10 The UW Centers Weathers Another Crisis: 1991-1997

When Stephen Portch left the Centers, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Arthur Kaplan was named acting chancellor to serve until a search and screen committee completed its work. The search and screen committee worked throughout the summer to screen the numerous applications and to interview a half-dozen candidates. Then it sent a list of candidates to Acting President Lyall and the Regents for final action. In September 1991, the Board of Regents and Lyall announced that Lee Grugel, the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UW-Eau Claire, would become the Centers’ Chancellor on the first of November. A historian, Grugel had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Ohio State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Grugel had practiced his craft at Moorhead State University (Minnesota) as a teacher and also served as chair of the history department prior to assuming a deanship at UW-Eau Claire in 1981. In his tenure at Eau Claire, Grugel had led a school with 22 academic departments and 350 faculty members. Acting President Lyall stressed that Grugel’s experience at Eau Claire had “prepared him well for his new administrative duties.”^[1]

Lee Grugel continued work on the full agenda he inherited from Stephen Portch and the Planning Council. A good example is the Council’s recommendation that the faculty merit evaluation procedure be revised, an issue which had been under consideration by the Senate Steering Committee for several months. The current procedure had been bitterly complained about for years by practically everyone. Under it, each faculty member was evaluated annually by both a department merit committee (a role often filled by the department executive committee) and a campus merit evaluation committee. The merit scale consisted of 2.0 points for each member of the faculty. Consequently, when a faculty person was awarded a merit rating above 2.0, someone else necessarily had to receive a “below average” rating. This aspect of the procedure damaged the morale of both those who received a “below average” rating and of those top-notch faculty who felt their work was not being adequately rewarded because of the constraints of the procedure.^[2]

The Steering Committee received suggestions for a new merit procedure through the Fall Semester 1991 and eventually presented a proposal to the faculty senators during the Senate’s March 1992 session. First, the proposal entirely eliminated the detested 2.0 point scale and recommended that every faculty member automatically be considered “meritorious.” Then a merit evaluation committee could place from 25% to 40% of its faculty in either a “highly meritorious” or an “exceptional merit” category. The other major change recommended that the department and campus merit evaluation committees operate on an alternate year schedule, thus reducing the hours devoted to the annual merit procedure by about half. In terms of the weight given to the four areas of evaluation–instructional activities, professional activities, university service (governance) and discipline-related public service and outreach–Steering proposed that the greatest weight be given to the effectiveness of ones instructional activities. In May 1992 the faculty senators voted eleven to six to adopt the new merit procedure.^[3]

A related issue–post tenure review–was under discussion by the faculty senators at the same time the merit policy was revised. Post tenure review raised many alarms because some perceived it as a direct attack on tenure. However, the UW System and the Board of Regents defended its implementation as an integral and appropriate component of “The Undergraduate Imperative: Building on Excellence” which aimed at ensuring effective undergraduate teaching in all UW institutions. Accordingly, the Board had mandated that each UW institution develop a post tenure review policy which required a performance review of all tenured faculty members on a seven year cycle. Acting President Lyall pointed out that the process was aimed primarily at “reinforcing and rewarding high quality [teaching] performance” and that if a deficiency in teaching was uncovered, the UW would assist the faculty member to overcome the problem.^[4] While these words somewhat reduced the anxiety level among tenured faculty, the Centers Professional Standards Committee tried to dampen the concerns even more by including reassurances in the preamble to the guidelines for Tenured Faculty Review and Development: “Post tenure review and development is not a retenuring process but rather a review of performance and provides the opportunity to plan for developmental activities and identify strategies by which these activities may be implemented. This process will fully respect the concept of tenure.”^[5]

After spending all of 1992 writing and rewriting a post tenure review policy, the Professional Standards Committee finally asked the Faculty Session (the seventeen faculty senators of the Senate) to initiate the approval process in January 1993. The faculty senators agreed but also decided to delay the second and final vote until May, to allow sufficient time for discussion of the proposal at the campuses and during the spring department meetings. In March 1993 the Faculty Session initiated a slightly altered draft of the policy and directed Jerry Bower (Richland–History), Chair of the Senate Steering Committee, to conduct a referendum among the faculty on the proposal. In May Bower reported the results: only 178 faculty members (49%) had cast ballots, with 89 supporting the proposed policy and 58 voting no. The remaining 31 voted that the proposal needed further revisions. In view of this terribly split outcome, the faculty senators decided to delay the adoption vote until the October meeting. Finally, on October 2, 1993, the Faculty Session approved, 14-3, the Tenured Faculty Review and Development Policy.^[6]

In the summer of 1992, Chancellor Grugel wrote a long letter to Vice President Stephen Portch detailing the Centers ongoing struggles with transfer issues. The major problem cited by Grugel concerned the nine baccalaureate institutions which insisted that transfer students earn a higher GPA than their own students to be regarded as “in good academic standing.”^[7] Grugel repeated the argument that a Centers’ student who was transferring should be held only to the same academic standards as a student who began at a four-year campus. Grugel also again complained about the lack of timely notice to the Centers when a four-year campus changed its transfer policy. He related a horror story involving a recent incident with UW-La Crosse. In the 1991 Fall semester La Crosse had requested that Center transferees not submit their applications until after January 1, 1992. Then, on January 17, 1992, La Crosse suddenly announced that it would cease accepting transfer applications in one week! This notice came before the Centers’ students had returned for second semester classes, thus making it nearly impossible to alert the transferees to La Crosse to mail their applications immediately. Although this incident was unusual, Grugel explained that many four-year UWs implemented changes in course equivalencies and/or majors requirements without sufficient notice. In the worst instances, the Centers only learned of such new policies when a student complained about transfer difficulties. Grugel suggested that the Board of Regents tighten up the nebulous language in the System Transfer Policy to absolutely require sufficient notice of changes in standards for transferees.^[8]

Early in October 1992 Department of Administration Secretary James Klauser ordered each state agency to set aside 1.5% of its annual budget in an escrow account to be used to balance the state’s budget. Once again, a decline in revenue had compelled this drastic action. A few days later President Lyall explained this latest budget blow’s impact to the Board of Regents. She added this unexpected $10.2 million giveback to an earlier required $8.1 million S/E lapse and noted that the total was about 2.5% of the UW System annual budget. Indeed, Lyall stressed that the effect upon the 1993 Spring Semester operations would be 5%, for the announcement came too late to extract a significant sum from 1992 Fall Semester expenditures. Lyall sought assurances from Governor Thompson that these truly would be one-time givebacks rather than permanent reductions in the System’s base budget.^[9] After each UW institution had specified how its share of the giveback would be raised, President Lyall reported that approximately 200 fewer course sections would be offered in Spring 1993, 100 positions would not be filled, and efforts to streamline administrative procedures and to expand the Transfer Information System to include Technical College courses would be delayed. Moreover, the installation of computers and creation of networks would be slowed.^[10]

The Centers’ share of this mandated giveback was $340,700. This amount was in addition to an earlier directive to pare $109,500 from the S/E budget. Commenting on the latter, Assistant Chancellor Antone Kucera noted that the Centers, over the last four years, had been allocated an additional $300,000 for S/E but the repeated lapses had ultimately meant almost no increase in actual revenues.^[11] The Centers pared its 1993 spring course offerings and held vacant several positions to pay off its debt. Grugel, in reporting this, observed that many Center students would be disadvantaged by the cancellation of courses, especially basic offerings in English composition and mathematics.^[12]

In addition to the funds returned to the state in 1993, the Centers reallocated nearly $130,000 into salary increases as its share of the ongoing Quality Reinvestment Program. In view of the miserly 1% raises the state proposed to provide in the 93-95 biennium, the impact of the QRP dollars upon salaries was practically inconsequential and the UW once again sank below the median compensation of its peer groups’. The Centers had extracted a sizable portion of its QRP contributions from summer session salaries which reduced summer sessions at several campuses to just a few courses. Finally, the Centers began, in 1993, to commit $100,000 annually to maintenance agreements for its new Student Information system (SIS). SIS was used by the campus student services offices and the central office in Madison to store permanent student records. Naturally SIS was vital to providing good service to each student, but the cost of maintaining the network and files had to be pried from other areas of the budget. In the end, despite everyone’s concerted efforts to reduce costs, the Centers had a $100,000 deficit at the end of the 1993-1994 academic year.^[13]

During 1993 Chancellor Grugel and Assistant Chancellor Kucera worked with UW System Administration to find suitable space to relocate the Centers’ Central Office. The impetus for this effort was the pending expiration of the Centers’ lease in the Verex Building (in August 1994) where the Central Office had been housed since mid-1988. The owners of the Verex Building had warned that the rent would be substantially increased. The looming rent increase by itself might have been enough to compel a move but the Central Office staff had also become increasingly cramped due to the addition of more personnel and computers. Since the System Administration, itself, also was in the process of reorganizing, it appeared that the Centers might be able to obtain space in a UW System building. Eventually, Grugel and Kucera negotiated a fifteen year lease for 20% of the space in a new UW System Administration building erected at 780 Regent Street.^[14]

In September 1992 an eleven-member North Central Association of Colleges and Schools evaluation team visited the Centers to decide whether the Centers’ accreditation should be renewed. The team members visited ten of the two-year campuses and conferred with Central Office staff and UW System officials to gather data. In March 1993, the Centers received preliminary word that the NCA would renew the institution’s full accreditation for another ten years. This was confirmed on June 4, 1993, when the Board of Regents officially received the NCA recommendation.^[15]

Among the 25 strengths listed by the visitation team in its “Report of a Visit,” a few deserve special note. The visitation team stressed how well Centers’ personnel had learned to operate effectively with meager resources and to place the emphasis on the “success of students rather than the comforts of the work environment.” But the team cautioned that the staff may have become too accustomed to “doing more with less” so that neither UW System nor the state government really understood the extent of the Centers’ need for more money.^[16] The Report commented favorably upon the dedicated, energetic and talented central administration which worked to promote the welfare of the Centers’ students, faculty, and staff. It also described the faculty as highly qualified and well prepared to teach freshman and sophomore undergraduates. The updated associate of arts and sciences degree earned special commendation, especially the requirement that a student complete both a writing/speaking emphasis and a multicultural emphasis course.^[17]

The North Central visitation team also cited numerous areas where the Centers needed to improve. Out of a list of twenty-six “Concerns” the team highlighted the three most important deficiencies and required the Centers to submit a progress report on overcoming them to the NCA by December 1995.^[18] The first concern called upon the Centers to clarify and improve how the resources it received from UW System were allocated among the Centers’ central office and the thirteen campuses. Second, the team noted the absence of an ongoing integrated planning process as a serious problem. Although each campus and department annually planned its budget and curriculum, the Centers lacked a master plan. Finally, the visitors chastised the Centers for its delay in implementing and using an assessment of student academic achievement to improve instruction.^[19]

During the Centers’ annual “budget exercise,” as it was popularly labeled, each campus, in consultation with the academic departments, prepared a budget request. This budget also often contained requests for additional or replacement staff. In the 1990s the number of faculty retirements accelerated each year, leaving many tenure-track vacancies. The campuses’ annual budget proposals routinely included pleas to have the faculty vacancies filled with tenure-track persons instead of by lecturers. When the thirteen campus budgets were totalled in the Central Office the sum was an astronomical figure that no reasonable person could ever expect to be totally funded. Consequently, faculty, staff, deans and indeed everyone had become increasingly disenchanted with the utter futility of preparing a comprehensive budget request that would never be funded. The state’s almost routine budget freezes and givebacks also added uncertainty and anguish to the budget-planning process. Early in 1996 the Centers new Assistant Chancellor for Administrative Services Christopher (Chris) Forrest initiated a revised and improved budget planning process which had been worked out in consultation with Senate Budget Committee and the deans.

The UW Centers 1996-97 Budget Guidelines carefully laid out the major areas for budget preparation–personnel, local campus considerations, institution-wide programs including plans for future givebacks and details for special budget initiatives such as the student technology fee and the upgrading of faculty computers. Although the new guidelines did not make more money available to the campuses, they did provide a clearer picture of the priority items for the entire institution and how the Centers’ budget would be doled out. In succeeding years the budget guidelines were refined and tied into the long-range plans of the Centers and UW System.^[20]

The NCA’s special concern over the lack of an ongoing and integrated long-range planning procedure had been anticipated and noted in the Centers’ Self-Study Report.^[21] Therein the Centers planning procedure was described as reactive rather than proactive; when a problem arose the Centers created a committee, commission, or task force to investigate and to recommend remedial measures. After the group’s report was submitted it dissolved.^[22] The Self-Study also related that Chancellor Grugel, recognizing the limitations of this approach to long-range planning, had “. . . recently proposed the creation of an ongoing planning group. This group will monitor the educational environment, develop and maintain strategic plans on a continuing basis, and provide the chancellor with recommendations for the future direction of the UW Centers.”^[23] This reference described Chancellor Grugel’s ill-fated Planning Commission proposal which he presented to the Centers’ Senate in January 1993. From the beginning there was much resistance to Grugel’s proposal emanating from a fear that this chancellor-appointed group would operate outside the governance process.^[24] Even though the Planning Commission was staffed in May 1993, the group never succeeded in carving out an agenda or a role for itself. And, once again, urgent problems arising from successive fall enrollment declines and their negative impact upon the Centers’ budget compelled the Centers to shunt aside long-range planning to concentrate upon immediate problems. Ultimately, with Chancellor Grugel’s reluctant concurrence, the Planning Commission was dissolved in early 1996.^[25] Nevertheless, the NCA approved the “progress report” the Centers submitted in December 1995 regarding efforts to address the agency’s concerns for budget allocation and long-range planning.

Making sufficient progress toward drafting and implementing a plan for assessing student learning outcomes to satisfy the NCA visitation team’s third major concern proved most difficult. The effort began in May 1993 when the Senate authorized its Steering Committee to draft a constitutional amendment to create an Assessment Committee. The amendment was duly drafted, initiated, and ratified; however, the Assessment Committee was not immediately launched because the Senate also decided to set up a ten-person General Education Task Force to undertake a broad review of the Centers’ general education program, the associate degree, and the assessment of learning outcomes. In view of the obvious overlap between the agenda of the Task Force and the Assessment Committee, the Senate wisely opted to wait to activate the latter group.^[26]

The General Education Task Force began its work in Fall 1994 coincident with an unanticipated dramatic decline in enrollment. [The Centers’ Fall 1994 FTE enrollment plunged from 7,468 the previous fall to 6,728, putting the Centers 10.7% below its enrollment management FTE target.]^[27] This development required that everyone focus on this emergency, which delayed the work of the Task Force. Consequently, in September 1995, only two months before the assessment progress report was due to the NCA, the Task Force reported to the Senate that it was just then organizing itself into three subcommittees to address particular issues. This report also indicated that each academic department had been directed to identify the specific educational proficiencies that would be stressed in one of its courses and be prepared to assess the achievement of these proficiencies in the Fall 1996 semester.^[28] Although these steps addressed several of the NCA’s worries about assessment of student learning, the agency pronounced the Centers’ December 1995 progress report inadequate. In particular, NCA was disappointed that the Centers were still “planning for” assessment when the agency had expected that the process would be underway during the 1995-1996 academic year. Consequently, the NCA scheduled a “focused visit” to the Centers for December 1997 to determine whether sanctions would be necessary.^[29]

In the fall of 1996 the General Education Task Force’s work on assessment was taken over by the Assessment Initiation Working Group (AIWG) which would implement the Centers’ assessment program.^[30] The AIWG, using the NCA focused visit as a prod, relentlessly pushed the academic departments to begin their assessment programs. Consequently, the small NCA team that conducted a focused visit on assessment December 8-9, 1997, decided not to impose sanctions upon the Centers.^[31]

A tangential outcome of the North Central review was the Centers’ decision to withdraw from a long-standing Financial Aid Consortium which the Center System had formed with UW-Madison and UW-Green Bay in 1968 to process student financial aid applications more efficiently. As data was gathered for the Self-Study Report it became quite apparent that the Centers’ students were not receiving a fair share of the financial aid generated by the Consortium.^[32] The figures revealed that while Centers’ students generated about 27% of the federal dollars dispensed through the Consortium, they received just 2% to 8% of the proceeds. In May 1992 Chancellor Grugel warned both partners that the Centers would withdraw from the arrangement unless the allocation formula was dramatically revised. Neither institution responded. But, after a 1993 U.S. Department of Education audit concluded that Centers’ students should be awarded over one million additional dollars annually, both suddenly paid attention. Now thoroughly alarmed, Madison and Green Bay requested President Lyall’s office to arrange a meeting to consider the Centers’ concerns. Chancellor Grugel readily agreed to meet with his fellow chancellors on December 15. However, neither Chancellor Ward (Madison) nor Chancellor Outcault (Green Bay) attended; instead they sent representatives to argue that the consortium formula ought not be revised. Steamed by this affront, Grugel wrote to President Lyall to reiterate the Centers’ position and to request her support for his decision to withdraw from the Consortium. His key argument was that the Centers’ students, who were clearly more needy, ought not continue to subsidize their more well-to-do Madison and Green Bay colleagues’ financial aid.^[33] President Lyall reviewed the correspondence and supported Grugel’s decision. Three years later the Financial Aid Consortium ceased to exist.^[34]

Early in 1993 the Board of Regents began to work on a UW System plan for Enrollment Management III. EM III would encompass three biennia, 1995-2001. Unlike the two earlier enrollment management plans (1987-1995) when a gradual 20% decline in the number of high school graduates had permitted the UW System gracefully to orchestrate a small decline in enrollment, EM III would be carried out during years when the number of high school graduates would gradually return to the high levels of the mid 1980s. In addition to this increased demand for admission by high school graduates, UW System planners also anticipated that a larger number of adult learners, who needed to update their knowledge and skills, would call upon the University. Along with these changed demographics EM III would operate during years of tight fiscal constraints which would force the UW System to educate more students without a proportionate increase in its budget. Because of increased competition for state dollars to meet rapidly rising health care costs, to provide more prison cells, and to implement Governor Thompson’s pledge to provide additional state aid to the local public schools, the University could not realistically anticipate any significant increase in its state support.^[35]

In order to compile accurate estimates of how many additional students the UW System could accept, the Board of Regents directed each UW institution to predict how many more students it could accommodate within each of three budget parameters: 1) no additional state funding, 2) a slight increase in state dollars coupled with internal budget reallocations, and 3) full state support for each additional student. Chancellor Grugel enlisted the Senate Steering and Budget Committees to help prepare the Centers’ estimates.

The Committees decided that the Centers could not accept any additional students under budget condition #1 because all of the campuses budgets were stretched very thin. In addition, the greatest number of new students would be expected to enroll at the Marathon, Fox Valley, and Marinette Centers because the nearby four-year UW campuses (Stevens Point, Oshkosh, Green Bay, respectively) had already achieved their enrollment limits. In the second budget scenario the Centers predicted it could accommodate 492 more students and with full state funding it could accept another 497, for a total of 989 FTE students. When all the estimates had been tallied, the UW System predicted it would grow by 6.8% (8,510 FTE) during the six years of EM III. The Centers anticipated a 13.1% (989 FTE) growth rate.^[36]

The UW System’s emphasis in EM III upon increased development of distance education capabilities presented both opportunities and potential pitfalls to the Centers. Since the Centers had thirteen campuses scattered across the state and a central office in Madison, it stood to gain a great deal by linking them together via a personal computer network. But the start-up costs would be huge because each of fourteen sites would need the same basic equipment. Then, the ongoing costs of maintaining the network, the computer laboratories, and technology staff salaries would require a significant amount of money. Despite these daunting fiscal prospects the Centers could not ignore a trend in the delivery of college courses. Somehow it had to find the resources to expand and maintain a telecommunications network that permitted instantaneous communication among its scattered parts.

In the quest for funds to increase the capability of CentersNet (established in 1990-91) the Centers sought private grant monies and also campaigned for special state budget items dedicated to technology acquisition. For example, in August 1992, Chancellor Grugel announced that the Centers had won a $508,806 U.S. Department of Education grant which, over three years, would be used to develop a new Student Information System (SIS) to store student records.^[37] The Centers fully supported the Regents’ campaign to gain the legislature’s permission to levy a special 1% student technology fee throughout the UW System. This special assessment proposal had even won the support of the student governments because the expenditures would be strictly devoted to increasing student access to computers and because students would have the majority vote on the committees which expended the funds. This campaign ended successfully when the state legislature included the technology fee in the 1995-97 biennial budget.^[38] In the fall of 1994 the Centers received a grant specifically for designing a distance education (DE) network for the thirteen campuses and the Centers’ central office. The money ($50,000) came from the Public Communications Facilities Program in the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Centers enhanced the value of this grant by collaborating closely with the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board to assure that its distance education network would be compatible across the state.^[39]

Early in 1994, in response to all of this activity, the Centers set up a Distance Education Task Force to study technology issues and to recommend how the institution should respond. The DE Task Force met several times during the summer of 1994 and submitted its report in November 1994. At the very beginning of its Report the group tried to quiet a major faculty misgiving about DE courses when it stated that distance education “. . . is intended to complement and enhance, not supplant, regular classroom instruction.”^[40] Elsewhere the Report listed three primary criteria for determining whether a particular course should be offered via distance education–the course should increase sophomore retention, have a low enrollment at several Centers, and utilize special faculty expertise.

A Task Force survey had revealed that the human and physical space resources available for distance education were severely limited at almost all Centers. The data highlighted the fact that the current technology staff person on several campuses was an individual who had taken on the additional duties of trying to keep the network operating smoothly. But the workload had significantly increased and several now indicated that they could not continue much longer to juggle their regular duties and their technology work. On many campuses the audiographics equipment (then the only DE delivery system available in the Centers) was crammed into little more than a closet, while the goal was a computer, a document scanner, and an electronic notepad for each three students. If the Centers could ever acquire sufficient equipment to meet this standard, a larger space naturally would be required to house the equipment and the classes. The Report noted that only four Centers’ faculty were then involved in the creation and delivery of DE courses; the Task Force proposed to entice more faculty to become engaged in DE by providing them with training and release time to prepare DE courses. The Task Force also suggested summer stipends for DE course development as a potential incentive. The Task Force’s most important recommendation was that the Centers should immediately employ an external consultant to assist in the design of an improved CentersNet and the selection of the appropriate equipment to support the network.^[41]

Shortly after the DE Task Force issued its Report, the Distance Education Strategic Planning Committee assumed the responsibility for carrying out the Task Force’s recommendations. The DE Strategic Planning Committee, like its predecessor, issued a set of principles which sought to calm faculty members who feared that an increase in the number of distance education courses might jeopardize their jobs. The principles statement said,

It is appropriate that the UW Centers engage in distance education when such engagement enhances its curricular array and/or enriches the curriculum. Such engagement must, however, seek to maintain the quality of education that has become the hallmark of the UW Centers and allow for the continuing personal contact and interaction that is consistent with the experiences our students have in face-to-face instruction. Rather than substituting for such instruction, distance education should become one of the tools of a technologically empowered faculty and staff while at the same time helping to prepare their students to utilize technology after transfer.^[42]

During January and February 1996 the DE Strategic Planning Committee reviewed the recommendations of Evans Associates, the external consultant employed to assist the Centers with technology issues. In brief form, Evans Associates proposed that the UW Centers create an interactive video system called “Centersview,” that Centersview be compatible with other existing networks, that Centersview be integrated as soon as practical with CentersNet, and that the Centers seek compatible partners to share the carrying capacity of Centersview. To support both Centersview and CentersNet the Committee recommended that each Center be allotted one FTE network administrator and one FTE instructional support administrator. Finally, the Strategic Planning Committee and Evans Associates urged that personnel be trained in the use and advantages of Centersview so that each Center would eventually have a properly designed and utilized electronic classroom.^[43]

The DE Strategic Planning Committee attached a half-dozen conditions to its endorsement of these proposals. The most important of these conditions stipulated “That sufficient funding additional to the current base budget be found [for the DE installation and operation] to guarantee that the quality and character of a UW Centers education will be maintained. . . .”^[44] Chancellor Grugel accepted all six recommendations and the conditions attached to them. He pledged that additional resources would be sought through traditional UW System fiscal procedures and through vigorous pursuit of all appropriate grant opportunities.^[45]

During the summer of 1994 political rhetoric intensified as both incumbents and their challengers geared up for the fall gubernatorial and legislative elections. Wisconsin’s governor’s race promised to be especially interesting because incumbent Republican Governor Tommy Thompson had decided to seek an unprecedented third four-year term. The Democrats launched state Senate Minority Leader Charles “Chuck” Chvala against Thompson. Chvala, a Madison-area political veteran, had served one term in the Assembly before being elected to the Senate in 1984. Once again the key election issues were taxes and the state budget. Thompson had been relentlessly pushing his proposal to increase the state’s share of public school costs from the current 45% to 67%. This would require an estimated additional $1.5 billion. But Thompson still insisted that his plan could be funded without increasing either the income or sales tax. Thompson was counting upon continued economic growth, along with increased efficiencies in all state agencies, to generate the revenue needed for this huge cost shift. Chvala attempted to trump Thompson’s plan with a pledge to have the state assume 100% of the public school operating costs, at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion. To finance his proposal Chvala conceded that some taxes would have to be modestly increased but he argued that most of the money could be garnered by closing sales tax loopholes. Thompson quickly labelled Chvala a “tax and spend liberal Democrat,” a charge that proved very effective in the campaign.^[46]

Long before the 1994 political campaign began in earnest, University of Wisconsin System officials had been grappling with budget issues arising from the pending increase in state aid to public school districts. They knew that the UW could not expect an increase in its state support because the K-12 schools would be the top priority for any additional state expenditure. In fact, a major concern was that the UW’s share of the state budget would continue to decline, necessitating unpopular tuition increases and/or reductions in the quality of a UW education. In May 1994 the Department of Administration seemed to confirm these fears when it imposed a hiring freeze and ordered all state agencies to prepare budgets based upon both a 5% and a 10% decrease. Each agency also was directed to submit a narrative describing any adverse impacts of these reductions.

In the Centers Chancellor Grugel mobilized the Senate Budget Committee, department chairs, deans, and key academic staff to prepare the reduced budgets and a commentary about their negative impacts. Meanwhile President Lyall waged a well-conceived public relations campaign on the theme that Wisconsin must not allow its excellent system of higher education to deteriorate in order to shunt more resources to the public schools. Lyall asserted that the University, through former President Shaw’s Quality Reinvestment Program, had made all of the position cuts and budget shifts it could afford. Perhaps in response to this campaign, in mid-September DOA Secretary James Klauser unexpectedly excused the UW from having to complete the 5% and 10% budget reduction exercise. Governor Thompson immediately used this announcement as evidence of his pledge to maintain the quality of the UW System while also improving Wisconsin’s public schools. Challenger Chvala soon also promised to spare the University from huge budget cuts but admitted that some “discreet cuts” might be necessary to implement his plan to help the public schools.^[47]

The November 8, 1994, election gave Wisconsin Republicans an astounding victory. Thompson crushed Chvala [1,019,599 (67%) to 465,772 (33%)] to win a third term. Adding to Thompson’s elation was the fact that his party retained its narrow, 17 to 16, edge in the state Senate while it captured control of the Assembly by a 51 to 48 margin.^[48]

Throughout the political campaigns the process for building the UW’s 1995-1997 biennial budget had moved relentlessly forward. The work was done under a DOA mandate to all state agencies to submit a no-increase budget. However, the Regents proposed a very modest increase and warned that much larger future increases would be needed to maintain the quality of a University of Wisconsin degree. The Regents also requested that the special state allocations for laboratory and classroom modernization be continued.

Governor Thompson’s budget proposal to the legislature, in February 1995, contained two pieces of bad news for the UW. First, he proposed a base budget reduction of 5.1% ($43 million), the first GPR cut for the UW System since merger. Thompson also, in the interest of increased efficiency, recommended that the UW System information technology and capital building project planning staffs be eliminated. DOA would assume their duties. This proposal especially alarmed UW officers because the University would lose control over its telecommunications network and direct access to the special planning skills required for academic buildings. Indeed, some disgruntled UW System officers predicted that DOA would soon realize that its personnel lacked the expertise to provide these services and would have to contract with consultants at greater expense to get the work done. On the positive side, the Governor proposed that the lab and classroom modernization programs be continued ($9 million annually) and that new special initiatives be funded for Distance Education ($5.3 million) and for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education ($17 million). He also concurred in the recommendation that the 1% student technology fee should be collected at all UW institutions to assure students’ access to computers, the internet, and e-mail.^[49]

President Lyall led the campaign to politely but firmly point out the negative repercussions of the Governor’s budget upon the University. She noted, for instance, that the $43 million GPR reduction would slash all state aid for 7,000 FTE students–equivalent to wiping out entirely the budget of UW-La Crosse or UW-Stevens Point or the Centers, all of which had a full-time equivalent enrollment of about 7,000.^[50] This campaign, while necessary, was fraught with political danger because Wisconsin’s taxpayers were looking forward to local property tax relief and were not in a receptive mood to hear complaints from a group of allegedly pampered professors. Chancellor Grugel discovered this first-hand when he was quoted as saying, while addressing a “Budget Cut Awareness Day Rally” at UWC-Fond du Lac, “This budget is good for the governor but bad for the people of Wisconsin.” Grugel had also noted that while the Governor’s budget did not increase taxes, it contained $460 million in new fees–“Whether you call it a tax or a fee, you still pay for it!”^[51] An angry Governor Thompson quickly protested to President Lyall about Grugel’s remarks and she relayed the governor’s complaint to the Chancellor. A few days later Grugel sent to Thompson a very carefully worded letter of apology in which he suggested that his remarks were quoted out of context and thus they appeared to be more personal than intended. In transmitting a copy of this “apology” to President Lyall, however, Grugel explained that he felt his remarks were appropriate for a political rally and that if Thompson’s budget was adopted real damage would be done both to the Centers and the UW System.^[52]

Early in June 1995 the powerful Joint Finance Committee (JFC) convened to review the Governor’s 95-97 biennial budget proposal. The JFC accepted Thompson’s $43 million GPR reduction for the University but offset it somewhat with $10.7 million in tuition and fee increases. The Committee members, however, deleted the Governor’s proposal to transfer planning for technology and major building projects to DOA, thus saving the UW System staff from elimination. Chancellor Grugel, in relaying news of the JFC’s action to the deans, noted that the Centers’ share of the GPR reduction would be $948,999 for the biennium.^[53] At the end of June 1995 the state legislature enacted a 1995-1997 University of Wisconsin System budget as crafted by the Joint Finance Committee.^[54]

Beginning in the Fall Semester of 1994 the UW Centers experienced three successive years of enrollment decline. This unexpected development created a fiscal crisis reminiscent of the one faced by the old Center System from the mid 1970s into the early 1980s. The numbers were indeed grim: the Fall 1994 enrollment was 810 FTE (10.7%) below the target which meant a loss to the Centers budget of $1 million dollars; Fall 1995 brought a further decline of 300 FTE (now 14.7% below target) and an increase in the budget deficit to $1,590,000; and finally the Fall 1996 numbers represented a decline of another 366 FTE, which pushed the Centers fully 20% beneath its Enrollment Management III target enrollment of 7,505 FTE and created a huge, total liability of $2.2 million.^[55]

After the disastrous Fall 1994 numbers were tallied, Chancellor Grugel polled the deans and student services directors for explanations of why the Centers’ enrollment had unexpectedly plunged. Subsequently, Grugel cited three major reasons for the decline in a letter to President Lyall. First, the spring 1994 high school graduating class had been the smallest in two decades and a fierce competition ensued among all UW institutions to enroll the college-bound graduates. Second, Grugel contended that some baccalaureate institutions had reduced admission requirements to achieve freshmen enrollment goals. In the past, the Chancellor observed, many of the underprepared freshmen would have been advised to enroll in a Center. The baccalaureates had also heavily recruited students who had completed only one year’s study in the Centers. This tactic, which reduced the Centers’ sophomore retention rate, had contributed to the overall enrollment decline. Finally, Grugel maintained that the strong economy and job market had lured some high school graduates into delaying their college education. The strong economy had also convinced some Centers’ students to postpone their enrollment to save for an eventual return to the classroom. He stressed that this phenomenon had especially harmed enrollment in eastern Wisconsin at Fox Valley, Washington County, and Waukesha County.^[56]

When the Fall Semester 1995 numbers proved even more dismal, Chancellor Grugel reiterated all three of these explanations. But now he added data which revealed that the four-year UWs, excluding Madison and Milwaukee, had increased the number of new freshmen by about 1,000 FTE and transfer students by approximately 600 FTE. Grugel used these figures to strongly intimate that the four-year institutions had met their goals at the expense of the two-year campuses. Consequently, he requested President Lyall to regard the Centers’ predicament “. . . as a systemic rather than [solely] an institutional issue.” ^[57] In his third annual letter of explanation to President Lyall, in October 1996, Chancellor Grugel hopefully noted two reasons why the Centers’ enrollment might begin to rebound in 1997. He wryly suggested that some baccalaureate campuses, thanks to vigorous recruitment of new freshmen and transfer students the past two years, would be at their enrollment limits and thus would again recommend that excess applicants should enroll at a Center. He also anticipated that the number of Wisconsin high school graduates would begin to rise in 1997. ^[58]

Although the record indicates that Lee Grugel worked tirelessly to convince System administrators that a major share of the Centers’ enrollment and fiscal difficulties were the result of damaging decisions made by the four-year campuses under EM III guidelines, some Centers’ faculty, staff and administrators felt that the Chancellor had become perplexed and discouraged. Consequently during the last two years of Chancellor Grugel’s tenure institutional morale sank very low. The situation appeared to some faculty and staff to be entirely beyond their control and they though it terribly unfair to require the Centers to make huge budget adjustments which resulted from the “theft” of students who normally would have enrolled at a Center. The entire episode also reinforced the impression that the Centers was the UW institution of last resort for students who just were not well-prepared enough to be admitted elsewhere in the University of Wisconsin. There can be no doubt that this negative image of the Centers compounded the difficulty of attracting students to enroll.

Once again in September 1996 Chancellor Grugel plunged into negotiations with President Lyall and key members of her staff to convince them that a portion of the Centers’ debt ought to be forgiven because the four-year UWs had “mined” the Centers for students. Consequently those institutions should, in fairness, be required to bear part of Centers’ burden.

In the midst of these negotiations, on October 31, 1996, Lee Grugel died unexpectedly in his sleep of an apparent heart attack.^[59] Because he was only 56, the Chancellor’s death hit everyone in the Centers especially hard. Some people naturally wondered whether the stress of dealing with the enrollment and budget crises had contributed to his death. Lee Grugel’s memorial service, held in Madison, was attended by numerous Centers’ personnel, by colleagues from UW-Eau Claire, and by President Lyall and other UW System officials. Six weeks later, in mid-December 1996, President Lyall appointed Howard Thoyre, who had recently retired after a 34 year career at UW-Stevens Point as a professor of mathematics and an administrator, to serve as the Acting Chancellor.^[60]

After Lee Grugel’s untimely death, other Centers’ personnel stepped forward to try to convince UW System officials that the Centers’ debt should be reduced. Previously, in 1994 and 1995, President Lyall had generously slashed the Centers’ uncollected tuition debt by half, to $500,000 and $795,000, respectively. Naturally it would also help tremendously to have the 1996 $2.2 million obligation sliced in half. But, because of shifting priorities in the state budget (as described earlier) the UW System now had less fiscal flexibility to assist the Centers. This was the clear message that Vice President David Ward delivered to Senate Steering Committee Chair Bellamy Hamilton. Ward stressed that the Centers’ “only issue was enrollment” and that the institution needed to quit blaming external factors for its dilemma and get busy to recruit more students. Ward recommended, in view of the continued fierce competition to recruit traditional-aged students, that the Centers should target new pools of students through distance education courses and through partnerships with area high schools to bring the best junior and senior students into UW Centers’ classes. Hamilton’s report to the Senate of her visit with Vice President Ward triggered a wide-ranging discussion of the sources of the Centers’ problems. During this exchange Fond du Lac Dean Judy Goldsmith described a recent meeting of the thirteen deans with President Lyall. The deans had stressed that “. . . the Centers’ enrollments won’t turn around until the four-year schools stop treating us like a colony to be exploited” and that UW System must forgive some of the mounting debt, “. . . otherwise the Centers will be in a death spiral.”^[61]

In yet another meeting, this time between Vice President Keith Sanders and the academic staff representatives of all fifteen UW institutions, information surfaced which supported the Centers’ contention that the four-year campuses had adjusted admission requirements to assure achievement of their enrollment targets. Sanders, a former UW-Stevens Point Chancellor, related that Stevens Point, indeed, had acquired forty or fifty more last-minute students by making telephone calls and personal contacts with students previously refused admission. Sanders added that he knew this tactic had harmed enrollment at both UWC-Marathon County and UWC-Marshfield/Wood County. Sanders concluded with the observation that the Centers provided a valuable service to the UW System and that a way had to be found “. . . to subsidize and help the Centers or the rest of the UW institutions will suffer.”^[62]

During the ongoing enrollment/fiscal crisis more and more Centers personnel expressed the opinion that part of the enrollment problem was that prospective students and the general public did not clearly understand what the Centers were and how they meshed with the UW System. Older citizens in the host communities still held fast to the “Extension Center” label.^[63] A second perception that dogged the Centers was that students lost credits when they transferred. This impression persisted despite the great strides that had been taken to create a “seamless transfer process” within the UW System. The best explanation for this misunderstanding is that students who had no problem transferring seldom advertised their experience while those who encountered difficulty complained loudly. Another image problem was the idea that the two-year campuses were not as good as the four-year UWs. Consequently, the impression was afoot that only students who could not gain admission at a baccalaureate institution enrolled in a Center. The Centers’ lower tuition sometimes even hurt the image because of the commonly-held notion that “you get what you pay for.” Evidently, when some prospective students read that the Centers were the “best educational value” in the UW System, they translated that to mean that the educational quality was not as high as at the four-year schools.^[64]

Chancellor Grugel’s response to these image issues had been brilliant–he requested that President Lyall reduce the Centers’ giveback to UW System by $45,000 so that the Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory (WSRL) could be employed to do a statewide image study. In less than a month the President gave her go-ahead.. ^[65] The WSRL conducted a fifteen-minute telephone interview with at least 100 respondents in each of the thirteen Center communities. These interviews revealed that 89% of the respondents were aware of the local Center compared to a slightly lower (86%) awareness of the area technical college. However, when the queries focused on how much each interviewee knew about these institutions, 67% replied that they knew “some” or a “great deal” about the technical college while just 47% said the same about the Center. Conversely this meant that 53% of those who knew that their community had a Center answered that they either knew “little” or “almost nothing” about its actual operation!^[66] The responses to the question about how well the local Center informed the public about itself and its activities disclosed that just 55% responded “excellent or good.”^[67] Obviously the UW Centers needed to devise ways to better inform the public about its programs and about its status as fully accredited University of Wisconsin campuses.

Two months after receiving the Image Survey Chancellor Grugel, in June 1996, created a nine-member Marketing Task Force (MTF) to conduct a broad-range review of current marketing efforts and to make recommendations for “a comprehensive institutional marketing effort.”. ^[68] The MTF included in its study a Student Satisfaction Survey sent to just over 1,100 randomly selected Centers’ students. This survey produced some heartening news–94% of the respondents expressed overall satisfaction with their UW Centers’ experience, 95% were satisfied with the quality of instruction, and 67% had selected a Center as their first-choice college. On the debit side of the ledger, however, was a UW Centers Transfer Study which indicated that almost half of the students who transferred encountered some difficulty–either they lost credits or a course which they expected would fulfill a specific general education requirement transferred instead as an elective.^[69]

The Marketing Task Force made nine recommendations in its final report. The MTF boldly urged that the name of the institution and each campus be changed by dropping “Center” and that this be accomplished before the end of 1997. The MTF recommended that an external consultant be employed to assist in the creation of an institution-wide marketing plan and that adequate resources be devoted to marketing efforts.^[70] These suggestions were quickly implemented. One result was a unified across-the-state advertising campaign via television and radio spots and even a few billboards.

Back in 1992, just a few months after he had become Chancellor, Lee Grugel had written Acting President Lyall to suggest that the institution’s title should be changed to the University of Wisconsin Colleges.^[71] After the Marketing Task Force also recommended a name change, Acting Chancellor Thoyre pushed the idea by circulating various options and requesting reactions to them. In May 1997 the Senate chose University of Wisconsin Colleges, 19 to 7, as its preference; UW Regional Campuses came in second.^[72] Thoyre promptly forwarded the recommendation to President Lyall who sent it to the Board of Regents with her endorsement. On July 25, 1997, the Board of Regents overwhelmingly approved the new title, to become effective with the 1997 Fall Semester. ^[73] In late August 1997 the UW Centers truly became HISTORY! but the two-year campuses are still hard at work in thirteen communities implementing the Wisconsin Idea by providing access to a high-quality University of Wisconsin education.^[74]