5 The Center System is Created: The Sixties

The sixties were years of tremendous change and challenge for the United States. President John F. Kennedy, in his 1961 inaugural address, called the American people to accept the hard work of taming a New Frontier. The confrontation with the Soviet Union and the battle against communism continued; by the end of the decade thousands of our troops would be engaged in a war in Vietnam. A host of social problems at home intensified, problems made more urgent by the continuing increase in population. The baby boomers would begin to establish their own families, assuring that the pressure upon social agencies would not diminish. The trend toward urbanization also persisted. These phenomena would compel an ongoing reevaluation of the operative principles of American society, including those of the nation’s colleges and universities.

The challenges facing Wisconsin, of course, mirrored the national issues. In state-supported higher education the challenge of steadily increasing enrollments was met through an expansion in the number of both two-year and four-year campuses and a major reorganization that phased out all of the County Teachers Colleges and many of the city vocational schools. These changes required action by the state legislature; thus the history of the Freshman-Sophomore Centers during the sixties includes the political interaction between state government, the CCHE, the University of Wisconsin, the State Colleges, the County Teachers Colleges, and the State Board of Vocational and Adult Education (SBVAE).

In 1960, thirty-two percent of Wisconsin’s eighteen to twenty-four year old citizens were enrolled in college. This was almost twice the national average and reflected the state’s continued emphasis upon education. More and more of the enrollees chose to attend a public college or university. In addition, the number of students eighteen to twenty-one years old would continue to grow, as would the percentage of high school graduates who intended to pursue some form of higher education. In 1951, 63.5% of the state’s college students had registered in a public institution; that number rose to 68.6% in 1960 and was projected to increase to at least 70% by the end of the decade. In the midst of all these numbers is the fact that, percentage-wise, the Centers’ enrollment was growing more rapidly than either Madison’s or Milwaukee’s. From 1954 to 1964, the number of students attending a Center swelled by 177% while the number at Madison and Milwaukee grew, respectively, by 88% and 82% during the same interval.^[1]

Director Adolfson, during his March 1961 Founders’ Day speech in Green Bay, stressed that the Extension Division’s operations would have to change dramatically to meet the challenge of an urbanized society. He noted that Extension “. . ., through its Centers, is in a good position to once again respond to the state’s educational and research needs.” He predicted that the Centers would eventually emerge as a special type of junior college. Adolfson believed that the Centers would increasingly attract instructors who had earned a doctorate and who intended to make teaching in the Center System their career. This would naturally give more permanence and continuity to the teaching staff. He applauded the efforts of each host community to provide its Center with adequate facilities, but noted that there remained a critical need for more laboratories to offer a greater variety of science courses. Once again, he emphasized the Centers’ close ties to the Madison campus as assurance that the students received a high-quality education. Adolfson concluded with a reiteration of the key role the Centers would continue to play in fulfilling the Wisconsin Idea—providing citizens with access to the University across the state.^[2]

Meanwhile, the CCHE, the fifteen-member coordinating council created in 1955 to head off a UW/WSU merger, continued its task of developing a master plan for Wisconsin higher education. In January 1961 the Council reported that a survey of the cooperation between the vocational schools, Extension Centers, and State Colleges had produced very positive results. Indeed, these findings indicated that Wisconsin did not need to develop comprehensive junior colleges. Especially significant was the cooperation in guidance and counseling which assured that students were directed to the institution best designed to meet their particular educational goals.^[3]

While the CCHE maintained its stance against developing community colleges in Wisconsin, its staff and various subcommittees worked toward important decisions which would affect all two-year post-secondary programs of study. In the fall of 1962 the CCHE approved a set of recommendations that called for the County Teachers Colleges to be closed by July 1, 1968. The cornerstone of the rationale was that two years of teacher education no longer sufficed, even for those serving one-room, rural elementary schools. A collateral recommendation urged that state teacher certification regulations be changed to require every public school teacher to have at least a bachelor’s degree by the beginning of the 1972-73 school year. The same report recognized that closing the county colleges would compel more students to enroll in the University or in the State Colleges and would create significant geographic gaps in the provision of higher education opportunities in some parts of the state.

The CCHE proposed, consequently, that these gaps be filled by the creation of additional “extension centers,” including some to be operated by the State Colleges. Naturally, criteria for the siting of these additional centers would have to be developed. Accordingly, a Committee Concerned with the Development of New Criteria for the Establishment and Operation of New Extension Centers was founded. It had ten members: four from the University, four representing the State Colleges, and two presidents of County Teachers Colleges. The committee was instructed to base its criteria upon the willingness of a community and/or a county to make a firm financial commitment to construct a new campus, on each site’s distance from any public or private college and on the number of high school graduates within one hour’s commuting distance.^[4]

The University appointed its most influential spokesmen to this committee to promote its interests—President Elvehjem, Chancellor Edwin Young (Madison), Chancellor F.I. Olson (Milwaukee), and Extension Director L.H. Adolfson—and the State Colleges sent men of equal rank. Adolfson, because of his long experience with the Extension Centers, played a pivotal role in the deliberations. Indeed, the committee used his proposal for the minimum criteria as the basis of its deliberations. Adolfson recommended that if a proposed center site was 15 miles from another public institution, there must be a minimum of 900 high school graduates within a 20 mile radius; if the site was 16 to 30 miles from a state-supported college, there should be no less than 750 high school graduates within a 20 mile radius; and, finally, a center more than 30 miles from any public competitor should have at least 600 secondary school graduates within 20 miles. Adolfson explained that he had excluded private colleges from his calculations because students who could afford to attend a private institution would not consider seriously enrolling at a two-year campus. He also maintained that a proposed center should be able to enroll at least 150 to 200 students in order to provide an adequate freshman/sophomore curriculum.^[5]

I.L. Baldwin, a member of the CCHE’s staff, immediately challenged Adolfson’s recommendations because he felt these criteria would permit centers to be too close to other public colleges and to one another. Baldwin also asserted that the minimum number of high school graduates in a center’s primary drawing area ought to be increased, because CCHE’s studies had demonstrated that a minimum enrollment of 300 to 400 students was required for a successful freshman-sophomore campus. The State College spokesmen vigorously supported Baldwin’s views, noting that Adolfson’s proposal would allow the siting of centers practically within “spitting distance” of their institutions. This latter point greatly intensified the debate over who should be authorized to establish and operate the new centers, the University or the State Colleges. The State College representatives vigorously rejected the University’s argument that its experience made it the only logical sponsor of additional centers. They demanded the right to establish and operate two-year branch campuses in those areas where a state college would be the nearest state-sponsored institution.^[6]

The public wrangling over the criteria for siting additional centers caused Democrat Governor Gaylord Nelson (1959-1963) and several members of the legislature to warn that if the CCHE could not reach a reasonable compromise, then the CCHE and both boards of regents might be abolished to merge the University and State Colleges into a single institution.^[7] It is difficult to determine whether this threat spurred the committee members to settle their differences, however in late July 1962 they forwarded their report to the CCHE. The CCHE approved the recommendations in October 1962.^[8]

The discussion of the minimum criteria for the establishment of additional centers had taken place in the midst of a raucous battle over the siting of an extension center in Wood County. For over two years that county’s two major municipalities—Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids—had been competing to be selected as the host community. In November 1961, the Wood County Supervisors had dodged making the choice when they pledged $350,000 toward construction costs in either city and forwarded their resolution to the CCHE. After completing its review, the CCHE passed the question to the UW Board of Regents. During the January and February, 1962, meetings the regents considered at length the competing claims of delegations from Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids. The regents also closely questioned Extension Director Adolfson about his opinion. He observed that both communities could provide the present minimum of 150 students for a successful two-year program, and that both had prospects for growth to 200 to 250 students within five years. But, he added, the proximity of both Marshfield (36 miles) and Wisconsin Rapids (23 miles) to the State College at Stevens Point and to each other (33 miles) was a matter that deserved careful consideration. In June 1962 the regents finally chose Marshfield and established a timetable for securing the funds from the state for equipping the center.^[9] Marshfield evidently won the competition because the city officials and the leaders of the medical community had planned and executed an intense lobbying campaign with the Board of Regents. Marshfield’s greater distance from the Central State College at Stevens Point also helped. The State College Regents, of course, had followed this contest with intense interest. Once the decision to place an Extension Center in Marshfield had been made, they reacted. In a unanimous resolution, they asked the CCHE to delay construction of the Marshfield Center, or any center, until the future of the County Teachers Colleges had been determined and until the criteria for the placement of new centers had been completed. Consequently, the July 1962 meeting of the CCHE was a long and tense session. After a lengthy debate the CCHE members, by a tight seven to six vote, refused to reconsider the Marshfield/Wood County issue and gave the University the green light to proceed. This row opened up a permanent rift between the UW and the State Colleges that seriously damaged the CCHE’s effectiveness as a coordinating body because the persistent issues of locating new centers and deciding who should operate them kept the CCHE membership sharply divided.^[10]

On July 27, 1962, President Elvehjem died unexpectedly. A short time later Vice President Fred Harvey Harrington, a former Madison history professor, was elevated to the University presidency. In early August 1962, Gordon Haferbecker, an administrator at the Central State College at Stevens Point, wrote to Harrington, ostensibly to congratulate him on his appointment. However, Haferbecker devoted most of his letter to a proposal for an extensive network of higher educational opportunities in central Wisconsin. Haferbecker suggested that Central State College become a UW institution and that thereafter, it alone, or in partnership with the Extension Division, be given control over existing and projected centers at Wausau, Merrill, Rhinelander, Medford, Antigo, Marshfield, and Wisconsin Rapids.^[11] Harrington’s reply to Haferbecker was terse and non-committal; he agreed that both the University and the Stevens Point State College should continue their cooperation in the central part of the state. He made no comment on Haferbecker’s bold proposal.

Much different was the President’s memo of the same date to Vice President Robert Clodius and Dean [sic] Adolfson. In it, he said the University must be “. . . out in front on this Center business—with us proposing and moving before a crisis develops.” Harrington requested that Adolfson or one of his staff members prepare a response to Haferbecker’s proposal to be used for planning purposes. Adolfson personally wrote the rebuttal. He noted that Haferbecker had made several good points, but the flaws in his scheme were fatal. First, Adolfson did not believe that the State College regents would give up Stevens Point or any of their institutions to the University. Second, he stated flatly that the State Colleges could not meet the diversified needs of the state’s citizens as adequately as could the Extension Division through its Centers and other programs. Third, he adamantly rejected the suggestion that any Centers should be turned over to Stevens Point. However, Adolfson admitted that the legislature would probably authorize the State Colleges to operate branch campuses, so he urged that the University should be prepared to lay prompt claim to the projected centers in Rhinelander and in the Janesville-Beloit area.^[12]

The need for Harrington’s and Adolfson’s advance planning became increasingly clear during the next two years, as the CCHE laid out detailed plans for at least six, and perhaps as many as twelve, additional two-year campuses in Wisconsin. When these plans and projections were formally announced, the State College leaders intensified the campaign to prevent the establishment of UW Centers in their proximity. The state government—the source of funds to equip and operate the Centers—was inexorably drawn into this momentous conflict.

The federal government added an important consideration to the ongoing debate in Wisconsin when it enacted Public Law 88-204, the Federal Educational Facilities Act of 1963. One of the cornerstones of President Kennedy’s grand plan to strengthen American education, under its terms the federal government would finance 40% of construction costs and contribute significantly toward equipment purchases, especially for science laboratories. Each state would receive a percentage of the federal appropriation, allocated according to its financial commitment to the construction of new educational facilities. Wisconsin fared well in this competition for federal dollars, thanks to years of study and planning by the CCHE. PL 88-204 gave a great boost to potential two-year campus host communities and counties because they would now have to underwrite just sixty percent of the construction expenses. This feature made it easier, certainly, to convince local taxpayers to support bond issues. But PL 88-204 made the CCHE’s task more difficult because it intensified the competition among prospective host communities and between the University and State Colleges to control the new institutions.

Following its usual pattern, the CCHE issued a preliminary report on new extension centers in March 1963 and in October approved a list of potential sites and a timetable for their development. Out of a total of twelve new locales, six were projected for development between 1965 and 1969. The University of Wisconsin was slated to operate new centers in Rock, Sauk, Washington, and Waukesha Counties, while the State Colleges would control the branch campuses in Barron and Waupaca/Shawano Counties. Then, depending upon how enrollment in these Centers developed, six additional communities would perhaps be given a two-year campus—Beaver Dam (Dodge County), Rhinelander (Oneida), Fond du Lac (Fond du Lac), Tomah (Monroe), Richland Center (Richland), and Lake Geneva (Walworth). Three cities—Medford, Monroe, and Wisconsin Rapids—were not on the priority list, but were kept under consideration. The CCHE promised to scrutinize their qualifications over the next decade to determine if they could meet eventually the minimum criteria for a center.^[13]

To defuse the criticism it had received for recommending the closure of the County Teachers Colleges, the CCHE noted that a half dozen counties whose colleges would be closed already had a Center. If all of the projected new campuses were built, four more counties would be added to that number. The siting of the new institutions, the report noted, meant that the majority of Wisconsin youth would live within commuting distance of either a four-year or a two-year public college.

The State College Regents reacted negatively to the CCHE recommendations. Hewing to the line they had taken during the Wood County dispute between Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids, they asserted that the State Colleges should be given control over any new campus closer to a State College than to Madison. The State College’s Council of Presidents also joined the jurisdictional dispute, making especially heated remarks about the allocation of the Rock County Center to the University, when Janesville was a scant nineteen miles from the Whitewater State College. Both bodies observed that the UW had received the choicest sites, while the two projected State College branch campuses barely met the minimum criteria for their establishment. The University of Wisconsin evidently won the dispute over control of the Rock County Center because of strong lobbying of the CCHE by the Janesville Chamber of Commerce.^[14]

In 1964 the situation became increasingly tense when the CCHE awarded both of the new four-year campuses at Green Bay and in the Kenosha-Racine area to the University. The CCHE based its decision primarily upon the fact that the new baccalaureate institutions would be created essentially by adding junior and senior year courses to existing Centers.

State College Regent John Thomson of Stevens Point, backed unanimously by his fellow regents, boldly attacked this decision. Thomson proposed that the State Colleges should specialize in undergraduate education while the UW concentrated upon its graduate programs. Consequently, he argued that the State Colleges should control the two new undergraduate institutions. Thomson urged that a new, separate board of regents be created to govern all two-year campuses—the existing and proposed UW Centers, the projected State College branch campuses, and the recently approved district-wide vocational-technical schools. Thomson asserted that his plan would finally end the jurisdictional disputes between the two systems and restore harmony to the CCHE.^[15]

President Harrington reacted vigorously to prevent the “Thomson Plan” from obtaining support in the CCHE. Harrington wanted desperately to retain the Centers because they provided the University with important political support across the state. Once again, Harrington enlisted Adolfson. He asked Adolfson to write a “hard-hitting” one-page document that stressed why the University should both control the new four-year campuses and continue to supervise the Centers. He also suggested that Adolfson immediately send his staff members to visit key vocational school leaders to enlist their support in defeating Thomson’s scheme. Harrington’s carefully orchestrated campaign succeeded. In June 1964, one by one, the CCHE turned down Thomson’s recommendations. The sole victory that Thomson and his fellow regents salvaged from this battle came when the state legislature approved changing the name of the State Colleges to State Universities to acknowledge that their curricula had been greatly expanded and that they would soon begin to offer masters degrees.^[16]

Once Thomson’s plan had been shelved, President Harrington confidently pressed forward with his ambitious plans to streamline the outreach activities of the University. Harrington wanted to merge the UW’s three separate outreach arms—General Extension, Cooperative Extension (formerly Agricultural Extension), and WHA Radio & Television. He decided that the merger would be facilitated by first removing the Centers and their college-credit program from General Extension. He believed that most of the Centers’ staff members would oppose any plan of unification with Cooperative Extension, because it offered almost exclusively non-credit courses and workshops. Thus, by separating the Centers from the Extension Division Harrington removed a large bloc of potential opposition to his merger scheme.^[17]

Harrington unveiled his recommendation for creating the University Center System before the regents on September 3, 1963. He proposed that the Center System should start operations on July 1, 1964. A Provost, who reported directly to the President, would be its chief executive officer. The new System would consist of the eight existing Centers, the one under construction at Marshfield, and any new two-year campuses assigned by the CCHE. In addition, Harrington suggested that the Center System should have control over any new junior-senior programs authorized by the CCHE, because the upper division courses would be grafted onto existing Centers. In his rationale, Harrington noted that the Centers had experienced the fastest rate of enrollment increase in the University and that this rapid growth was expected to continue. Consequently, he was convinced this was the opportune time to relieve the Extension Division of the increasingly burdensome responsibility for administering the Centers. The Regents, after asking a few perfunctory questions, unanimously approved the President’s plan.^[18]

Within two weeks, President Harrington appointed a search committee which would provide him a list of qualified candidates for Provost of the Center System. In his comments to the Regents, Harrington had stressed the importance of finding the right person for this position, someone who could ably organize the new institution and who could command the respect of all those who worked for the Centers. Wilbur Hanley, the long-time Director of the Centers within Extension, avidly sought the post and apparently felt that his experience made him the obvious choice for the appointment. Hanley and his advocates arranged for letters of support to be sent to the search committee from Centers’ faculty, county boards, and various municipal groups. The Kenosha News even editorialized in his behalf.^[19]

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Harrington and Vice President Robert Clodius worked carefully to avert Hanley’s appointment and to persuade L.H. Adolfson that he was the only person who could get the Center System properly launched. Hanley’s open eagerness for the post and the broad campaign in his behalf had peeved both Harrington and Clodius. A more substantial objection rested upon Hanley’s renowned unilateral decision-making which, over the years, had antagonized the Centers’ faculty, the Center directors, the Madison academic departments, and the top University administrators. Adolfson, on the other hand, was almost universally well liked. But he was not especially interested in the Provost’s position , his eye was on the top administrative slot that would result from the merger of the Extension Division, Cooperative Extension, and WHA-Radio & Television. Patiently but persistently, Harrington and Clodius worked to get Adolfson to change his mind. They reminded him of all the successful battles he had fought on behalf of the Centers in his nearly twenty years as the leader of the Extension Division. Here was an opportunity, they said, to assure that the Center System was properly launched. Finally, in early March 1964, he agreed to accept the post. The next month the Board of Regents confirmed him as the Center System’s first Provost.^[20]

Adolfson faced a daunting task. In virtually all areas—administration, faculty governance, and relationships to the other arms of the University of Wisconsin—Center System personnel were required to be innovators. To be sure, the historical ties to the Extension Division and to the academic departments in Madison provided good starting points. But as the Centers matured, traditions sometimes had become an impediment to change. It is also perhaps fortunate that the Extension Division, itself, was involved in a merger at the same time the Center System was setting its course because those in Extension who would have been most inclined to try to maintain their ties to the Centers were kept very busy with the merger process and had little time to meddle with the Center System.

Adolfson and his colleagues had an important Working Paper on [The] Separation of Center System from University Extension Division to guide them. This document, issued in February 1964, represented the culmination of several months work by a committee whose members came from all University constituencies. The Working Paper’s analysis of the administrative needs of the Center System was quite candid. The committee said the Provost would need to be strong yet flexible, a person who could boost morale and end uncertainty among the faculty, and an administrator who could set up from scratch a central office in Madison while overseeing eight widely-dispersed Centers. Adolfson managed to accomplish all this. The chancellor’s office (Adolfson’s title was changed from provost to chancellor in January 1965) that emerged contained five distinct functional areas. The vice chancellor was essentially an academic dean, who supervised the faculty and the curriculum. The business office, the registrar’s office, and the assistant vice chancellor for student affairs handled most of the routine work. The secretary of the faculty was a new and important office. This person had the responsibility for all of the records associated with faculty governance.^[21]

The Working Paper also analyzed the local directors’ roles. It described the present directors as “weak,” with no legal control over their Centers’ faculty, budget or programs. It noted that in the new Center System the directors would become responsible for providing leadership in four areas: instruction, research, adult education, and public service. Consequently, the directors’ authority needed to be augmented. However, in contrast to the precise recommendations made for the Provost’s office, the Working Paper did not contain firm directions about how to strengthen the directors’ roles. For example, the committee suggested that with regard to the faculty the directors could be empowered by one of three options: they could 1) be given complete control over faculty personnel actions (hiring, salary increases, promotions, granting of tenure), 2) hold a veto over the recommendations of the academic departments, or 3) share the decision-making with the departments. The third option of course presented the problem of where to draw the line of authority between the directors and the department heads. A similar dilemma existed with the budget: should each director receive a budget and have the sole responsibility to develop the courses/programs needed by his Center’s clientele or should the director, Provost’s office, and the departments collectively control the money? The committee observed that giving each director complete fiscal control would surely create powerful local administrators.^[22] Because the local directors’ roles intersected intimately with those of the department leaders and with faculty governance issues, the answers to these knotty questions only gradually evolved.

During the ensuing half-dozen years, the local directors’ roles inevitably became larger. After the separation from General Extension, they assumed tasks that formerly had been shared with the central office and the Madison academic departments. The ambitious building programs of the sixties greatly increased the directors’ visibility. In the fall of 1965 Adolphson recommended to the Regents that their title should be changed to “dean” in recognition of a greater workload and, especially, increased involvement with curricular issues. The Board readily approved.^[23]

The Center System faculty took the greatest amount of time to settle upon an organizational structure. In 1964, the Center System employed 171 full-time teaching faculty and 122 part-time instructors. Ninety-seven percent of the full-time faculty were either instructors (65%) or assistant professors (32%), while just four persons held the rank of associate professor and only one had achieved a full professorship. Only thirty-seven of the full-time teachers had earned their doctorate; most of the others held a masters degree. Well over half of the graduate degrees had been awarded by Madison, vivid proof of the strength of the “Madison connection.” By the mid-sixties, in response to rapidly rising enrollments, the vast majority of the full-time faculty had become resident faculty and had ceased to travel among the Centers. Indeed, in 1964 just 60 members of the faculty had split appointments and almost all of them were part-time instructors in special subject areas. This, then, was the teaching staff which had to shape its governance structure.^[24]

The Center System faculty had virtually no experience in self-governance. Curriculum and personnel decisions, which normally would be made by faculty governance bodies, had been made by Madison’s academic departments. Consequently, the Center System faculty faced the formidable task of creating its own governance structure and of writing the policies and procedures by which it would operate.

A faculty committee—the Interim Committee on the Organization of the Center System Faculty—consisting of one representative from each Center took on the task of setting up a faculty senate and of writing its constitution. The Interim Committee had been at work several months when the Center System was officially launched in July 1964, but did not make its report until February 1965. The proposed constitution enfranchised all half-time or more teaching faculty. Each Center would send at least one representative to the Senate; Centers with more than thirty voting members would elect two representatives. The department chairmen would select a senator from among themselves. The chancellor or vice chancellor would schedule the Senate meetings, prepare the agenda, and preside over the sessions. The report did not suggest how often the Senate should meet.

In addition to the Faculty Senate, the Interim Committee proposed the establishment of a five member Faculty Committee, whose duties would parallel those of Madison’s influential University Committee. One member, elected at-large from all of the Centers’ eligible faculty, would chair the committee. The other four members would be elected to represent a geographic region: area one consisted of Racine and Kenosha, two of Green Bay, Fox Valley, and Marinette, three of Manitowoc and Sheboygan, and four of Marshfield and Wausau. To be eligible for this committee, a faculty member had to have taught at least four years in the Center System. After consideration and debate at each Center, the faculty overwhelmingly approved the proposed constitution by a 165 to 18 margin. The next month, on May 7, 1965, the Board of Regents also gave its consent and faculty governance in the new Center System was officially underway.^[25]

The chair of the Center System University Committee was automatically a member of the powerful UW Faculty Council which consisted of representatives from Madison, Milwaukee, and Extension, in addition to the Center System. The President of the University met regularly with the Faculty Council; the Council used these sessions to react to the administration’s policies and to initiate policy proposals desired by the faculty. Within a short time, the Faculty Council created a Faculty Assembly which met at least once a semester to discuss and resolve issues of university-wide concern. Representation in the Faculty Assembly was proportional to each institution’s size. In 1968 both the Council and Assembly were enlarged to include delegates from the new UW-Green Bay and UW-Parkside. Through these bodies the Center System faculty maintained strong ties to the Madison campus.^[26]

One of the Senate’s first tasks was to organize the academic departments. This task was complicated, as mentioned earlier, by the former ties to departments in the Extension Division and to the residence academic departments in Madison. The Senate considered several options. One possibility was to continue the association with the subject-matter departments in a reorganized UW Extension. This would be the least disruptive choice as, presumably, most of the same persons would continue as chairmen. But since the interaction of the Centers’ faculty with the Extension Division departments had ranged from good to non-existent, this option was fairly quickly rejected. Second, the Senate investigated whether the faculty could be directly attached to their respective academic departments in Madison. This was an attractive possibility because it would perpetuate the “Madison connection.” However, it would also mean that the Center System faculty would have their personnel decisions made according to Madison departmental rules—rules which did not take into account the far different nature of an appointment in the Center System. A third option called for the Centers to sever all former ties and to create their own independent academic departments. This alternative, too, was quickly dismissed, primarily because of the prohibitive cost of paying the entire salaries of the chairmen and of the potential problems in the transfer of Center System course credits.

In September 1966, the Faculty Senate developed a compromise which created independent departments in the Center System, but whose chairmen would hold a teaching appointment in a Madison department. Chancellor Adolphson would appoint the chairmen, upon the recommendation of the departments’ executive committees and after consultation with the Madison Departments. This procedure was used until the appointment of chairs solely from among the Center System faculty became feasible. By 1972, only two departments (English and physical education) were still led by individuals who held joint appointments.

Each department’s executive committee consisted of all its tenured members above the instructor rank, plus one member each from Madison and Milwaukee. The latter two representatives provided advice on policies and procedures and facilitated coordination of the Center System curriculum with Madison and Milwaukee. Each executive committee recommended promotions in rank, awards of tenure, and salary increases to the dean of the appropriate Center. The dean then added his comments and forwarded both reports, as appropriate, to either the Biological and Physical Sciences Division or the Humanities and Social Science Division executive committee for review. The divisional executive committee’s advice went directly to the Chancellor, who ultimately forwarded a request for approval to the Board of Regents. With this procedure the Center System faculty had steered a careful course which allowed them to maintain important ties to the Madison departments, but which also permitted them to write their own personnel policies and procedures.^[27]

In the fall of 1964 the Center System petitioned the Board of Regents to revise the “60 Credit Rule,” which stipulated that all UW students must earn one-half of their graduation credits in residence. The Board of Regents had originally adopted this rule in the 1890s to limit the number of credits that a student could earn by correspondence and extension courses. In the 1930s the 60 Credit Rule had been applied to the Freshman Centers. Now, however, that limitation conflicted with a new Regents’ policy which encouraged the development of a summer session in the Center System. If, for example, a student averaged 15 credits a semester for four semesters, the 60 credit limit was reached and that student could not enroll in even one summer course. The Faculty Senate, in November 1965, submitted to the regents its rationale for allowing the Centers’ students to transfer a maximum of 72 credits to Madison. In its Memorandum the Senate argued that this revision would accommodate the better students, who wanted to carry more than 15 credits per semester and/or to enroll in a summer session, would reduce the overcrowding in Madison, and would help the Center System establish a viable summer session.^[28]

Transfer problems had intensified, generally, after the Center System was established because many of the special ties to the Madison campus had disappeared. Consequently, students from the Centers began to encounter increasing difficulty when they moved on for their junior and senior years. In the worst instances, some of the Madison colleges insisted that Center students apply for admission, as though they were new students. Naturally, Chancellor Adolfson took up this crucial issue in the Administrative Council where he argued that transfer students from the Centers ought not to be treated differently than a UW-Madison student who changed majors and had to be admitted to a different college. President Harrington agreed and directed the Deans of the colleges from both Madison and Milwaukee to meet with Center System representatives to work out a smooth transfer policy. The policy, produced in September 1966, pledged the senior campuses to a liberal policy in accepting transfer credits and directed the Center System to assume the initiative in conferring with the individual colleges to assure that its courses would meet degree requirements. The policy also required each college to name a person who would handle questions and appeals. Shortly afterward, the Centers initiated the practice of having UW college representatives visit their campuses to talk directly with prospective transferees. These face-to-face conversations enabled students to learn first-hand about requirements they had to meet and which Center System courses would satisfy those requirements. These visits gave important reinforcement to the on-campus counseling in the Centers. Subsequently, most Center students were able to transfer smoothly to either Madison or Milwaukee.^[29]

The Centers’ libraries grew very rapidly in the sixties, especially after the separation from the Extension Division. Now the focus could be upon building a network of purely academic holdings, rather than having to share the resources with many non-academic departments. Roger Schwenn, the Director of the Libraries, noted many of these improvements in his June 1968 Center System Progress Report. In all cases, Schwenn contrasted the situation in June 1964 with June 1968. The number of volumes in each Center library had at least doubled and at Manitowoc and Sheboygan it had quadrupled. In order to catalog all these books, periodicals, films, records, and other materials, the processing center in Madison had been compelled to lease space at two additional locations to augment its original area in the Extension Building. Schwenn noted that the state had been generous in appropriating money for the University libraries. The Center System basic book fund, for example, leaped from $30,000 in 1964-65 to almost $123,000 in 1966-67. The state added nearly $436,000 in “enrichment funds” during the 1965-67 biennium and the federal government granted $10,000 per library during the same interval. The Centers, in 1967, finally reached a long sought goal of having a professional librarian operate each library. The local librarians, Schwenn, and the professionals on his staff met in Madison four times each year to plan and coordinate their work. In addition, a Centers-wide faculty library committee met periodically with Schwenn to provide him with advice on acquisitions needed to accommodate new courses and to strengthen weak areas. Schwenn also noted that several campuses, in addition to the ones recently built at Marshfield, Janesville, and Waukesha, had new libraries which provided pleasant, efficient surroundings for the patrons. Schwenn believed that the Center libraries would be near a goal of at least 20,000 volumes, each, by the end of the decade. This was certainly a sharp contrast to a Center library of the 1940s that had housed 200 well-worn books shelved in the corner of a classroom or an office. Like the Center System, itself, the libraries had matured and were on a solid footing.^[30]

During 1965 and 1966 the community college/junior college question returned to center stage. Warren Knowles, a Republican who had been narrowly elected governor in 1964, triggered this episode with a letter he sent to the CCHE in December 1964, a month before he took office. Knowles asked a dozen questions about the CCHE’s long-range plans; four of the queries focused directly upon community colleges and made it clear that the governor-elect believed Wisconsin should build several of them. He asked that the CCHE reply by mid-February. Governor-elect Knowles’ decision to push community colleges arose from his desire to provide adequate post-secondary educational opportunities at an affordable cost. Knowles believed that the CCHE would never be able to overcome the UW-WSU competition to gain control over any new two-year campuses. Knowles had decided the best solution would be to construct a few dual-track community colleges in areas of the state not presently served by a public institution of higher education. He also believed that control over these community colleges should be given to the State Board of Vocational and Adult Education (SBVAE) to avoid antagonizing either the University of Wisconsin or the Wisconsin State Universities. Giving control to the SBVAE would, Knowles hoped, prevent the academic track from dominating these institutions.^[31]

In a move that surprised many, the CCHE, in early February 1965, abandoned its hard-line against community colleges and proposed that dual-track institutions be authorized for construction in Rhinelander, Rice Lake, and Wisconsin Rapids. The resolution recommended these three as “pilot projects” and justified them on the basis that neither a vocational-technical school nor a two-year college, alone, could enroll sufficient students in these communities to be educationally or fiscally sound. By providing both a vocational training program and liberal arts transfer courses, a community college hopefully could succeed. This sudden abandonment by the CCHE of long-held and often-reiterated opposition to community colleges drew much criticism. For example, David Obey, a rising Democrat Assemblyman from Marathon County, wrote the CCHE to warn that he would oppose funding for these pilot projects from his position as Vice Chairman of the powerful Joint Committee on Finance. Obey had three major objections: first, where vocational and academic programs were combined, one became dominant and the other languished; second, Wisconsin could not afford to establish institutions of higher learning “all over the state”; and, third, Obey believed that the CCHE had caved in to political pressure in approving the three sites.^[32] However, instead of backing down, in its March 1965 meeting the CCHE decided to reevaluate the preliminary plans for the new two-year campuses authorized for Waukesha, Janesville, and Richland Center to determine whether a vocational-technical component should be added to their curriculums.^[33]

Governor Knowles was deeply disappointed by the CCHE’s response to his questions about whether the state should create new community colleges. In particular Knowles was angry because the CCHE recommendations contained no estimate of the costs to carry them out and because the recommendations dealt primarily with liberal arts education and gave little attention to technical training. Consequently, Governor Knowles kept up the pressure with a special message to the legislature, “Crisis in Education”, in late March. In a series of bold proposals, he repeated his call for the establishment of community colleges, suggested revamping the CCHE’s membership to reduce the influence of the University of Wisconsin and of the Wisconsin State Universities, and recommended the creation of new four-year colleges in the Fox River Valley and in the Racine-Kenosha area. In the latter instance, Knowles proposed to add junior and senior year courses to one of the UW Centers in each area.^[34]

Because of Governor Knowles’ campaign, the 1965 legislative session grappled with several educational issues, including the vocational school/community college question. The traditional city-sponsored vocational high schools which Wisconsin had pioneered clearly were in decline. CCHE studies revealed that a major factor in the shrinking enrollments was that more and more high school students were electing a college prep program of study. After hearing hours of testimony on various proposals, the legislators passed a bill that would close the remaining vocational high schools by 1970 and replace them with multi-county vocational-technical school districts. Each district would build a new campus which would be supported by a district-wide property tax levy.

The original proposal would have granted the SBVAE (State Board of Vocational and Adult Education) the option to authorize any or all of the new institutions to offer liberal arts college transfer courses in addition to their traditional programs. However, Assemblyman Frank Nikolay (Democrat—Abbotsford), prompted by University of Wisconsin and State University lobbying, successfully amended the enabling legislation to prohibit the transfer of liberal arts credits to either the UW or the State Universities. Nikolay’s amendment, though, exempted both Madison’s and Milwaukee’s Vocational-Technical Schools from the prohibition because they had already demonstrated sufficient support for both a high quality liberal arts curriculum and a top-notch vocational training program. Nikolay’s proviso effectively halted the community college movement in Wisconsin, with the exception of the Nicolet Community College in Rhinelander.

Armed with the CCHE’s February 1965 recommendation, the persistent lobby group from Rhinelander pressed the legislature to authorize a dual-track, two-year college for the northern Wisconsin region. The Rhinelander interest group also had the governor’s support for a “pilot project” to establish a community college in north central Wisconsin, an area whose residents often complained that they were not adequately served by state-supported higher education. During the 1966 session the legislators acquiesced. The Nicolet Community College was the only dual-track institution of the three recommended by the CCHE to be constructed. In a special message Governor Knowles had spelled out his reasons for advocating the reorganization of the CCHE. Knowles based his case upon the allegation that the UW and State University representatives so thoroughly dominated the council that it had failed to coordinate anything. Therefore, considerable duplication in academic majors in the two systems had occurred, accompanied by steadily increasing budgets. The Wisconsin taxpayer could no longer afford the CCHE’s failures, Knowles said. The legislature took up the Governor’s suggestion and in the fall of 1965 it sent Knowles a bill which revamped the Coordinating Council. The measure only slightly reduced the body’s size from nineteen to seventeen members. But the institutional representation from the University of Wisconsin, the State Universities, and the SBVAE was dramatically reduced by half, while the number of citizen members (appointed by the Governor) was increased from four to nine. From now on the council would have a citizen majority. As he signed the bill, Knowles expressed the hope that the new CCHE would do a better job in providing adequate higher education opportunities at a reasonable cost to taxpayers.^[35]

The busy 1965 Wisconsin Legislature enacted yet another measure which affected the Center System. This statute authorized the University of Wisconsin, working with the CCHE, to construct two new four-year campuses. Green Bay was quite quickly chosen as the site for the Fox River Valley institution, but a spirited competition between Racine and Kenosha held up the siting of the Parkside Campus for several months.

President Harrington’s original intention, expressed at the time the Center System was created, was for these new institutions to offer just junior and senior year courses and for them to be operated by the Center System. Neither of these concepts proved practical. A study by the CCHE provided convincing evidence that juniors and seniors often needed also to take lower division courses, especially if they had changed their major, and that it would be terribly inconvenient for them to commute to a Center to take those courses. It made more sense for UW-Green Bay and UW-Parkside to absorb nearby Centers and to offer all four years of undergraduate work. This decision led naturally to a subsequent one to establish a separate administration for each of the new campuses, on a par with that at UW-Milwaukee.^[36]

The decision that these new four-year campuses should absorb nearby Centers was easy to implement in Racine and Kenosha, but not in the Green Bay area. Reasonably close to the Green Bay Center were three other Centers: Manitowoc (37 miles), Marinette (55 miles), and Fox Valley/Menasha (39 miles). Students from these Centers might logically finish their undergraduate studies at Green Bay, rather than at Madison, which strengthened the argument that these 3-M Centers, as they were popularly known, should be attached to Green Bay to better key the curriculum to that campus. President Harrington and Chancellor Adolfson supported this transfer of control. Harrington, however, clearly indicated that the three Centers should “. . . not be satellites, run from Green Bay in the colonial manner.” Instead, Harrington envisioned that they would be fully integrated into Green Bay’s structure and faculty.^[37]

The faculty of the three Centers were not happy with the pending transfer to Green Bay. Because the UW-Green Bay was undertaking a bold experiment with its curriculum, these Centers’ faculty feared that as the courses became oriented to Green Bay’s program, students would find it increasingly difficult to transfer to other colleges.

For example, the Manitowoc Center’s faculty was especially apprehensive about a transfer to Green Bay and the potential effect upon their careers. They feared that the greatest rewards would go to researchers and that mere teachers would be relegated to a secondary role. They also expressed concern that tying Manitowoc’s courses to Green Bay’s innovative, inter-disciplinary curriculum would make the Center less attractive to students who did not intend to earn a baccalaureate degree from Green Bay. At the end of the 1967 spring semester the Secretary of the Manitowoc Faculty urgently requested that President Harrington meet with a faculty delegation to hear first-hand their misgivings. In a terse reply Harrington declined to receive a delegation. Instead he said that the top administrators—himself, Adolfson, and Weidner—would again discuss the issue. If that conversation took place (there is no record of it in Harrington’s file), the same conclusion was reached: Manitowoc would be placed under Green Bay’s control.

Later that year, in early November, the faculty of four Centers—Fox Valley, Green Bay, Manitowoc, and Marinette—received notice from Chancellors Adolfson and Edward Weidner (the newly appointed Green Bay Chancellor) that they had until mid-month to decide whether to apply to UW-Green Bay for a teaching position or to remain in the Center System. Those who chose the latter option would, of course, have to accept a transfer to one of the seven remaining Center System campuses. Faculty who applied to Green Bay would not automatically receive an appointment; they would be interviewed by an appointment committee, which would make the final recommendations to Chancellor Weidner. The entire process was extremely distasteful to the Centers’ faculty and morale remained low at the 3M Centers during the years they were attached to Green Bay.^[38]

On July 1, 1968, the Center System became a much smaller institution. Three Centers—Green Bay, Kenosha, Racine—were directly absorbed into the new four-year institutions and Green Bay now operated the 3-M Centers. Thus just seven Centers remained in the Center System: Wausau, Sheboygan, Waukesha, Janesville, Marshfield, West Bend, and Baraboo. The latter two were still under construction and scheduled to open in the fall. Of these seven, only Wausau and Sheboygan had unbroken roots that stretched back to the 1930s.

Naturally, the Center System faculty now had to modify its constitution and procedures to reflect the dramatic changes that had taken place. The faculty approached this task with a confidence and determination that had been lacking in the drafting of the original documents. The Committee on the Future Role and Organization of the University of Wisconsin Center System took clear note of this when it reported that “Center System faculty are ready to effect independent exercise of full departmental prerogatives within their own System. . . .” In order to facilitate the exercise of this authority, the committee recommended that all faculty should be members of an academic department and that the departments should meet periodically to discharge their responsibilities. The committee also urged the administration to reduce the teaching load of the department chairmen to provide adequate time to do their work. The committee also stressed the important role of the departments and the two Divisional Executive Committees in approving new courses and other curriculum modifications because the Center System now prepared students to transfer to four other UW units, not just to Madison. By the end of the 1968-1969 academic year, the Faculty Senate had approved all of these recommendations and had accomplished the necessary amendments to the faculty documents.^[39]

Both the Center System administration and the CCHE staff continued to study intently the Centers’ student body, hoping to gain insights crucial to wise decision-making. One clear trend concerned the county of residence of the students. In the fall of 1962, 98% of the students enrolled in the Center System lived in the county which hosted their Center. By September 1969 that percentage had dropped almost twenty-seven points. This pronounced broadening of each Center’s drawing area resulted from the students’ increased mobility, who were now able to commute longer distances to classes and still live at home. The number of women students rose dramatically during the decade. Just three of ten students were female in the 1960 fall enrollment; however, they constituted 44% of the student body in 1969. The quality of the entering freshman class, measured by class rank, had improved just slightly. In 1963, for example, 44% of the new enrollees had graduated in the upper quarter, while 77% had been in the upper half of their senior class. The figures for fall 1969 were 46.2% and 82.3%, respectively. Entering women students ranked significantly higher than the males and the increase in the number of females no doubt primarily accounts for the improvement in academic quality of the freshman classes.^[40]

In 1963 Madison Professor L.J. Lins, who was the Coordinator of the Office of Institutional Studies, and Allan P. Abell made an extensive study of Center System transfer students. The major finding echoed the theme of earlier studies—that former Center students, after a one semester adjustment period, earned a GPA equal or superior to those who had enrolled as freshmen at Madison. What is unique about this study is its analysis of the so-called “transfer shock” experienced by the students from the Centers. Lins and Abell noted that while all transferees’ grades slipped during the initial semester in Madison, those who had spent two years at a Center, rather than just one, recovered more quickly and sustained a higher GPA for the remainder of their undergraduate careers. Here was positive proof that students were well advised to remain at a Center for a sophomore year. Lins and Abell concluded that the Centers succeeded in helping students to realize their potential for college work and prepared them well for transfer to Madison.^[41] Nine students, one from each Center, appeared before the Board of Regents in May 1966 in response to an invitation to present an evaluation of their experiences in the Center System. All nine indicated that they had gathered comments from classmates and from former Center students in preparing their remarks. They reported that, because most of the students came from the hometown high school, the same cliques reappeared at the Centers. They felt that this situation could be improved by providing more diverse social and cultural activities and programs. The students said a survey of former Center students revealed that the curriculum and the rigor of the courses was adequate to prepare them for junior and senior year courses. They remarked that they especially appreciated the personal approach to teaching by the Centers’ faculty in comparison to the large lecture sections in Madison. However, they related that a few faculty members seemed to be just marking time while they sought a teaching position at a four-year school. One student concluded her testimony by underscoring that accessibility was the Centers’ greatest advantage for students. She estimated that fifty to seventy percent of the current student body would not be in college, if a Center had not been nearby.^[42]

The next year, Dr. Martha Peterson, UW-Madison Dean for Student Affairs, echoed what the nine students had said. Peterson, who had gathered her “Impressions of Center Students” from many interviews, both in Madison and on the two-year campuses, described her findings during a workshop for the Center System Student Affairs staff in July 1967. She had drawn three major conclusions. First, living at home created a problem, both for the student and the parents, particularly during the first semester. The tension apparently arose from the fact that society placed a great value on “going away” to college and, consequently, ones acquaintances looked askance at any family whose student enrolled at a Center. However, she added that no one had demonstrated that there was any educational value in going away to college and that this expectation rested solely upon appearances and subtle concerns about status. Second, Center students did not see themselves as the “cream of the crop.” Peterson believed that this self-deprecation dampened their desire to learn and to perform up to potential. Third, Peterson reported that Center students realized that they had a limited geographic, social, and cultural background. Unfortunately, the faculty and staff sometimes dramatized the situation by referring to a Center as “Siberia,” in comparison to Madison. The Center System would have to work hard to broaden its students’ horizons, Peterson warned, to reduce the eventual transfer shock.

Dean Peterson also listed the Centers advantages. First, because the students lived at home, the Centers’ staff did not have to perform “in loco parentis” duties, allowing them to focus upon more beneficial activities. Second, she had found that Center students generally underestimated their abilities and knowledge. Consequently, the faculty had a great opportunity to awaken these students to their potential. Third, because the student body was fairly homogeneous in background and in preparation for college, the instructors could accurately target the courses to the clientele’s needs. Finally, Peterson explained that, deep down, the Center students she had talked to believed that the Centers provided a good education and that they had not chosen a second-rate institution in which to begin college. Peterson concluded by underscoring the important role that Centers were playing in the University of Wisconsin.^[43]

Center System administrators were, of course, aware of the need to broaden the students’ cultural horizons. The lack of sufficient funds remained the major impediment to solving the problem. Back in 1965, the legislature had dictated that the Center System’s tuition could not exceed the amount charged by the State Universities. At the time Adolfson had been privately unhappy because the law effectively placed the WSU Regents in charge of the Centers’ tuition. The State Universities charged a separate student activity fee of $80.00 per year, but the UW Regents had imposed a “no fee” policy upon the Centers. In November 1966, Adolfson asked President Harrington to review that prohibition in light of the Center System’s need to expand its cultural arts and lecture series. Harrington replied that he wanted to retain the no fee policy because it made attending the Centers slightly less expensive than enrolling in the State Universities. However, Harrington promised that he would provide additional dollars to the Center System for the Fine Arts. With this encouragement, the Center System Lectures and Fine Arts Committee developed a budget of $18,500 for 1967-68, to be allocated equally among the eleven Centers. At each Center the fine arts committee chose its programs from among Public Affairs, Drama, Science, Art, and Music. By using a central booking procedure, popular performances were scheduled at several Centers on successive evenings to stretch the funds. By these means the Centers provided a greatly expanded Fine Arts and Lecture series.^[44]

Intercollegiate athletics was another concern of the Center System in its quest to provide its students with a complete college experience. Since the late 1940s the Centers’ basketball teams had played one another but no other sports had been offered on a regular basis. In the summer of 1968, months of discussion and negotiation concluded successfully with the formation of the Wisconsin Collegiate Conference. The WCC, for its initial season, had fifteen members: the seven Center System campuses, the four WSU Branch Campuses, the 3-M Centers, the Green Bay Center, and the new UW-Parkside, whose team would be drawn from the Kenosha and Racine Centers. The new athletic conference sponsored competition in cross-country, basketball, wrestling, fencing, golf, and tennis. For the basketball season, the WCC divided into a northern division of eight teams and a southern division of seven teams. A play-off at the season’s end between the divisional champions determined the Conference championship. The member institutions decided that the basketball games with Parkside should not count in the Conference standings, because its team would be drawn from two Centers. Once these two Centers and the Green Bay Center were absorbed by the new four-year campuses they, of course, ceased to be members of the WCC.^[45]

In the mid-sixties, as the United States increased its involvement in Vietnam, college students across the nation visibly demonstrated their opposition to or support for the federal government’s policy. The Madison campus was frequently the scene of violent anti-war protests that drew national attention. Center System students also demonstrated on both sides of the issue, but they avoided the use of violence. In Racine, for instance, co-eds baked and sent over 2,000 dozen cookies to service personnel in Vietnam, while students at the Kenosha Center donated 84 pints of blood during a “bleed-in.” At Fox Valley a group of anti-war students circulated a petition that said, “we believe the present U. S. policy is neither ethical nor according to national interest.” At several Centers, student government leaders worked with the local administration to arrange “teach-ins.” In a typical teach-in, classes were suspended and students were invited to attend special lectures and to discuss the issues. For example, the Green Bay Center and nearby St. Norbert’s College jointly sponsored a State Department panel that presented the government’s position. All of the student newspapers, of course, contributed to the discussion with editorials, columns, and letters to the editor.^[46]

One outgrowth of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations was a nation-wide movement among students to achieve greater participation in the governance of colleges and universities. In December 1966 forty-four student leaders—four from each Center—met with student affairs staff members from Madison and the Centers to discuss student government problems and issues. The conferees drafted several resolutions: one demanded more significant student participation in the Faculty Senate and in each Center’s faculty meetings; another called for the establishment of an inter-Center student government council. Responding quickly, Chancellor Adolfson arranged to have the eleven student senate presidents meet in Madison the following spring, at which time they organized themselves and agreed to meet at least once each semester and to maintain communication with one another between meetings. In the spring of 1968, the Faculty Senate approved a Student Government Association resolution that called for “voting student representation” in the Center System Faculty Senate and all of its committees, and in each Center Faculty Senate and its committees. Gradually, the faculty constituencies amended their constitutions to provide for student representation and voting rights in all governance bodies (except the committees that dealt with personnel issues). This significant development opened up new and better lines of communication between students, faculty, and administrators.^[47]

While the Center System was organizing itself and drafting policies, the development of the Wisconsin State University Branch Campuses had been moving forward. The Barron County branch of WSU-Stout opened in the fall of 1966 in the former County Teachers College building in Rice Lake. During the first year it offered only freshman courses and the initial enrollment was far below estimates, but the addition of basic sophomore courses the following year caused Barron’s enrollment to increase dramatically. Its new campus was completed in 1968. The Richland Campus, operated by WSU-Platteville, started instruction in new, but not entirely completed, buildings in September 1967. Thus Richland became the first new WSU campus to open since 1916, when Eau Claire had joined the system. Richland, of course, had not been scheduled by the CCHE for construction until the 1967-1969 biennium, but President Marjorie Wallace of the Richland County Teachers College, State Senator Jess Miller, the Richland County Board of Supervisors, and numerous other community leaders had lobbied successfully for permission to begin construction early in 1967. WSU-Oshkosh’s two-year campus in Fond du Lac enrolled its first class in September 1968. After an interval of sixteen years, a state-supported collegiate institution again operated in this city at the southern tip of Lake Winnebago.^[48]

The fourth WSU two-year campus, the Medford/Taylor County Branch Campus, did not begin operations until September 1968. The decision even to open it had been difficult to reach. The CCHE’s initial intent (in 1963) had been to study the enrollment potential over ten to twelve years before making a recommendation whether to proceed. The Center System’s Wilbur Hanley was brutal in his analysis of the CCHE’s preliminary findings on Medford. Hanley estimated that a two-year campus there would not attract more than fifty students. Hanley naturally felt that potential students in Medford’s orbit would be better advised to attend the Centers at either Marshfield (39 miles) or Wausau (48 miles), because both had a broader curriculum than Medford could ever hope to develop. Hanley asserted that much of the pressure to develop the Medford Campus arose from the fact that the Taylor County Teachers College had an almost new building. However, he had visited the facility and concluded that its “ordinary classrooms” were unsuitable for a Center-type program. Although its estimate of potential enrollment was considerably higher than Hanley’s, the CCHE staff was well aware that a two-year campus in Medford would always be a marginal operation. But the politics of siting the new institutions and, especially, the heated rivalry between the Wisconsin State Universities and the University of Wisconsin had ruled out a wait-and-see approach.^[49]

Even after the Taylor County Board agreed, in September 1965, to construct an entirely new campus, the State University Regents proceeded very cautiously. Over the next two years, they received periodic verification from the CCHE of the enrollment estimates and they learned that the costs per student at Barron County and Richland were significantly higher than anticipated. They were also concerned because the competition for federal dollars, under PL 88-204, was intensifying in the state, now that the newly authorized Vocational-Technical School districts were also scrambling to secure these funds. Even WSU-Stevens Point President Lee S. Dreyfus, whose school would oversee the Medford campus, expressed misgivings about going ahead too rapidly. Dreyfus preferred that a freshman program be tried for a couple of years in the County College building before Taylor County began construction of new facilities. On the other hand, WSU Executive Director Eugene McPhee argued that the Regents had accepted jurisdiction over Medford and had “made commitments that could not be rescinded.” Finally, on April 26, 1968, the WSU Board voted 9 to 3 to initiate a one-year program in the Teachers College building in September 1969. If Medford maintained an enrollment of 125 full-time equivalent (FTE) students until October 15, 1969, the Board committed itself to authorize an addition to the County College and a two-year curriculum for the following academic year. The target enrollment was achieved and the Medford Branch Campus was finally launched.^[50]

The Branch Campus faculty members, unlike their Center System counterparts, did not have an inter-campus faculty organization. Indeed, there was virtually no interaction among them. However, each Branch Campus did send a representative to the Faculty Senate of its parent campus and thus had a voice in that chief policy-making body. The relationship between the two-year campus faculty and their parent departments was not specified by policy. For example, during the five years Richland was attached to Platteville, a member of the history department recalls that he was invited to just one department meeting and had no input into its curricular decisions. Conversely, the content of the Richland history courses and the selection of textbooks was not dictated by the department.^[51]

The Sixties ended on a disappointing note for the Center System. In February 1969 Governor Knowles, who had become increasingly concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of operating the state’s higher education institutions, established a special Governor’s Commission on Education. Knowles selected William Kellett, a successful, retired businessman to lead the group, which soon was labeled the Kellett Commission. The Governor asked the commissioners “to examine the huge public educational machine from top to bottom, from the inside out, and to make recommendations about how it can function better on the one hand, and more economically on the other.” The Kellett Commission was expected to make its report in early 1971.

The progress of the Kellett Commission, which held public hearings across the state, was followed intensely by the governor, state legislators, and officials from both the Wisconsin State Universities and the University of Wisconsin. By late 1969 it had formulated four options for the Center System. First, the Center System could continue its cost reduction program until it reached an acceptable cost-per-student and be maintained as a high quality collegiate transfer institution. Second, the seven Centers could be nucleated (i.e. attached) to a nearby four-year UW or WSU campus. For example, the Marathon County Center would most logically be attached to the WSU-Stevens Point. Third, an enlarged Center System could be created by bringing in the WSU Branch Campuses. And, finally, the Centers (and Branch Campuses) could be merged with the Vocational-Technical Schools.^[52]

But, of course the Center System was only a small part in the Kellett commission’s assignment. In looking at the larger picture of public higher education in Wisconsin, the Kellett Commission studied intently a potential merger of the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin State Universities. The projected savings from a merger would be substantial. Elimination of the CCHE and one board of regents and central administrative staff, an end to costly duplication of academic programs and perhaps the elimination of repetitive programs that were already in place would all reduce costs. The leaders of both the UW and the WSU lobbied hard against this option. President Harrington feared a merger would damage seriously the UW’s reputation as one of the nation’s leading research institutions while the WSU leadership issued the alarm that Madison would capture an even larger share of the budget in a merged system, causing the withering of their campuses and a weakening of the Wisconsin Idea. As the decade drew to a close, it was obvious that the Kellett Commission would play a pivotal role in shaping the future of not just the Center System but of all of Wisconsin’s higher education institutions.