8 The Scope of the University is Reduced: 1979-1982

While Chancellor Fort could fend off rather easily the suggestion that the smaller Centers be turned over to the DNR, he had considerably less success coping with two other events during the Fall 1978 semester. These events foreshadowed the most turbulent, stressful four years in the history of the Center System. The first development was an unanticipated enrollment decline of 2.4% to 8,389 headcount. While this drop, by itself, might appear insignificant, it gave credence to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report that predicted the UW System enrollment would plunge by at least 25% by 1993. Such a drastic decline, the LFB said, would surely result in tenured faculty layoffs. While the 21.4% enrollment decline projected for the Center System was considerably less than the 30% to 40% rate expected for several four-year campuses, it renewed the concerns about the ability of the smaller Centers to attract enough students to maintain a high quality academic program at a reasonable cost.^[1]

The LFB predictions touched off a great deal of activity in the state capitol and in Van Hise Hall, the headquarters for System Administration. As enrollment declined, the University’s leaders would have to carefully trim the System’s scope in response to diminished demand and a simultaneously reduced state budget. Consequently, the 1979-1981 budget bill directed the Board of Regents’ Education Committee to report by November 30, 1979, how the University planned to cope with an enrollment decline and less money. The Education Committee’s preliminary report, “Preparing for a Decade of Enrollment Decline,” indicated that existing academic program audit and review procedures would suffice to gradually scale down the scope of the University’s offerings in all except two institutions, the Center System and UW-Superior. Accordingly, the Board of Regents ordered President Young to appoint special task forces to conduct in-depth reviews of enrollment and budget prospects for those two units. The Center System Task Force was to pay particular attention to the outlook for Barron County, Medford, and Richland.^[2]

Behind the scenes while the “November 30th Report,” as it was popularly labelled, was still in the draft stage, Chancellor Fort argued strenuously with the President’s staff. He contended that the entire Center System was not a legitimate candidate for a far-reaching review. Fort lodged his contention on the language of the budget resolution, which required a review for any UW institution whose cost of instruction exceeded the University Cluster average CSI by 130%. He reminded the System administrators that the Center System’s CSI was just 123.3% of that average, compared to Superior’s 146.8%. While Superior’s options obviously needed to be investigated, he argued, the Centers deserved to be excused from this round of special scrutiny.^[3] In a pithy letter, an angry Vice President Donald Smith demolished Fort’s arguments. Smith pointed out that Fort had focused upon just one portion of a broadly worded resolution; the Board of Regents needed to respond to all of the issues it raised. Even though the Center System CSI was below the legislature’s threshold, the three named Centers had stumbled over the Regents’ 1975 tripwire that required individual Centers to keep their cost of instruction below 120% of the Center System’s average. In addition, Medford was far below the 250 FTE minimum and the enrollment projections for Barron County and Richland were not promising. At some point, a campus’s academic program might become so constricted that it could no longer meet the quality standards of the University of Wisconsin. Smith closed with the reminder that the Center System’s budget contained $700,000 more than her enrollment warranted. The Board of Regents and System Administration needed to demonstrate that steps were being taken to bring the Centers’ fiscal affairs into balance.^[4]

Shortly after New Year’s Day, 1980, President Young appointed an eleven member “Special Task Force to Review the Programs of the UW-Barron County, UW-Medford, and UW-Richland, Within the Mission of the UW Center System,” and named UW-Madison Professor Richard Rossmiller as its chairperson. None of the eleven were from the Center System; however, Thornton Liechty, assistant to the chancellor, and Peter Okray, chair of the Senate Steering Committee, were designated as resource persons to the Task Force. Young told the members that the Board of Regents had given them a broad mandate, including the freedom “to rethink the wisdom of the current alignment of the Center System, or individual Centers.” Young requested that the Task Force work hard and quickly, forwarding its recommendations to the President by June 1, 1980.^[5]

The Task Force’s report, however, would actually go to new UW System President Robert M. O’Neil because Young retired at the end of January. O’Neil, the first President in decades who did not have previous ties to the UW, came from Indiana University at Bloomington, where he had been vice president and chief academic administrator. A Harvard Law School graduate, O’Neil was nationally known as an expert on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause. O’Neil’s personal style was unorthodox–he typed many of his own letters and either walked or rode a bicycle to Van Hise and to appointments in Madison, spurning the use of the car and driver traditionally provided to the President.^[6]

The Task Force held a public hearing in each of the three communities to gather the opinions of students, faculty, and the general public. The group also conducted interviews with campus administrators, faculty, and community leaders to learn of the plans they had for guiding their Center through this crisis. And, of course, the Task Force used previous reports on the Center System in its deliberations.^[7]

The Special Task Force’s “Report to the President” began by sketching the fiscal problems of the Center System. It noted that the Centers and System Administration had already negotiated budget reductions of $150,000 for 1980-81 and another $400,000 for the following year, which would repay most of the debt. However, the Task Force estimated that the Center System would accumulate an additional $600,000 in red ink by the mid-1980s due to the projected enrollment decline. Consequently, closing all three Centers would not fully address this looming fiscal disaster. It seemed apparent that only a fundamental restructuring of the Center System could solve its lingering and future financial problems.^[8]

The Task Force quickly decided that maintaining the status quo would not solve the Center System’s huge budget problem. Proportional budget cuts spread across all fourteen Centers would not solve it either because even the strongest campuses’ academic program would be devastated. Likewise, transferring some Centers to four-year campuses was not a practical solution. The remaining Centers would still confront a bleak fiscal future and the negative publicity generated by this policy seemed likely to scare away potential students. The two remaining alternatives sought a solution outside the Center System. A remerger of the Centers with Extension received only brief consideration because the latter had its own serious financial problems. Finally, the creation of community colleges via a union between the Centers and the VTAE schools was also set aside, in light of Wisconsin’s repeated decisions to keep the two systems separate.^[9]

The Task Force firmly recommended the closing of Medford, but left the timing to the Board of Regents and state legislature. The public hearing in Medford had naturally elicited an outpouring of support. County officials and campus personnel bitterly charged the UW with perfidy for never giving the Center the support that it needed to become solidly established. While the Task Force acknowledged that the campus’s troubled history had kept Medford in a negative light, it concluded that the demographic data did not predict a viable future.^[10]

After it established that a fundamental change should occur in the Center System’s structure, the Task Force proposed the reorganization of the Centers into regional groups as the best way to achieve that goal. The Report described four possible configurations; only one is discussed here, as an example. Configuration I envisioned three groups: Region I would include the northern tier of Centers–Barron, Marshfield, Marathon and Marinette; Region II would lie along the shores of Lakes Michigan and Winnebago and consist of Fond du Lac, Fox Valley, Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Washington; Region III would sweep across the southern part of the state, from Richland to Baraboo to Rock and, finally, to Waukesha. This arrangement allegedly produced savings of $1.4 million, including $282,000 garnered from a reduction in the number of central administration staff in Madison and all of Medford’s $215,000 budget. The remainder would come from cutbacks in each Center’s administration and from a reduction in the number of faculty in each region. Ten campus deans’ positions would be trimmed to half-time, and proportional reductions would be made in every Centers’ library, business office, student services, and classified staff. The number of faculty in each region would be slashed by assigning some faculty to travel throughout the region and by offering traditionally low enrollment courses less frequently. Overseeing each region would be a modest administrative staff (8.5 FTE), which would provide services no longer available on the campuses or from central administration. The Task Force recommended the creation of a new Office of Academic Affairs to be headed by a vice chancellor to coordinate and supervise the regional curricula.. ^[11]

The Task Force decided the Center System should be dismantled only as an extreme last resort. Nevertheless, it studied what might be gained by closing several Centers and assigning the rest to nearby four-year institutions. For example, $3.5 to $4.0 million could be gained by closing six smaller Centers (Baraboo, Barron, Manitowoc, Marinette, Medford, Richland), phasing out entirely the central administration, and assigning the eight survivors to various UWs to be operated as branch campuses. The model the Task Force used envisioned these pairings: Fond du Lac and Fox Valley with UW-Oshkosh, Marathon and Marshfield with UW-Stevens Point, Sheboygan and Washington with UW-Milwaukee, Rock with UW-Whitewater, and Waukesha with UW-Parkside. This drastic option would reduce access for people living in the vicinity of the closed Centers and could result in the cannibalization of the remaining campuses by the parent campuses as enrollments and budgets declined. In addition, these projected savings would be diminished by the costs of closing six campuses and of educating those Centers’ students elsewhere in the UW.^[12]

The Task Force Report also recommended several policies for consideration by the Board of Regents and state government. It suggested that the Regents should use a three-year rolling CSI average, instead of annual figures, to identify Centers for special review because small Centers’ cost of instruction could fluctuate tremendously from year to year. Once the Center System’s future had been decided, the Board of Regents and state government should promise not to conduct a special review of any Center for six years to allow adequate time for the corrective measures to take effect. Finally, the Task Force called upon the governor and legislature to support the entire University of Wisconsin System with adequate resources to maintain both access and the quality of the academic program. The Report closed with a question, does the state “have the will to preserve one of its most valuable resources?”.^[13]

In May 1980, while the Special Task Force was winding up its work, the Center System faculty was astounded to learn that Chancellor Fort had overturned tenure recommendations for five probationary faculty. Fort based his decision on the need to avoid excessive “tenure density” in any academic department. If the tenure density in a department exceeded 75%, Fort believed he would not have the flexibility needed to make staffing adjustments when the Center System’s enrollment declined or if a campus was closed. The tenure density issue was not new to the Centers or other UW institutions, as it had been discussed periodically for several years. The key concern of the Board of Regents and the System Administration was that each institution maintain sufficient staffing flexibility so that tenured faculty would not have to be laid off in the event of a severe enrollment decline, because that would require a declaration of a fiscal emergency.^[14]

The five affected persons soon filed a grievance with the Senate Appeals and Grievances Committee, requesting a reversal of the Chancellor’s decision. Their central argument was that Fort’s rationale for denying them tenure was not among the criteria for awarding tenure in the Faculty Personnel Rules (UWS 3.06(b)), which required an evaluation of a probationary faculty member’s “. . . teaching, research, and professional and public service and contribution to the institution.” In each case, the department executive committee and campus evaluation committee had decided that the person had met these criteria and had earned a tenure appointment. Because Fort’s decision was not made public until late May, the academic departments, campus collegia, and the Senate did not have an opportunity to voice an opinion in this dispute until the Fall semester began. When they did speak, they solidly backed the appellants. In January 1981, the Senate passed unanimously a resolution that called upon the Chancellor to reverse his decision because his “. . . actions ignore and supersede faculty responsibility for shared governance.” In the 1981 Spring semester the Appeals and Grievances Committee granted all of the appeals and formally requested Fort to send forward the five tenure recommendations to the Board of Regents. He reluctantly did so. ^[15]

The issues raised by these tenure density cases reverberated throughout the University of Wisconsin. Ever since merger various faculty groups had expressed alarm at the increasing number of instructional academic staff (lecturers), who were teaching courses. Since these lecturers were not “faculty,” they were not protected by the Faculty Personnel Rules and were usually employed on a semester to semester basis with the position dependent upon sufficient enrollment. Concerns about this practice, along with an increasing emphasis upon avoiding high tenure density, were not limited to the UW. In 1973, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) had issued a statement on tenure density that read, in part, “To make appointments which are destined to lead to non-retention because of a fixed numerical quota of tenured positions, . . ., is to depart from a basic feature of the system of tenure and thus to weaken the protections of academic freedom.”^[16] The highly publicized furor in the Center System caused System Executive Vice President Joseph Kauffman to request a legal opinion from UW Legal Counsel John Tallman. He asked whether a chancellor could make tenure decisions on criteria other than those specified in the Faculty Personnel Rules. Tallman replied affirmatively, arguing that a chancellor, according to the Personnel Rules, had the authority to also take into account “. . . the mission and needs of the particular institution and its component parts.” Tallman added that several Regents’ policies specified the need to maintain staffing flexibility. Indeed, some UW institutions had responded by establishing a specific tenure ratio. ^[17]

Eventually, the Center System Senate adopted a tenure policy, but avoided setting a specific maximum for the number of tenured faculty. The Policy included “Institutional Need as a Criterion in Defining Tenure Positions” and “Program Flexibility” as factors the academic departments and campuses were to consider in making tenure recommendations. The policy required each department to conduct an annual review of its core curriculum and the enrollment history and projections for its courses to ascertain the number of tenured positions the department could justify. Each year every probationary faculty member was to receive a letter that assessed “the anticipated institutional need for positions” in his/her academic discipline.^[18] The provisions of this document laid the foundation for many other policies still in force–the annual four semester sequence review, the need for a department to justify the existence of a tenurable position before it receives permission to advertise a faculty position, and policies which mandate the primary role of the departments in the employment and evaluation of the instructional academic staff.

In May 1980, as the System Task Force was polishing its report, Chancellor Fort began preparation of an institutional response to its recommendations. He appointed a seven member Coordinating Committee to write a critique of each of the Task Force’s proposals. Fort requested that the Coordinating Committee’s conclusions be sent to him no later than September 1.^[19]

The Coordinating Committee’s report, “Meeting the Challenges of the 1980s,” concurred with many of the Task Force recommendations. For example, it reluctantly agreed that Medford should be closed, but expressed the hope that some of the dollars saved could be shunted to Barron and Richland to enable them to recruit more students and improve their chances of survival. The members also agreed that the amount realized from closing the smaller Centers would be negligible. In addition, they observed that transferring the survivors elsewhere could touch off a competition to gain control of these stronger Centers that would be potentially damaging to the entire University of Wisconsin System. The Coordinating Committee approved the suggestion that the Center System should reduce the size of its administration since the faculty already had been severely trimmed. If fewer students meant fewer teachers, it also meant less demand for the services administrators provided. The Committee believed that the Central Administration in Madison was especially overstaffed.^[20]

The Coordinating Committee disagreed with the Task Force’s conclusion that the Center System allegedly could not overcome its fiscal difficulties as it was currently organized and that the Centers should be rearranged into regional groups. It asserted that, just as an enrollment decrease in 1978 had created much of the problem, the enrollment increase in Fall 1979 (316 students, 3.8%) and the one projected for September 1980 would enable the Centers to repay almost all of its debt. The members also proposed that at least twelve positions could be pared from the central administration, saving $250,000. Having established its confidence in the Center System’s ability to reduce its budget, the Coordinating Committee moved to a critique of regionalization.

The major advantages claimed for regionalization were a reduction in administrative overhead costs and enhancement of the Centers’ ability to attract and serve students. The Coordinating Committee attacked both of those claims. Using figures supplied by Assistant Chancellor for Administrative Services Antone Kucera, it argued that the Task Force had vastly overestimated the savings from regionalization and had dangerously understaffed the regional offices. For example, the Task Force had neglected to include money for S & E (supplies and expenses) in its budget, an oversight that Kucera estimated would reduce the savings by $340,000. Kucera also worried that the proposed cuts in the business operations staff would ensure that a regionalized Center System would fail one of Wisconsin’s rigorous audits. Kucera’s concerns were backed up by comments from Manitowoc Business Manager Steven Bendrick, who related that for eight months he had also operated Fox Valley’s business office. He reported that services at both campuses had suffered and that, while they were able to “get by,” sharing a business manager would not work over the long haul. Bendrick predicted that the regionalized business staff would be unable to cope with the heavy workload on the campuses, especially during final registration when tuition and fees were collected.^[21]

Using data supplied by Assistant Professor Stephen Portch (English, Richland), the Coordinating Committee declared that, with regionalization, services to students on the campuses would be seriously deficient. For instance, the students would be unable to obtain adequate academic advising and counselling from the half-time student services officers. Students would find it difficult to arrange a time to meet with circuit-riding faculty. The campus libraries would be open fewer hours. Non-traditional students would suffer the most from the effects of reduced student services and they were the very group that the Centers were being urged to work hard to attract. National studies had repeatedly demonstrated that non-traditional students made greater use of these services. The net result, then, would be a declining enrollment as word spread that the Centers could not meet students’ basic needs.^[22]

Chancellor Fort’s speech, “The Issue Before The House: The UW Center System and Access For the 1980s,” to the Board of Regents in October 1980 disappointed anyone who anticipated hearing new ideas for leading and managing the Centers. The Chancellor agreed with the Coordinating Committee’s conclusion that the Center System did not need to be restructured and assured the Regents that the necessary reductions would be made at Barron and Richland to bring their budgets to an acceptable level. However, he did not propose cutbacks in the Central Administration staff; instead, he said the matter would be studied. Fort made a plea for the President and Regents to consider seriously the creation of a “basic financial module” for the Center System, which would take into account the diseconomies of scale that arose from the geographical dispersion of the Centers.^[23]

Especially disappointed with Fort’s remarks were the two UW-Madison professors, William Lenehan and Richard Rossmiller, who had been members of the Task Force. Lenehan wrote Rossmiller that he was pleased that everyone agreed that Medford should be closed but he blasted Fort’s request for further study of issues that both the Task Force and Coordinating Committee had thoroughly investigated. Lenehan complained that Fort had asked for more money, so that he would not have to face “the necessity of finding ways to live within the Center System’s current and projected budget.” Rossmiller forwarded Lenehan’s letter to Vice President Kauffman, who had also served on the Task Force, adding his own observation that Fort “still does not seem willing to face reality.”^[24]

In December 1980, President O’Neil brought to a close a year’s intense study of the Center System, when he made his recommendations about its future to the Board of Regents. He began by reviewing the Centers’ major strengths–they provided relatively low cost access to the UW, the faculty and staff were extremely dedicated, and the Center System was fulfilling its mission to deliver a high quality academic program to freshmen and sophomores. But because the Centers faced a potential $1.5 million debt by 1986, some changes had to be made. O’Neil confirmed that Medford would be closed. He followed the Task Force’s lead in recommending that Barron and Richland remain open, but admonished them to increase their enrollments and to keep their costs under control. The President reported that he had been persuaded by the Coordinating Committee’s strong arguments against regionalization and had decided to give the Center System some additional time to decrease its institutional CSI. On that topic, O’Neil said he would not propose a basic financial module for the Center System, but that its instructional costs would continue to be compared to those of the freshman-sophomore CSI in the University Cluster. He added that, in this era of fiscal stringencies, he could not justify cutting the Center System free from standard measures of cost effectiveness. In an effort to facilitate the search for more efficient ways to operate, O’Neil said his office was willing to arrange talks between a Center and a baccalaureate UW institution that might eventually result in formal affiliation between the two. The President concluded by saying that he would give the Board periodic progress reports and in one year’s time he would decide if further action was necessary to assure that the Center System would reach its objectives.^[25]

Even before President O’Neil made his encouraging remarks about formal affiliation between a Center and a four-year UW, both the Fox Valley and Marathon County Centers had begun exploring the possibility of attaching themselves to UW-Madison. This development understandably alarmed Chancellor Fort. If Fox Valley and Marathon, the second and third largest Centers, respectively, left the Center System, the remaining campuses would find it much more difficult to meet the Regents’ enrollment and financial goals. In time, President O’Neil also became concerned. His major concern was political. UW-Stevens Point and UW-Oshkosh had already objected to the possibility that nearby Centers might leapfrog over them to establish ties with Madison. O’Neil realized that both institutions had a valid complaint. In addition, if these two Centers were permitted to attach themselves to Madison, the infighting among the UW System campuses would surely intensify. So O’Neil sought a strategy that would permit him to gently defuse the situation.^[26]

In late April 1981, President O’Neil met with the Senate Steering Committee to discuss the affiliation issue. During this session, he used points provided by Chancellor Fort to list four major conditions that any affiliation negotiations would have to meet. First, a two-year planning period must precede any formal proposal for affiliation. Second, that planning must include a study of the impact of the affiliation upon the Center System and upon all other UW campuses. Third, O’Neil stressed that several governing bodies–the Center’s host community, the Board of Regents, and perhaps even the legislature–would have to give their consent to the proposed affiliation. Finally, the President observed that it was unlikely that he would view favorably an affiliation between a Center and a “remote” UW, because of the negative impact on the nearby UW campuses. The Senate Steering Committee Chair widely circulated these requirements which dampened considerably the enthusiasm for affiliation by Fox Valley and Marathon.^[27]

Meanwhile, Chancellor Fort appointed a Long Range Planning Committee, whose major responsibility was to write a six-year plan for the Center System, describing how the institution would manage diminishing resources during an era of declining enrollments. In his initial letter to the committee members, the Chancellor outlined the parameters of the task. They were to assume that the current Center System structure, minus Medford, would be maintained. They were asked to outline the staffing and program changes necessary to enable the Centers to accommodate current and future givebacks to the UW System and the state. In addition, the long range planners were to recommend any necessary changes in the administrative and governance structures. Because the task was so broad, Fort gave them almost a year to do the work, asking that their plan be forwarded to him by December 1, 1981.^[28]

While the Long Range Planning Committee pored over the numerous studies of the Center System, interviewed department chairs and deans, and consulted with the Senate Budget Committee, once again state and federal economic problems intervened and made its task more difficult. In mid-May 1981, as state legislators worked on the 1981-1983 biennial budget, Governor Dreyfus suddenly announced that the proposed biennial budget needed to be reduced by six percent to balance the state’s books. Dreyfus explained that the still lethargic economy had compelled the Legislative Fiscal Bureau to reduce its estimate of revenue over the biennium. In addition, because of similar difficulties in Washington, newly installed President Ronald Reagan had announced cutbacks in Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, and several block grant programs which would diminish federal aids to Wisconsin by $220 million over the same interval. The Governor and his Republican colleagues believed the best way to avoid red ink was to cut expenses. The Democrats, who controlled the legislature, responded that the state should cover the deficit through selective tax increases in order to maintain the integrity of these important social welfare programs and to underwrite a 1981-1983 state budget at least at its current level.^[29]

Speaking on behalf of the University of Wisconsin System, President O’Neil reacted very negatively to Dreyfus’s proposal. He noted that, so far, the UW had accommodated successive cutbacks in state funding, including an $18.5 million giveback imposed in Fall 1980. But he insisted that this most recent paring down of $51 million for the biennium, coming in the midst of a 5,000 student increase in enrollment, would produce “unspeakable results.”^[30]

The Center System’s share of the looming reduction was $750,000 or 35 positions. The Senate Budget Committee, in close consultation with the Long Range Planning group, took the lead in drafting a proposal for meeting this crisis. The Budget Committee reported that a cutback of this magnitude could not be squeezed entirely from faculty positions, which had borne the brunt of previous decreases. Consequently, it recommended that 15 positions be slashed from the Central Office staff, reducing it from 35 to 20 full-time slots. The Budget Committee supported its dramatic proposal with the observation that every group which had studied the Center System since merger had concluded that the central administration was overstaffed. What is more, the Chancellor’s failure to make any significant cuts in his office had created a serious morale problem on the campuses, where the budget axe had repeatedly fallen. Another twelve positions would be gained by selective trimming of the Centers’ administrative staffs. This might be done, for example, by reducing annual contracts by a month or two, especially at Centers where the summer session was very small or where one was not offered. The remaining eight positions would have to be trimmed from the instructional staff.^[31]

In the midst of this latest budget turmoil, Chancellor Fort, on June 13, 1981, announced his resignation to become the Chancellor of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro.^[32] Naturally, Fort’s announcement triggered speculation about his reasons for leaving. Some believed that after seven years of incessant strife, he was burned out from defending the Centers. While that was the most visible explanation, a few insiders also knew that Fort’s relationship with President O’Neil and key members of the President’s staff had grown increasingly tense. Throughout the Task Force process, the Chancellor had repeatedly insisted that the entire Center System should not be under scrutiny, because it had not met the legislature’s criteria for a special review.^[33] By the time of his resignation even the Deans had stepped up their criticism of Fort’s steadfast refusal to consider deep cuts in the Central Office Staff.^[34]

When queried about the anticipated search for Fort’s successor, President O’Neil replied that he intended to take his time and study the wisdom of a thorough reorganization of the Center System.^[35] The President’s remarks sent a shock wave through the Centers. The alarm intensified two weeks later when Vice President Joseph Kauffman told the press that the coincidental resignation of Extension Chancellor Jean Evans had provided an opportunity for the UW System to weigh options for slashing the administrative costs of both institutions. Kauffman observed that one possibility for streamlining the Center System was to entirely eliminate the Central Office, give each Center administrative autonomy under a “super” dean, and have the System Administration oversee the operation.^[36]

Kauffman’s remarks appeared to unveil a plan already adopted in the President’s office. As an interim measure O’Neil then announced the appointment of Robert R. Polk, his Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, as the half-time Acting Chancellor of the Center System. Polk, who had earned his Bachelor’s Degree from the Naval Academy in 1944 and who had been a naval officer and pilot from 1944 to 1949, had long been connected to the University of Wisconsin. He had served as a faculty member and chair of the UW-Oshkosh Geography Department from 1957-1967. Then he had moved into full time administration at Oshkosh. After the merger, Polk had been appointed to his current post in the President’s office.^[37]

O’Neil, sensitive to the fears that would surely arise from Polk’s selection, arranged a meeting to introduce the acting chancellor to representatives of the faculty, the academic staff, and the deans. These representatives reported, “The President said there was no hidden agenda for Center System reorganization,” but that he was also convinced that significant economies could be achieved in the Centers’ administration. O’Neil told the delegates that he felt Polk, who had a thorough understanding of the Center System’s difficulties and of the UW System, would be able to assist the Centers in defining and implementing these economies. Polk impressed the representatives with his candor and his pledge to help the Centers get their affairs in order.^[38]

Acting Chancellor Polk repeated O’Neil’s theme when he met for the first time with various constituencies–the Central Office staff, the Deans, the Board of Visitors, the Academic Staff Advisory Committee, and the Senate. In his initial Senate session he said, “I want to assure you that I have no charge to dissolve or unbundle the Center System but we will have to undertake some restructuring actions cooperatively and with dispatch. In the past the Center System has given outsiders the impression that it is unable to make a tough decision. This has to change.”^[39] To help him accomplish the restructuring, Polk appointed a Special Planning Committee (SPC), and charged it with two major tasks: recommending specific reductions in the Central Office staff and developing a procedure to be followed if a Center decided it wished to affiliate with a four-year institution. Polk directed the SPC to use the System Task Force and the Center System’s Long Range Planning Committee Reports as it discussed the possible elimination of Central Office positions. Polk requested the SPC’s final report by February 1, 1982.^[40]

In November 1981, the Long Range Planning Committee published its report, “Adjusting the UW Center System to the Demands of the 1980s. A Six Year Plan.” The Six Year Plan became the blueprint for the Centers’ payment of its debt to UW System, of state-mandated budget reductions, and trimming of program and staff as the enrollment declined in the 1980s. While the Six Year Plan set goals and suggested processes or formulas for achieving them, it left the details of implementation to be worked out by the chancellor and the Senate.^[41]

Of course, given the circumstances, much of the Long Range Planning Committee’s report dealt with financial issues. The Committee proposed that the Center System gradually reduce its CSI to approach the average cost-per-student of the University Cluster campuses’ freshman-sophomore programs by 1987. It also recommended that processes be established so that budget reductions could be sensibly made as enrollment declined, rather than waiting, as in the past, until a huge debt had accumulated. A key to achieving these goals lay in changing the method for allocating resources within the Center System. Since merger, tradition had prevailed in the setting of each Center’s annual budget, thus funding inequities had been compounded over the years. Although some Centers, such as Barron and Richland, had experienced deep emergency budget cuts to bring their campus CSIs within acceptable limits, the greatest fiscal burden had been borne by the larger Centers. Consequently, these campuses’ academic and support services programs were seriously underfunded and their faculty and staff felt overworked. To rectify this situation, the Six Year Plan proposed a formula, based on the student credit hours generated at each Center, that would be used to allocate all positions (administrative, support staff, faculty) to each campus. Over a few years, this formula would correct the most glaring funding inequities among the campuses and bring them all within a narrower range of the institution’s average CSI. To complement these important proposals, the Committee recommended that a Reinvestment Fund be created to underwrite innovative programs and to provide matching funds for grant proposals. This was something that had been proposed every year since merger, but never implemented due to repeated budget restraints.^[42]

In order to facilitate the reallocation of positions and money among the Centers, the Long Range Planning Committee urged the Senate to create an annual academic program planning process to be conducted by the academic departments and relevant campus committees. The departments would play a pivotal role in this process because they had a systemwide perspective of the curriculum and could allot fairly the faculty and lecturer positions needed to staff the academic program at each Center. To make clear the departments’ control over the academic program, the Six Year Plan recommended that the Constitution be amended to stipulate that no course could be offered and no instructor could be employed without the express approval of the relevant department chair.^[43]

The path-breaking Six Year Plan proved to be an invaluable tool as the Center System worked toward bringing staffing into balance with enrollment. Now data had been gathered to support or debunk long-held notions about who was underfunded and who was overfunded. Formulas and procedures had been created to enable the Centers to meet budget crises in a more rational manner. And mechanisms had been created to assure that long-range planning would be an ongoing process, so that the Centers could anticipate and adjust to the changing tastes of their student clientele.

Acting Chancellor Polk’s Special Planning Committee made extensive use of the Six Year Plan and its supporting data to prepare its recommendations for paring down the Central Office staff. In addition, the SPC interviewed each staff member to better understand the position and how it fit into the services provided by the central administration. Consequently, the SPC believed it was on solid ground when it proposed to Polk a reduction of the Central Office staff from 35 to 20 positions.

The SPC recommended that two positions (media services and institutional research) be eliminated. The remainder of the reductions would be accomplished by transferring several data processing and business office positions to UW System Administration and by terminating the employment of those classified staff whose services were no longer required. The members of the SPC had also discussed at length the chancellor’s office itself. In view of these staff adjustments, it seemed that the Center System no longer needed a full-time chief administrative officer. Then, too, Polk’s excellent performance as a half-time Acting Chancellor was a powerful argument in favor of a somewhat streamlined position. Ultimately, the SPC decided that the Center System could be adequately served by a two-thirds time chancellor and suggested that the balance of the new position continue to be lodged in System Administration. The SPC had taken into account the potential impact of these recommendations upon the administrative staff at each Center, where the dean, the student services director, and the business manager would experience an increased workload. Following precisely the Six Year Plan, the SPC proposed that, if a Center’s non-instructional/administrative costs exceeded the Center System average by 20% or more, its administrative staff should be trimmed to bring its personnel into balance with the workload.^[44]

The SPC’s final recommendation concerning the Central Office moved in a different direction. The SPC proposed that one new position, an assistant chancellor for student services, be created. Again, this need had periodically been discussed but Chancellor Fort had steadfastly refused to make the necessary adjustments to create the post. This assistant chancellor would supervise the operation of the Registrar’s and Financial Aids’ Offices and work with the Centers’ directors of student services to resolve transfer issues. It was also anticipated that the assistant chancellor would help coordinate the student recruitment and retention endeavors by bringing the directors together periodically to plot effective strategies.^[45]

The SPC also drafted an Affiliation Protocol to be followed if a Center decided to try to attach itself to another UW institution. The SPC followed the guidelines already laid down by President O’Neil and Chancellor Fort in shaping the Protocol. The process could only begin upon a two-thirds vote of the entire collegium membership. Once that vote was secured, the Center was to investigate the effect of its departure upon the Center System, on each one of the other UWs, and, perhaps most importantly, upon the employment status of each person in the new relationship. The Center would also have to secure the consent of its host community to transfer its allegiance from the Center System. Finally, the Center was required to convince the Chancellor to recommend secession to the President and the Board of Regents, who had the ultimate authority to approve or veto the proposal. The Affiliation Protocol, a daunting, three-page long list of requirements, thoroughly squelched interest in pursuing new affiliations. Of course, the prospect that the implementation of the Six Year Plan would finally put the Centers on a solid footing no doubt also contributed to the quieting of this issue.^[46]

Acting Chancellor Polk was very pleased with the Special Planning Committee’s Report. In transmitting a copy to President O’Neil, he observed that it was “. . . succinct and on target, in my view.” He told O’Neil that he would soon give notice to four staff members that their positions would be terminated as of the first of July. In addition, he immediately began working to facilitate the transfer of three data processing personnel to UW System Administration offices. Polk moved quickly on these tasks so that the morale of remaining Central Office staff members would rise–the uncertainty of the past six months had taken a heavy toll on everyone’s spirits. When all of these transitions were completed, the central administration would be at the level proposed by the SPC.^[47]

Now Polk turned his attention to lining up support, both inside and outside the Center System, for the Special Planning Committee recommendations. With a sense of relief, the various Center System constituencies endorsed the Report. For example, the Faculty Senate did so unanimously in April, including even the votes of senators from campuses which had expressed an interest in affiliation with UW-Madison.^[48] A few days later, Polk appeared to have won support from President O’Neil, who announced that he was removing the “Acting” from Polk’s title. This meant that Polk would be the Center System’s Chancellor until May 1983, when he would return full time to System Administration. In making this announcement, however, O’Neil, ominously noted that this interim appointment would provide time “. . . for the UW System Administration to review various alternative structures and options . . .” for the Center System. These were most disquieting words because they suggested that O’Neil had lingering doubts that the thirteen Centers should continue to operate as a single institution.^[49]

Polk, who had become convinced that the Center System was a valuable asset to the University, wrote a long letter to O’Neil concerning these remarks. He reiterated his conclusion that the Center System was now on the right track. Polk insisted that the major elements in the Six Year Plan and the Special Planning Committee proposals preserved “the best of the Center System whose liberal arts transfer mission and function as an access point for thousands of Wisconsin students are in my view indispensable contributions to the University of Wisconsin System. That the Center System is still there to be salvaged is remarkable in itself after all the buffeting it has received.” Polk reviewed the key items that remained to be accomplished and closed with, “Before we can, as a Center System, move toward implementing some necessary internal management improvements, we need badly a corroboration of the plan so that we can do away with the arguments of those who say we should not proceed with further activity until we know that we will be permitted to continue as a System of Centers.”^[50] Polk urged O’Neil to provide this reinforcement when he came to the May Senate meeting.

It is clear that Polk had carefully calculated his strategy. A week before he sent his letter to O’Neil, he had written confidentially to Therese Rozga, Chair of the Senate Steering Committee, asking her to prime the senators to express to O’Neil, “The depth of their concern about any imposed change of planning direction which would disregard progress in the past months and throw the Center System into turmoil once again.” Polk mentioned that he also had arranged for two members of the Board of Visitors to be present at the Senate meeting, to make strong statements of support for keeping the Center System intact.^[51] The transcript of the senators’ comments and O’Neil’s responses clearly reveal that he was surprised by the extensive support for maintaining the Center System. When he remarked that he had heard from a few faculty who continued to talk favorably about affiliation with Madison, several senators responded that this was the minority opinion even on those campuses and that O’Neil should not listen to these lingering malcontents. Instead he should weigh heavily the position of the official governance body, the Senate, in shaping his recommendations to the Board of Regents about the future of the Center System.^[52] A couple of weeks later, O’Neil reassured Polk that he approved of the steps already taken to reduce the central office staff and asserted that his “careful consideration” of the SPC Report did not mean that he disagreed with it. O’Neil asked Polk to relay this message to the Centers and to arrange for O’Neil to meet with the Board of Visitors and the Deans to discuss the Report.^[53]

In the fall of 1982, as the President worked to shape his recommendations to the Board of Regents, Polk tried hard to steer him toward keeping the Center System intact. But O’Neil had also received pressure from people outside the UW System and from some Regents to make “. . . significant changes in the present organization of the Center System.”^[54] After he finished drafting his recommendations in mid October, O’Neil asked Polk to distribute the text for comment to the Board of Visitors, the Deans, and the Faculty Senate leaders. While there was much in the draft that pleased Polk and these groups, they were greatly concerned about three points. Polk wrote that they were worried about O’Neil’s observation that alternate structures, such as those in the Special Planning Committee Report, “. . . remain attractive and potentially viable for the future.” Faculty leaders were especially concerned that this remark signaled that the Center System would remain under intense scrutiny and that an alternate structure might yet be “imposed” upon them. Polk asked O’Neil to recast the sentence, “Additional economies [in Central Administration] should be considered and implemented as soon as possible.,” because it had totally deflated the morale of Polk’s staff. Polk suggested that O’Neil might simply enumerate the central office reductions already made and stress that progress had been made toward establishing a Central Administration that could provide necessary services at “the lowest cost practical.”^[55]

The third point, however, was the most alarming. In discussing the need to appoint a search and screen committee to select Polk’s successor, O’Neil had written, “I believe there may be much value in changing the title from Chancellor (as it now is) to something a bit more modest, . . . [because] it would signal that the academic and administrative leadership of our Centers resides in their Deans and campus-based colleagues–even though major personnel and policy decisions would remain centrally.” Polk reported that this proposal alarmed everyone because it would signal a lesser role for the Centers in the UW System decision-making process. In addition, the reference to the Deans as the Centers’ academic leaders thoroughly upset the faculty leaders because the academic departments, under the Constitution, had the primary role in making faculty appointments, awarding tenure, and monitoring the curriculum. The department chairs, Polk observed, guarded their prerogatives “jealously” against any encroachment by the Deans. To cushion the impact of changing the title of the chief executive, Polk counseled O’Neil to enumerate the powers of the office to clarify that its holder would meet with the other chancellors. Further, he recommended that the reference to the Deans as “academic leaders” be dropped, and that O’Neil explain that they have assumed a somewhat larger “administrative” role, due to the cutbacks in the central office.^[56] Ultimately, O’Neil accepted each of these three suggestions.

Polk continued a personal struggle to prevent a change in the chancellor’s title until the eve of the November Board of Regents meeting. He also helped arrange a meeting with O’Neil for the Senate Steering Committee, which hoped a last-minute appeal might change the President’s mind. It did not. O’Neil told the Steering Committee that he would recommend to the Board, in two days, both a new name for the institution and a new title for its chief executive. He cautioned the Steering Committee not to make its displeasure public, because there were many individuals, including some Regents, who anticipated that much more drastic medicine would be prescribed for the Center System.^[57] The next day, November 4, Polk wrote O’Neil that he, too, had advised the Steering Committee not to go public with its concerns. Polk then informed O’Neil that he did not want to be called upon for comment in the Regents’ meeting because he would have to politely disagree with the President’s recommendations.^[58]

Except for Polk and the Steering Committee, President O’Neil’s announcement that he was recommending a new institutional name for the Center System and a new title for its chief executive caught everyone at the Board meeting by surprise. O’Neil proposed “UW Centers” as the new institutional label to remove confusion that arose from having two “Systems” in the University. The new title, “Executive Dean,” he explained, signaled that the Centers had made significant progress in the last year and a half toward coming together in an effective thirteen campus federation. He emphasized that the executive dean would have the statutory powers of a chancellor and would meet with the Council of Chancellors. O’Neil concluded his report on the Centers by requesting the Board to authorize the recruitment of “an Executive Dean of the University of Wisconsin Centers.” When asked whether the Centers’ staff had been made aware of the President’s recommendations or expressed opposition, O’Neil chose his words carefully. He replied that he had met with the Steering Committee and that he had sensed “some concern” among its members, as well as among the Deans and other groups, that the changes would signal a lesser stature for the Centers. But “As we talked and as I explained some of the thinking that went into the recommendation and shared with them my desire to strengthen and to recognize the role of the Centers, rather than of a central administration, it seemed to me that there was understanding, if not in all quarters complete happiness with the change.” The Regents then unanimously endorsed the new name and authorized the search for an Executive Dean.^[59]

When Chancellor Polk retired from his Center System duties, in May 1983, faculty, staff, and administrators regretted his departure. In his twenty-two months with the Centers, he had compiled an impressive list of accomplishments. He had taken charge of a dispirited team in August 1981, had dispelled fears that he had been assigned to break up the Center System, and had initiated a planning process to implement the recommendations of the System Special Task Force and of the Centers’ Long Range Planning Committee. After he had assessed the situation, he moved quickly to pare down the central office staff, a step that Chancellor Fort had avoided for years. Through his System vice presidency, Polk had communicated to O’Neil and his staff his growing admiration for the hard-working people he met. Moreover, he had brought two mutually suspicious groups–the deans and department chairs–very near to an agreement on a curriculum planning protocol that recognized the academic departments’ primary role in approving the courses and the instructors who would teach them. Perhaps most importantly, Robert Polk had restored the morale of those who worked in the Centers. When he left, they looked forward to a second straight fall semester with an enrollment over 10,000 students. And there was no budget crisis on the horizon!