 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And as you can see, nothing will slow down my boss. He's had some surgery and we could spend probably an interesting half hour talking about the trials and tribulations there, but Mike continues to run the county board and does an excellent job. And today the focus of our discussion is to meet and talk with Mr. Al Hardison, Dean of UW-Sheboygan now for an unbelievable five years. How quickly the time has gone by Al. Absolutely, I'm hard to believe. Hard to believe, wonderful to have you with us. So many good things happening here at UW-Sheboygan. And please start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and when you first started and just how you've been enjoying the job the last five years. Well, thank you. First and foremost, I remember we first came to Sheboygan being welcomed by so many people. And I had no idea what a great community we were moving into. And living in the county, getting to know some of the folks has been probably one of the best parts about coming to UW-Sheboygan. My wife and I came from a land a little further south. We won't mention it by name, but we will say that the Packers did beat their team in the playoffs last year or so. And we were actually cheering for the Packers. So to have that as a starting point of our conversation, when you start cheering for the Packers and you start rooting for the Brewers and you're a lifelong Cub fan that does say something. Probably the biggest thing to say is that I've had some experience in the higher education at four institutions now. And I'm very proud to say that this is one that I truly love working at and love working with the students and the faculty and staff here. I think a lot of people may not recognize it and we mention it every time we talk about UW-Sheboygan. But Sheboygan County, the county owns the building and grounds, the state operates it. And it's a wonderful partnership. It dates back for quite some time. And Al, I know you take a lot of pride in the campus staff that you have here in your team. Please share a little bit about your faculty here and their strengths. Well, we have been very fortunate to have had two of our faculty in the last five years named as Undercoffler Award Winners. The Undercoffler Award is granted to UW System faculty. And each year, four faculty from the whole system are identified and recognized as being outstanding in their field. And that includes the medical school, the law school. It includes the universities, the comprehensives and doctorals. And to have two UW-Sheboygan faculty, the most recent, Dr. James Ryder, James English Professor. And prior to that, Tom Iboher, they actually became the fourth members of this campus to be so recognized in the 21 years of that award. That says a lot about the quality of the faculty. Our faculty approximately 90% have their terminal degree, either a PhD in their field or MFA if they're in fine arts or an MBA if they're in the business field. And that says to the students that you're getting top quality folks, they're here because they wanna be here. We have a requirement for research as a part of their continuation as a faculty member, whether it's retention for tenure track or after tenure track completion of tenure, they have to continue to publish and do research. Our faculty have the same requirements that UW and Madison have. And they also have a heavy teaching load, which is a hallmark of the UW colleges. We're very proud of them. Please set the stage for us a little bit. The three of us recognize what a jewel we have here with UW-Shabuigan. And more and more people are discovering that as your enrollment's gone up. But what's all here at UW-Shabuigan? What can people expect to see? Why should a student consider UW-Shabuigan? That's a great question. What sets us apart in many ways, our faculty live and work in the community. And so they're concerned about the students. They want them to be successful. They're not a number in their classroom. Our classes are small. They're small by comparison. It's not uncommon to walk into, say, UW-Madison lecture hall and have 500 to 1,000 students sitting in that lecture hall. The largest room that we have seats 66 students. And we're proud of that. The reality is we're a teaching institution. And so if a student would like to be in a class of 20 to 30 students, we're a great fit. If they'd like to be in that lecture hall and be unknown to the professor and never see the professor, we're probably not a great fit. We have a lot of students who come to us as adults. 40% of our students are returning adults. And as far as economic development goes for the community, that adult learner is able to complete not only the associate's degree, but we have currently approximately 18 baccalaureate degrees that a person can finish and never leave this campus. And the huge plus for that is that the student is able to pay UW system tuition, which is much, much lower than private college tuition. They're able to continue working while they're finishing their education. And most of our adults have families, they have children, they have other commitments. They're able to work that in. They do amazing things and they succeed. The student who leaves a UW college campus completes at a very high rate within the UW system. And when I'm talking to students, that's very important. You don't want to spend two or three or four years and end up with nothing to show for it other than some credits. You want that degree completed, you wanna be a success. And more people are recognizing the value that UW Sheboygan provides. What has happened with enrollment over the years? My first fall, we had 670 students. We've seen increases each year. We have a board up in the student services area where people have predicted where we're gonna end up at the end of this year. My number happens to be the highest number on the board. But the number that I keep seeing is right at 900 or more. And so to grow from 670 to that amount in five falls is a significant change. Incredible, incredible. And as you said, collaborations with other four-year campuses. So if an individual wants to go here and start working on a four-year degree, please expand upon that a little bit. What kind of opportunities would they have? How does that work? We have a variety of offerings. And that's one of the things that makes it so attractive. We actually have programs with, say, UW Whitewater if you want a degree in business. You would literally never have to set foot on Whitewater's campus. But you could take the last two years and complete the coursework right here. You'd be doing that through distance education. You would not have faculty members sitting in the room with you, but you'd have the connectivity with that faculty member that electronically is available today. And it's very seamless. We also have blended opportunities. We have classes that are either taught here or they're taught on another campus and they're shared through either video conferencing, point-to-point instruction, or different types of distance-ed technology. And the students do have contact with faculty they're on a fairly regular basis. Programs such as management would fall into that area. We have a degree program, actually two programs with UW Platteville. We have students that are finishing bachelor's degrees in engineering in mechanical and electrical engineering. And those students use a streaming video technique. Streaming video allows the student to control what they see and to control how they see it. They can also capture that and replay it. And what I've learned in talking to the students that have gone through this program, they love it because if there's something that's addressed in a lecture that they don't quite understand, they can replay it as many times as they need to so that they've got the concept down pat. The advantage of that is huge over a face-to-face lecture where once it's said, it's said, and if you didn't get the notes properly, you just lost it. With that Platteville program, they're actually trucking equipment to our campus for our students to do the lab components. And it's a little bit old-fashioned in the sense that they literally use a loader and load the equipment on a semi and haul it in and we unload it and instructor will do the labs. But the students are getting the same equivalent. Our students GPAs are higher on average than the students who are sitting in Platteville. Most of our students are adults who've come back to school for that program. So you know that what they got from us to get ready for that program, prepare them, and what they're getting from Platteville is extremely strong. Those are just a couple of examples and I'll give you a few more in a little bit. Excellent, excellent. And last question before I turn it over to Mike, back to that value, the economy right now, there's a lot of people hurting and I'm sure folks who didn't have the same job, the same income that they may have had three years ago if someone in the family's lost a job, they don't have you, a lot of situations out there. Their children are ready to go off to school, finances are tight. They can potentially come to a UW-Chaboy again, get that excellent education, get two years under their belt, as you just described, potentially be here all four years, but certainly get that two years and then if they wish, move on to a four-year campus. How does that work with the credits that they earned? And you touched on that briefly a moment ago chances are, are they all going to carry over? What can a person expect in that regard? Great question. As a graduate of a two-year campus and someone who didn't have the financial wherewithal to go to college and know one of my family had ever been in college, I can certainly relate to the value I share with folks when I speak, no one ever asked where I started in college. They asked where I earned my PhD, where I got my master's degree, what my thesis was about, my dissertation, my research. They never asked where'd you spend your first two years and I'm very proud to say I started in the two-year campus and actually the campus that I started in had temporary ten buildings that are still standing 45, 50 years later. But the value of the credits, the UW system has a transfer website where you can literally go on and you can see every course from every UW system campus, all 26, and you can see how those courses transfer within the system. A student who wants to be an engineer needs the same courses at Platteville that they would need here for those first two years and vice versa. When a student finishes here, they seamlessly step into the junior year of courses. They met all the requirements and everything transfers with them. If I say I'm gonna be in nursing and I end up wanting to go in special ed and I've taken courses required for nursing that aren't required for special ed and I switch over to special ed, then I may have some credits that don't count towards special ed, but the reality is they do transfer within the system. You just may have set yourself back a little bit because you didn't make up your mind early on in the process. That's true if the students in Madison, they changed their major a couple of times. Very common. But coming back to the financials, a student can start at a two-year campus and graduate with little or no debt, and that's a huge plus. That's almost impossible to say for a student that's going to a four-year, especially a private campus because the reality is our tuition has been frozen for the past four years. It did go up this fall, five and a half percent, but we have four years of frozen tuition. So if you think back to 19, I'm sorry, 2006, that's what our tuition was at last year. So we've really, we've been a great bargain and even with the small increase that we have this year, we're still a real big cost savings. Very good. Thank you, Al. Al, in the past six to eight years, Boygan County's made some key capital improvements out here at UWS. There was a $2 million HVAC project. There was a $5 million Broad Science Edition, and then the $6 million Acuity Technology Center. How has that impacted the facility and the students here? Well, it's been a huge impact, Mike, and we as folks who come and enjoy working here every day certainly appreciate it, but so too do the students that attend. The reality is each of those additions and improvements that you're talking about play a key role in making this campus attractive and a better value. The Broad Science Facility, I'll speak about it real quickly, that facility is a showcase. It's an outstanding educational center for education in the sciences, whether it's biology or geography or geology or chemistry or physics. We have professors from other institutions who come here and they're at meetings and they walk over in that building and they just come back with their mouths hanging open and they're jealous. I mean, they don't teach and work in an environment that nice. The Acuity Technology Center, the new library. Two years ago, our library was recognized as the Wisconsin Library of the Year, and it was so recognized by all the libraries in the state of Wisconsin. This was not the higher ed library of the year, this was not the education library of the year. It was the Wisconsin Library of the Year, and it was so recognized because of the wonderful facilities and the great programs that our students get from those facilities. Likewise, with the Broad Science Building, students have great faculty teaching and a wonderful teaching environment, learning environment, so it enhances the learning opportunities for our students. The HVAC we benefit from doesn't really matter what time of year, whether it's in the winter or summer or fall or spring, it's a huge plus. Some roof work was just wrapping up this past week that you've helped with also. I mean, we not only receive major projects, we receive ongoing maintenance and upkeep of these facilities, which make them what they should be, 100-year buildings. There's not a building on this campus that shouldn't be able to be here 100 years from the time it was built. And if that's the case, then we're probably not doing a good job. Us taking care of it, you maintaining it. And I will say that when I visit other campuses, I come back and I'm very proud of what we have. Well, I'm glad that the facilities are working out quite well. And could you tell us about some of the student successes that come out of these facilities and the staff and faculty that you have here? Well, we send students, if you name an institution in the state of Wisconsin, we probably have students there. We have students who are in med school. We have students in law school. We have students finishing their engineering programs. We have students in doctoral programs. And we have students who transfer from UW-Shabuigan to Lakeland or Oshkosh, and they finish their degrees right here. I'll talk just briefly about a couple of the students that we've had since I've been here that I've gotten to know really well. One of our students just graduated in May with her bachelor's degree in early childhood education. She was an outstanding student as a returning adult, mother of a couple children, husband working, place bound, could not pick up and move to go away and finish a bachelor's degree. But she had this dream of teaching. Outstanding student, outstanding student leader, someone who got very actively involved in our education organization on campus. And she ended up going through Oshkosh's program as one of the top students in their field, did her student teaching locally and was snapped up by a school district because they realized this is a winner. Someone who has her roots deep, she's not gonna be moving in a year or two, her family's being raised, and she's very well trained, very well educated. The facilities that we have here made it possible for her to not only get her first two years, but she earned her second two years right on this campus. And that's a huge plus. That's a great success story. Thanks for sharing it. What trends are you aware of that are taking place in other parts of the state or the state in general that are gonna affect the way UW-Shabuigan operates in the future? Well, we are operating under a new financial model. This is something that came into play actually a year ago in July. It's called an integrated enrollment management model. And what that means is we have a lot more independence and everybody likes independence, along with that goes a lot more responsibility. We're accountable to ourselves now. If we don't make it financially, then we have to cut our own budget. We have to cut our own staff. So we have to be very careful how we manage. Fortunately, we began managing that way a few years ago. And so this model, because that's a model I'd worked under for a number of years, 35 years, that model will allow us as a campus to build up a reserve. And if we have an academic need that we identify, that we feel the campus or the community could benefit from, we don't have to beg Madison to get started in that area. We can make the decision to invest some funds and start in that path ourselves. A little bit more business-like. A lot of anxiety for some faculty who aren't used to that kind of a system and that kind of a model. They're used to one where things have been taken care of and they didn't have to worry about it. Personally, I think it's the direction that higher ed needs to go in. I think it's the direction that education in general needs to begin thinking, how do we sustain ourselves? Rather than always looking to someone else, we need to find ways to develop resources. And if we have programs that aren't working, that we have areas that are not successful, we need to take a hard look and make a decision. Is that something that we can sustain? Is it central to the core of our mission? And if it's not, there may come a day when we need to move on. And I believe that kind of thinking, I'm hearing more and more folks beginning to talk that way. And I believe that's a change that we're gonna see in Wisconsin and higher ed. To go on a little bit more with the financial questions, we've got a new state budget that was recently passed. We're learning to live with some new rules and things in Sheboygan County for our local government. How is that affecting UW Sheboygan and the facility here? Well, another good question. We've been operating the last couple of years under a furlough plan. And that furlough plan had an impact on all employees. There was some reduction in work days and reduction in pay that corresponded to that. The furlough plan went away after a couple of years and the new plan where each employee pays a percentage of their retirement and pays a greater share of their benefits package has been put in place. In reality, we haven't laid off anyone. We've not made any cuts in staff and we've not made any cuts in services. And in fact, I believe we're doing more with less. And I think we're doing a very good job doing more. It's always hard to do with less, but in reality, we do that at home. You learn to manage. As far as impacts on budget with this new financial model, we're in a position now, if we feel something is important that we need to do, we're in a position to be able to put money in that area. Now, to be in that position, you have to begin to save money. You have to invest that money and hold it back and be accountable for it. But you also then, when you have a need, you don't end up turning to Madison or someone else or chancellor's office and saying, give us some money, please. You look at your own resources and invest them, just like the county does every year. As you look at the future, what kind of opportunities do you feel you wanna pursue with some of these funds you're talking about or other needs that you feel need to be addressed? Well, we're working on some programs that I think are very critical for the community. They're critical for some of the businesses and they're very important for the students and the future students. Some of those programs include special education and we're developing with Oshkosh a regional program that we're sharing with three other UW college campuses, UW Fond du Lac, Washington County, UW Manitowoc and our campus. And that program will be housed in Plymouth. We're doing that because that's central to the four campuses. There are some resources that will need to be invested to make that work. Oshkosh will be putting some dollars in. We're gonna put some dollars in. Another area that we're expanding into is engineering technology. And we're working with UW-Astout to develop, again, our shared program. And this is something that I've been talking about since I've been here. Our new chancellor is very supportive of that concept to where three or four UW college campuses are much more attractive to a university and saying bring your bachelor's degree program to our area. We'll make it work between the three or four of us. We'll feed students into it so they're guaranteed to have a good pool of candidates. The programs we're looking at with Stout would be mechanical engineering technology, electrical engineering technology. We're talking nano and plastics. Those programs will be very beneficial to a number of the businesses and industry that work in our community. We have a number of students that are expressing interest in that. So the resources for that we actually applied for and with Stout's help and a lot of support, including letters from you folks, we actually received a COBE grant, which is continuing, I'm sorry, it's a baccalaureate expansion grant and it's one that's designed to grow more bachelor's degrees so people can complete bachelor's degrees without necessarily leaving their homes, primarily for adult learners. That program is one we're very excited about. We will have some investment of resources, but we believe it's a good investment. Sounds like an exciting couple of years coming up here at UWS and probably some more growth in your students attending. With that, I'll turn it back over to Adam to wrap up. Thank you, nice overview. And one of the areas we haven't touched on would certainly have previously when we've had the pleasure of having you on this program. A few years ago, we embarked on a rather controversial move of consolidating UW Extension, which was in Sheboygan Falls for a long, long time with UW Sheboygan. And of course, we had the pleasure of helping make sure that happened as smoothly as possible and now that we look back on that, what's been your impression now? Has it worked well? How has the relationship worked with UW Sheboygan and UW Extension being consolidated? I would say, from my vantage point, I think the campus as well, they're a great partner. We've found a number of ways to collaborate. We've shared some ideas. We've worked on projects together and it's been a very positive experience. In fact, I have a meeting with Tina Coleman this afternoon. We meet regularly, we discuss ideas and plans. We developed a grant together that we shared with Bookworm Gardens and we'll be talking more about that in the fall but just very quickly. I will say that their being here has not in any way been a hindrance. It's been a huge asset and I hope they feel the same way. In fact, I've talked to our staff at UW Extension not only do they love it here but the master gardeners and the energy that has come from the movement. In fact, some of them say students that they had a few years ago or in the past are now going to school here. And as you said, Bookworm Gardens, the wonderful asset that they're contributing to the UW campus and just bringing more people to see the jewel here that we have. That's all the time we have, Dean Al Hardison, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your leadership, the good work here at UW-Shabuigan. A lot of wonderful things that have happened on this campus continue to happen. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Al or his staff. As you can see, they're very warm and welcome and this is your facility. Come out and check it out. On behalf of Chairman Mike Van Der Stien and the Full County Board, thank you for joining us. Next month, our new finance director. Well, it's been a year now, not so new anymore. Terry Hanson will be here and will be giving a status report of how the county's doing with the budget process. So until then, thanks for joining us.