was one. He helped me with getting involved nationally with some of the organizations that I had succeeded in doing. And Bob Bach was wonderful. He really, he was patient. He would explain things to me. He would give me the history on how we got somewhere. And he always said, "Here, try this. This will be new and different. Try this." And some of it, it may have been the smartest thing he ever did to keep me there. He knew I wouldn't get bored. But he really thought, he valued the brain and the ability to do something over sex. Whether they were male, female, he didn't care. Eh wanted the best people around him. And he made you feel like you were one of the best people around.

And then I worked with people like David Ward was associate dean of the grad 00:51:00school. Who then, you know, moved on to be provost and chancellor. And he knew you. He would trust you. These were valuable, really important. Bernie Cohen was the same. Graduate school actually kind of mentored and grew a lot of folks that became campus leaders over time.

And it had to do with the fact that the graduate school was called the "all campus college." And unlike other schools on campus, we didn't teach. We were a coordinating office, basically. Yes, we did the academic side. We admitted students. We helped them get through their grad programs, and we granted degrees. But then we did the research end of it. And we oversaw a lot of the 00:52:00interdisciplinary research that was going on. But because of the research, and the research money, your tentacles went into every school and college on campus. And you knew what L&S was doing, you knew what Education was doing, you would know what [Cals?] was doing. We'd coordinate and work, you'd do something with land grant money, [Cals?], we'll do something with the work money, we'll build something good. And med school was the same way. It took longer to bring the med school into that group. But they clearly are there now. And I think Bach was responsible for a lot of that.

And as a result, it trained people in a different way than if you had been the dean of L&S, or the dean of Business, or whatever. Because Bach, he's actually sat on a council with Irv Shain. It was the chancellor, the vice chancellor for 00:53:00academic, and vice chancellor for admin, and the dean of the graduate school. That was his advisory group, and they would meet once a week.

SP: Now when new chancellors came in, did that affect the grad school, affect your position, affect the culture of the campus administration?

MW: Not really. I think some of it, to some extent, the grad school, because it was the research school, and because of the WARF money, all chancellors were smart enough to know, even Donna Shalala, to talk to folks and to work with people in the grad school. Donna Shalala shook the campus up over time. And you had Irv Shain and Dave Cronyn and Bernie Cohen and Bob Bach that were all 00:54:00retiring. They were all in that same era. And she had a chance to restaff those positions. And maybe pick different people than Irv Shain might have, but I don't know. But it changed some of the culture. But the strengths of Wisconsin are so vast, that it's hard to disrupt them, I think. I always remember Ed Young said that everybody gave him credit for leading the University of Wisconsin. And he always said that if he got out from in front, the institution would just keep going on its own. He said that as a leader you have to worry you don't get run over. Which was an interesting observation.

SP: Yeah.

MW: And that's the way he felt about it.

SP: Would you talk about the climate for women when you were on campus? Do you 00:55:00think it helped or hindered your participation in campus administration or in getting your job done?

MW: The fact that in the early '70s, the university was starting to try to recognize women maybe helped. Had me in the right place at the right time. But there were some uphill, real uphill battles to try to convince people you knew what you were doing, for one thing. To gain the confidence of some of the folks. But for me, being in Bascom, I never felt that I was at a disadvantage because I was a woman. I got to do most everything I wanted to try to do. [laughs] I hardly ever got told no. Sometimes I failed, but I didn't always get told no. So 00:56:00I don't think, I think I was part of that movement. I got put on, oh, in 1980 they did this big study on the status of women. They did an update. I ended up on that committee.

SP: Was that worthwhile? Was that worthwhile committee?

MW: Oh, they were writing a report for the regents, mostly. I think it had some positive effects. It showed that we moved a little bit, not a whole lot, and that more work had to be done. And in that respect, the committee was very useful. There were some people, I think there were some women on that committee that hoped it was going to be more of a revolution than an evolution. But I really think evolution was the only way it was ever going to work. There were too many men that were going to be uncomfortable if the women moved much too 00:57:00fast in this respect. And I think that was true everywhere. But it was so different, at least, when I first went to the grad school, they would talk about Elizabeth McCoy, who was in bacteriology. I think she might have been one of the few women full profs at that time, in science. And at least in 1980 there was a big array of folks now. And some of them, the departments had come around and had started to hire some women. And I felt like I was able to help that movement, rather than to be someone that needed help. In that respect, I was probably very fortunate.

SP: Were there any other outside activities, outside of your primary responsibilities, that you would like to talk about, that you think were 00:58:00important to what was happening on the campus? You were pretty much involved in a lot of governance and academic staff issues and committees in general. And you probably have a lot of, well you do have that institutional knowledge about the things that were going on all that time. Are there other things that you want to talk about?

MW: Not, I guess, totally. A lot of them, we've gotten into. I did some work with extension, and I got involved with WHTB for a while. And I think some of the things that, again, some of the experiences that I had had, evolved over into trying to help them. I volunteered out at Central Colony. They had an 00:59:00auxiliary group. There's a wonderful, I had an opportunity to deal with, they had forgotten to do the, to file the income tax return. And I was treasurer the next year, of course, and I thought why me? So the auditors came, I wrote them this letter and said this is this volunteer group, and we're not informed on how to do the taxes. I pleaded real ignorance. And they wrote back and said, fine. So this was about, and then about twenty years later, I was on the board of the University Insurance Association, UIA. And the then insurance company that was supposed to take care of us forgot to do something with our taxes. And they were going to pay it right out of our proceeds, our big twenty-four dollars a year we 01:00:00had to pay for that insurance.

So I told them what had happened the last time I'd run into the IRS in this kind of a nonprofit situation. And their attorneys looked at me in shock. And I said, "Try it! Can it harm anything?"

And they did try it, and they came back a couple months later and told me it worked.

SP: Oh, my.

MW: They let the University Insurance Association off the hook. So I guess in that respect, I helped do a few things.

SP: Absolutely. You had mentioned earlier that you got involved in professional organizations. Will you talk about that, how that helped you over your career? Is it important? And why?

MW: I do think that's very important for everybody, for their development. And I 01:01:00mentored a fair number of people as time went on that I tried to do some of the same things in there. And the first one was the National Council of University Research Administrators, which meets in Washington. And Dorothy went one year, and then I went the next year with her. And we always commented on how few women were in the audience. And today, that organization is 55 women/45 men. And Bob Gentry, again, he mentored me and said, "Well, you should get involved with this organization." And he put me on a Minority and Women Committee. And we tried to develop a plan to broaden the representation for some of those folks. And I 01:02:00think some of that ultimately worked. And again, Eric Brudy had been active in this group from Wisconsin. And he got me to run for national office. And I won.

SP: What office?

MW: I was treasurer of the council for three years. And you're on the board, of course, when that happens. And learned more about the organization, and the differences. I had some fun in the, there was a staff member, we had one staff member in Washington. They now have like twelve I think. And she called and said there was a conference room table on sale in a store down the street from where they were in Washington, and it was a good deal. And I said, "Do we really need a new conference table?" And she said yes. And I said well, okay.

And she called me back an hour later and said, "They'll deliver it tomorrow." 01:03:00And I just was blown out of the water dealing with the university's purchasing--

MW: --national organizations and associations. And I was on the [unclear] board. And we hired another individual while I was there and moved the office in Washington. This all kind of took time away from work. Fortunately I had a good staff that was willing to work a little extra, that would make all that happen. And it really, it gave you the opportunity to talk to every school in the country. Any school who was doing research. And yes, Wisconsin, it's always been in the top five nationally. And people wanted to know what we were doing. But at 01:04:00the same time, the interchange really helped you. It solidified your own thoughts on whether what you thought you were doing was right. It would give you new ideas, new ways to approach things. You always brought something back from those meetings. And I think working, becoming more involved even helped me with some of that kind of thing. Even more, people never hesitated to call. And as a result, I never hesitated to call if I needed help to get some new ideas.

And I was chair of, there are regional organizations, and I was chair of the reason. Then I served again on the board and was one-year temporary treasurer. The treasurer became the president, and they had to have somebody fill in. So they brought me back. So I guess I was still doing okay. They keep bringing me 01:05:00back. But the region gave me an outstanding service award in the early '90s, and NCURA gave me an outstanding award in 2001. Then there's another group which is called the Society of Research Administrators. It has a slightly different mix. It has more med schools involved in it than NCURA. And I've done some panel, made some presentations to those. And then you have the Federal Demonstration Project I've already talked about. That brought all kinds of new things to the campus. That was really a working group. It was an important part to be part of it, as the Council of Government Relations is. And if you're going to be a major research institution, you needed some of those outlets to keep current. You would hear, particularly at [Coker?], you'd hear more early on what anyone in 01:06:00the federal government was thinking about. And it was important to maybe even fend some of it off in there.

And then, from the grad school side, there's the Association of Graduate Schools and the Council of Graduate Schools. They each meet once a year. the council was much more oriented toward student activities. And there was a period of time there when I said I was working with Lorraine [Mithaler?]. In those meetings, again, you'd find out what other schools were up to.

Some of the formal presentations didn't stimulate you, but the conversation you got out in the hall or at dinner or at lunch, or even in the hospitality suite, that's where you really learned the most. They were very important to me, anyway. I'm not sure I would have been as successful as I was if I hadn't--and 01:07:00you'd transfer some of those things you'd learn, too. Something worked in, just like I said, with the taxes, something would work with NCURA, so you'd try it with FDP. Or you'd, maybe I'd even try it with the budget staff. I mean, I don't know. But all of those things ended up being just part of you.

SP: You mentioned a couple of awards that you received. Could you talk about those in more detail, and then talk about the other honors and awards that you received over the years. And I know there are many.

MW: Well, the NCURA award is for the outstanding research administrator. They give one a year. And I was chosen in 2001. I was very proud of that accomplishment, particularly as I was thinking about retiring, and so on.

SP: So are you nominated for that?

MW: Yeah. Somebody nominates you, and then you need two letters of 01:08:00recommendation from members of NCURA. And again, I was working for Virginia Henshaw, who was the dean. And she was the one who was convinced that I had to get it. And I know she was responsible for putting it together. You don't do it yourself; somebody has to do it for you. And Virginia was also the one responsible for the campus. I got the University of Wisconsin, Madison, award for leadership. Excellence in leadership, I guess it was called. And Ginger was the nominator for that. And again, that one, you had to have four supporting letters, I think, from faculty and colleagues and peers across the campus. The NCURA region has a distinguished service award, which I won in 1989. With other 01:09:00things, I was brought in as an honorary member and a school of business professional fraternity. I didn't pledge it when I was in school. I stayed independent. And there's a local Madison group, and they've made me an honorary member of that. I was in all the Who's Whos. Who's Who America, Who's Who of the Midwest, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who of the World, and then Who's Who in American Education. I ended up enjoying a fair amount of recognition that way. And I worked with the UW Credit Union. And they had a University Credit Union Ambassador of the Year. First, you're ambassador of the month, then you're ambassador of the year. So I had an opportunity to serve in those respects. And 01:10:00I guess those are the honors. I've held office. I was vice president of this University Insurance Association for ten years. I served on that board for twenty years. You're elected.

SP: I voted for you. [laughs]

MW: Oh, good. That was another one. They called and said that they wanted somebody to run, and that it had been a faculty. And they wanted somebody to break the mold and be academic staff.

SP: Oh. Sure.

MW: And would I be willing to have my name put up for that. I can't remember. It might have been Carla [Rotz?] and Steve Lund that thought I might have enough name recognition that it might work. And it did. I was the first woman, and the first academic staff member on that particular board.

SP: Did you feel like you fit in, though, right away? No problems with being the first woman and the first academic staff?

MW: The academic staff was a bigger problem than the woman. But I think the woman part was fine. It was a bunch of faculty from the School of Business. Many of them knew my name, and knew me.

SP: Is that a systemwide committee?

MW: Yeah.

SP: That's what I thought.

MW: They, it was a question of whether the insurance professors should really be the ones controlling [unclear] I think, more than anything else. But once I saved them on the income taxes, then it was okay. [laughter]

SP: Did you feel any discrimination as academic staff on campus?

MW: Rarely. Every once in a while you'd run into a faculty member that would 01:12:00kind of, "I'd rather talk to a fellow academician." And some of the compliance issues, I have to admit in the last five years that I was working, every once in a while somebody would say, "Well, a faculty member really should be the one that tells a faculty member they have to do this." That they might not like it coming from an academic staff member. Many of the faculty did not feel that way. But every once in a while you would find one, I think. And sometimes I had to agree with them. To me it was more important that the university get to where it needed to go than to get hung up on this. But I think this was rare, very rare. Early on, it wasn't academic staff, I think, early on it was more the woman's 01:13:00voice on the end of the phone telling the male faculty principal investigator, rather than it was academic staff.

So again, I was very fortunate. I was in positions where I wasn't surrounded by that kind of attitude or people. And when people from outside the grad school were, the research activities, the research offices I came in contact with, respected it enough that I didn't feel it at all.

SP: Well now we get to the final group of questions. Life after work. If you would talk about your family, what you do for fun and relaxation when you're not working, what are you doing now in retirement, how do you keep yourself healthy? Do you miss not being on campus?

MW: Let me take that one first. I don't miss not being on campus. I miss some of 01:14:00my colleagues. It was kind of fun to interact and work with those. And I miss a little bit some of that groundbreaking knowledge that would occur. I remember hearing about the stem cell stuff three years before it hit. And that was always kind of fun.

SP: Sure.

MW: We were in with space science and engineering when they took the first picture of the earth with the [spins and camera?] And that kind of maybe in feeling or something always made you feel good. But other than that, I'm saddened sometimes when you read the bad reports in the paper. But I'm also smart enough to know that it's not the full story always in there. So that's where it is. Uh, what am I doing? What did I do and what am I doing?

SP: Yeah. What did you do?

MW: Pretty much a lot of it is the same. I love to ski. And did a lot of that. I went every winter while we were working. Unfortunately, I had surgery. I had a herniated disk in my neck. And I skied a couple years after that. And now, in retirement, I think it's a little dangerous. If I fall really hard, I could be in trouble. So I've given the skiing up. And in its place I've gotten more serious about playing golf in the summer. And I read more than I ever did. I just didn't have time.

SP: Do you like to read?

MW: At the time I didn't--yeah, I enjoy a good mystery, actually. And working, I 01:16:00had so many other things I was reading that reading for pleasure, there wasn't any time left for that. And we, I like to hike and travel a lot. I've always had the travel bug. My father used to tease me when I was seventeen years old about traveling. And I still have that. My older sister is in Arizona now full time, and my brother's in Rancho Mirage, outside of Palm Springs.

SP: Oh, those are nice places to visit.

MW: Perfect places to visit, particularly when it's cold here. And they're both, my sister has a spare bedroom with my name on it, and my brother has a casita, which is a separate little house, and a swimming pool in the front yard, and a hot tub. He lived in Los Angeles while he was working. He ended up flying for United Airlines. And when he retired, decided that he didn't need the hustle and bustle of the big city, so he moved further east, but not out of California. He 01:17:00fled from Chicago one year after, when there were 28 inches of snow. So I'm the only one in the family really who has stuck it out in the winter. But I like winter, and I've always liked winter sports. I'd like to do a little more snowshoeing or something. But we don't get enough snow. And I like to travel and break the winter up. A trip somewhere, to the sun, then come back here for a while, then go back to the sun again.

SP: Where are some of your favorite places that you've traveled?

MW: That I've traveled. Oh. I like to go to where there's a lot of nature. I enjoyed Alaska a lot. I've done some, with the Alumni Association, got into some wildlife tours that they have offered. One was to Churchill for polar bears. And 01:18:00Yellowstone in January when it's 20 below zero for wolves, we found all kinds of wolves. Oh, Yellowstone was just so picturesque in the winter, with the frost all over everything from the geysers and things. And we went for, the guide volunteered to take us all for an evening walk into the geyser basin one night. And it turned out the moon had set. And so the stars were just there. Oh, I've never seen so many. It was just magical. It really was. And on the way back, Old Faithful went off for us.

SP: Oh, my.

MW: And that same group, last summer we went to Bella Coola, British Columbia, and went grizzly bear watching. And next summer that group is going to go to Newfoundland for whales and birds. Puffins, they're my favorite bird.

SP: Now where haven't you been that you want to go to?

MW: Oh, I want to go to Galapagos Islands. And I'd like to go Down Under. I would like to go to New Zealand and Australia. I originally thought I wanted to go to the Orient, but right now I'm not so sure I want to go there. They get their bird flu under control, maybe. And I love to go, in the wintertime I love to go somewhere warm. I'm really a fan of Hawaii. I've been there a lot.

SP: The questions are over. But is there something you'd like to say to add to the tape before we turn it off?

MW: Oh, maybe only that I really feel like I've been very fortunate. The university's been a great place to work. It has been very supportive of me, and I wish it all, as an alum, I especially wish it all the best in forward movement 01:20:00that it can handle.

SP: Well thank you very much. This was an excellent interview and I'm so glad you agreed to do it. Thank you.

MW: My pleasure. [pause]

SP: There is one more thing we want to add to this tape. Go ahead.

MW: I just wanted to talk about how the bombing affected everything. I was living at the time on the south side of Madison. And woke up in the middle of the night thinking it was raining, because there was this rumble. And we were six, seven miles away. And when I got back to campus, and I was walking toward Bascom Hall, at the time I was carpooling to Space Science building, and then I'd walk up the hill. And there were all these police. And it was a shambles. They weren't going to necessarily even let me get to work. And we got up there and I found out what had been going on. And it was not but two days later that 01:21:00they announced that Bob [Borchers?], who was the supervisor of the prof, of Fassnacht, was going to try administration. And [Heinz Barsha?], who was the senior faculty member, was going to move to the engineering campus. And they both left physics at that point in time. And Bob came and was associate dean for the physical sciences in the graduate school. He never went back to research. That just totally changed his life. He went from there to vice chancellor at Madison, vice chancellor at Colorado, associate director of Lawrence Livermore Labs out in California, to assistant director of National Science Foundation, where he retired. It's just amazing what these kinds of things do to you. It 01:22:00really totally calmed the campus down, too.

SP: Right. Right.

MW: It just leveled it. It was really an experience to go through. I know, it's hard for me to believe that the students on campus now have no idea, and no memory of any of that.

SP: Well, thank you for adding that. I'm glad we got it on.