 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. I think we must be on our 100th plus program now, right? Or at least, yeah. We've done this, been there, and every month we try to bring a different department head or a department of focus for you to learn more about. And we're so pleased, because this is a little different this month. We have our Dean, Jackie Joseph Silverstein with us today. Welcome. Thanks. Thanks for having me today. It's great to have you. You may not be aware of it, but UW-Sheboygan is actually owned by Sheboygan County. The county owns the buildings and the grounds, and we've had a long-standing partnership with the state of Wisconsin, and a very good one I might add, where though the county owns the buildings and the grounds, the state operates the facility. So it's the state staff that make this place so successful, and it's our county staff, and our county board that continue to support it and make sure the buildings are improved. So today we're going to learn a little bit more about that relationship and the good things happening out here at UW-Sheboygan. But before we get started, Jackie, to me you still feel relatively new, though I know you've now been here for... Close to three years. I was going to say two or three years. Please set the stage for our viewers. Share a little bit about yourself and your journey to become Dean of UW-Sheboygan. Well, I think everyone can tell by my accent that I'm not a Wisconsinite. I grew up in Connecticut, and I was born and raised in Connecticut, and I've had a long career. I'm a lot older than you might think I am. And started that career as a faculty member, actually, in New York City at St. John's University. And after several years of being a faculty member, I realized that I had some passion and ability when it came to being an administrator instead. So I jumped ship from the faculty and started my administrative career. I was a dean. I was an associate provost. And little by little, my husband and I moved west. We spent time in Cleveland, Ohio, prior to coming to Wisconsin. And for the last four years we've been in Wisconsin, first in Milwaukee, where my husband was recruited for a job, and then I was lucky enough to land the job here at UW-Sheboygan, which really brought me back to my first love in my higher education journey as an administrator. And that was to run a small liberal arts campus where I could get to know the faculty and the students and actually continue my own lifelong learning journey by learning something from the people here every day. So I was lucky to find this job. And we were lucky that you applied for this job. I appreciate you sharing that background because you have some outstanding experience and you mentioned the word passion. And one of the things I've enjoyed, as I've gotten to know you over the last three years, is you still have that passion and desire to make things better here. And we're going to talk about some of those improvements in a few minutes. But talk about your first impressions or your impression today. What are the strengths of UW-Sheboygan? I'm very, very proud of here at UW-Sheboygan as our faculty. And not just as experts in their field who work very hard, but as people who really care about the students and provide the students with a lot of one-on-one attention. And their goal really is to make our students be successful. You know, you hear about the professor with the yellowed paper he teaches from semester after semester. That is not our faculty. Every time I'm talking to them, they're revising their courses, they're making their courses better because maybe there wasn't something that worked the previous semester and they want to improve upon that. So I think one of our greatest strengths is our faculty. When we talk to students, we've had a couple of opportunities to survey students to say, you know, why did you come here? Would you recommend other students come here? What are our greatest strengths? They always talk about the personal attention they get here, the faculty, the support that's provided by the student affairs office. Our student faculty ratio, I believe, is around 19 to 1 in the classroom. So our students really are in smaller classes where their professor gets to know them very different than the experience they might have if they went to Madison right away. Know what? Right away. So I think that is... Those are our greatest strengths, our faculty, our staff, and the way they interact with the students and the great education they provide to our students. I guess one other thing I would say, and I think maybe you'll ask me about this later, is that I think another great strength is the fact that we've been able to collaborate with some of our four-year relatives around the state to bring collaborative degree programs to this community so that students can complete a four-year degree while they're right here in Sheboygan. And I think it's because of the collaborative nature that this campus, I think, has always had that's been able to bring those forward. And again, setting the stage a little bit for our viewers, some people may not be aware that we have colleges and we have universities, two-year versus four, a brief snapshot. What is UW-Sheboygan and how does it fit in the higher learning setting? Good question. It took me a while to figure that out when I first was thinking about coming here. So UW's system has basically 14 institutions. 15, I guess, if you consider extension as a separate institution. It's got 13 four-year campuses including Madison and Milwaukee that are research universities and it's got UW colleges which is a single institution with 13 campuses across the state. And UW-Sheboygan is one of those 13 campuses that make up UW colleges. So that's why we refer to ourselves as a campus. Not a university or college. We are part of colleges, one of the 13 sites of colleges. So 13 universities, four-year universities and 13 UW colleges or two-year. And back to that relationship and you just mentioned before the relationship with getting a four-year degree, please tell us a little bit about the kind of students that choose to come to UW-Sheboygan or any two-year college rather than going immediately to a four-year. Well, part of the mission of UW colleges is access to education. And you know, access means different things to different people. Some people think it's just about geography. Financial access. Flexibility, the ability to attend school when it's right for you to attend school. All of these things make up that term access in the mission statement for UW colleges. So the students who tend to come to us are place-bound students. Right now we don't have dormitories, although that could change in the future. But most of the students live in the area and they're not going away to a four-year school because either they have families or jobs or can't afford to go away to a four-year school right away. They save a significant amount of money by coming to UW colleges first. Sometimes it's just prudent planning. I've heard, you know, friends, parents of children that are attending here that said, you know, they could have gone to any university they wanted, but they chose to come here at UW-Sheboygan because they knew it was a better value and that many, if not all of those courses, would ultimately transfer to a four-year university. So they just simply did it as a good value for their dollar. That's right. And there are parents that, for whatever reason, don't feel like their children might be ready to go away yet. In fact, we get students sometimes that first week of school that have gone off to a four-year and within that first week they know it's not for them at this point in time in their lives and they come back and they come to UW-Sheboygan. We have a huge number of students that actually enroll in the last month before classes actually start or in the last couple of weeks. And sometimes those are the stories of those students. And I imagine the diversity here may be as diverse, if not more so than a university because you do have people from all walks of life, all ages. We do. And in terms of ethnic diversity, I believe we're actually the number three institution in the system. And that's in large part due to the large Hmong population we have here. About 10.5% of our student population is Southeast Asian. So, and obviously we have adults, 30% of our students are over the age of 22. We have part-time students, full-time students, people who are working, mothers who are taking care of their children. So we really do have a very, very diverse student body and the faculty love that because it makes for really rich conversations in the classroom. Absolutely, absolutely. How many students are enrolled here currently? So this fall there are 713 students who have enrolled with us. And going back to what you touched on earlier, so how does that work if I choose to attend UW-Chaboy again? But ultimately I want a four-year degree, a bachelor's degree or a bachelor's of science degree. Where are those collaborations taking place and in what fields? Okay, so in terms of the collaborative degrees, if you want to stay here at your four-year degree ultimately. So the ones that I am most excited about are the ones that can be done on-site. And the ones that can be done here on-site on this campus are the elementary education degree with UW Oshkosh, which has been around for years. The dean at UW Oshkosh, I believe, approached Joe and some of the other people in the county and began that program here on campus. And the other is the one that you've been seeing in the last year in the newspapers, which is the Platteville Engineering degree. You can get an engineering degree in either electrical or mechanical engineering right here on campus. Outstanding. Yeah, it's great. In addition to those, Oshkosh offers a human services leadership degree program, and that is done through streaming video. So it's physically on-site here, but students are actually in our distance education classrooms doing that through streaming video. In addition, I'd say there are a good 30 online degree programs where we have collaborations with the four-year partner for a seamless transition into the four-year degree program. And in the case of Milwaukee, for example, they send an advisor down here every other week to talk to students who are interested in those online degree programs so that those students know right away what's going to be required for them when they transfer to UW-Milwaukee. We have them with white water. There are other programs with Oshkosh that are fully online. Actually, I would say with the majority of the four-year schools, we have some of these online degree programs. And the neat thing I learned about the online degree program is, you know, these are people who live in Cheboygan, and these are people who spent their first 60 credits taking courses here on this campus. So this campus is home to them. I talk to our library director and I say, okay, when students are using your computers down in the library, what are they doing? Are they just doing research? And he said, there are sometimes there are students who are doing their online courses while they're sitting down in the library. So I think we are home to these students, whether they're in a four-year program now or they're still enrolled in us and they're in our program. I may be catching you cold on this one, but my wife is a registered nurse and it seems to me you also have some opportunities there, too. We have a three-way collaboration with Oshkosh and LTC, where you can do the first two years, the Gen Ed requirements with us. LTC, because they have the associate's degree in nursing, provides all the clinical courses, and then Oshkosh provides the bachelor's degree courses online. So it's a three-way collaboration to train nurses without ever having to leave this local area. Outstanding. Outstanding. Beautiful overview and obviously so many opportunities here that if you didn't hear something that interests you, all you need to do is follow up with the dean or her staff and certainly stop by and we can get you more information. Last question before I turn it over to Roger. You touched on your faculty and we have outstanding faculty here and they're doing good things and certainly providing wonderful educational opportunities but they're doing that both in the classroom and out of the classroom. Could you briefly touch on what some of the faculty are doing here to help the community as a whole outside of UW-Shaboy? Sure. So there are a couple of examples I always like to talk about. Many of my examples have been focused on the fine arts recently as we're trying to build some visibility for our fine arts programs. But for example, our music professor, Christy Talbe, she recognized that the music teachers in the city who work in the school system never have an outlet to perform themselves. So she has organized a concert every year for the last, this might be the third or fourth year, for all the music teachers in the community to come to campus and to have an opportunity to perform. Oh nice. And then in our biology department, we have an aquaponics lab, which is the place where we are growing vegetables, very often lettuce under hydroponic conditions. And that faculty member has actually worked with the food banks in the community and just the end of last spring did a huge harvest of lettuce from the aquaponics facility that was given to the food bank so that they could use that for their clients. Awesome. You know and then we have our speakers series which provide a level of expertise on topics the community might be interested in. We had a great one last week that Elise Cohen. I saw that in the paper. She had a great turnout. She had over 50 people come to campus and she talked about the Syrian refugee crisis and this comes from a level of experience that she has. Her degree is in international politics and the Middle East in particular. So she's speaking with some authority when she speaks about those topics and educates the community about that. And then I would mention one more that's in a little bit of a different vein and that is we have a lot of faculty especially on the humanity side of things that are really social justice oriented. So we've done several things through our theater department to really try to raise awareness of things like sexual assault, domestic violence, mental health by some of the plays we put on and in some of the supplementary materials we make available when we're doing these plays to try to raise awareness of those organizations and also to raise some money for those organizations as well. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. Roger. Great to have you with us today, Jackie and there have been a number of improvements at the campus in recent years. It is quite a list so I'm going to have to read that. $2 million HVAC upgrade, $5 million science building addition and the completion of the $6 million Acuity Technology Center and just completed this year the engineering building and a lot of dollars and how have these improvements been funded? Would you explain that to our viewers? Yeah, they've been funded for the most part and large part through the county which is wonderful. Without that county support we probably would have trouble bringing in the additional philanthropic dollars that have helped to fund some of those buildings as well and then for equipment for the buildings the state provides the money for the equipment for the buildings. So for example the engineering building is about a $1.5 million, $1.6 million building with another $350,000 of equipment in it. So we've been able to, we were able to leverage the county resources and the state resources when we were going out and trying to raise money for this building. So it's a great relationship between the UW system the state, the county and the wonderful philanthropists in this community. Are there other capital improvements on the horizon and how will that help the students and the faculty do their job? I'm glad you asked because we are just beginning to lay the groundwork for a capital campaign to improve our fine arts building maybe called the creative arts building as we move forward with this capital campaign but what we're doing right now is as you know our foundation is the group that raises the philanthropic dollars for us and they have hired a consultant who is working with us to try to lay that groundwork for renovation and expansion of that building. That building is very, very old and there are some environmental issues with the building the theater requires a significant updating and so the way students are going to benefit from that is that the environment for learning is going to be improved. Right now you will have the chorus practicing and they will be hearing the hammering that's being done in the theater space as they're building a set or they may be smelling the oil painting that's coming from the painting studios part of the renovations we're talking about are going to improve all of those issues for our students so that they're in more of a safer comfortable sort of environment for the courses they're taking but it's also going to benefit the larger community as well because we are often told by people in the theater arts here in this community that our theater is a little gem in terms of the way it's set up and the size of that theater I don't believe there's anything quite like it in this community so with renovation of the theater there are going to be opportunities for other theater groups to perhaps when they have an appropriate show that they want to do in a smaller theater that has the kind of ambiance that our theater has that they will utilize our theater as well there are going to be benefits to our students because it really is about the educational program that takes place in that building but also we see opportunities for significant collaborations for the county for county organizations as well with that building and we've mentioned the partnership between Sheboygan County and the UW how do you see other ways that have impacted the community in the whole county I think not to be flip at all but UW Sheboygan wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the county resources and the county vision that started the building of the campus on this site because of the county we're able to take care of deferred maintenance when you're working at a private institution or sometimes even at a state institution building buildings is always kind of fun you can always raise money to do that but nobody wants to do deferred maintenance for you our county has been wonderful in making sure that these buildings are safe and provide the appropriate environment for our students and you've allowed us to keep up to date with the kinds of programming we can offer the Acuity Technology Center all of our distance education that's not online that expands course offerings for our students because we can beam courses between Oshkosh in here or between Marathon County in here is all because of the ability to have the Acuity Technology Building and have all of those wonderful spaces for us to be able to do that so you allow us to offer programming that we wouldn't be able to make available to students at all without this county UW-Shabuigan partnership personally what I've appreciated Roger and you've been on the board now for what 34 years? 32 32 years so clearly you've been a long standing supporter of UW-Shabuigan and these buildings these facilities and I've been on the as county administrator now 16 years and what I've really enjoyed is seeing the recent development whether it's the Broad Science Building Edition the Acuity Technology Center the Engineering Lab and personally what I've really enjoyed is back to your comments early the collaboration the county board has definitely stepped up UW-Shabuigan and the state has stepped up but most importantly the private sector has stepped up and their generous contributions that we've been able to leverage these funds if it wasn't for that collaboration I really don't think we'd have the kind of improvements out here in the juice that's true and all that's happening without it so it's a credit to everyone involved it is and I think is a good reflection of the fact that the community really understands the value that this campus brings that they're willing to help out in that way and one of the other things that's happened here it's great to see the campus how it's grown but another addition we've had is the Bookworm Gardens it's great to see that as you roll in and some people are kind of wondering what that's all about how has that enhanced your campus? Well it's enhanced me personally because in the summertime at least once a week I walk over there and just watch the parents and the grandparents and their children it's just wonderful but as you know it brings many many people to our to our site from within the area and from out of the area as well I've had people I know down in Milwaukee say they were at Bookworm Gardens and they'll you know and they say and that's where your campus is you know I was on your I was on your campus grounds so it really has brought some new visibility to UW-Shaboy again and when you think about it we have all of these children now who actually are on the grounds of a university of a college campus and you know people have told me stories over the years about there sometimes we'll watch people the parents haven't gone to college themselves maybe they'd really like their children go to college but they're too intimidated to even step on the grounds of the college campus you know they feel like well this can't be for me I can't come and visit I can't come and see what this is like and I think Bookworm Gardens has opened those doors and removed that barrier for students in this county and beyond this county so I think it plays a great role in just young people seeing that there's this thing called the college campus and they're on it basically when they're at Bookworm Gardens it's a beautiful facility thanks again for all the good work you do Jackie appreciate it thanks Roger as you said one day some of those young children or toddlers at Bookworm Gardens or grade school or whatever it may be it's for all ages some of those young people are going to be attending UW-Shabuigan someday that's quite a memory in a circle of life well Jackie you've covered a lot of ground in a short period of time and just an excellent overview outstanding overview and we only have a couple of minutes remaining and I wanted to end with the note of the engineering lab or building the most recent addition if you haven't been out to your UW-Shabuigan campus come on out you heard Jackie say everyone's invited check it out and walk the facility and the newest addition again being the engineering building we're going to have a groundbreaking coming up here not groundbreaking I'm sorry no that was last year that was last year the dedication yes we're really excited about that and the engineering building really was a response to the community and the businesses saying we want to grow our own engineers and give opportunities for development here to keep these employees for our businesses was it not? that's absolutely right they came to the university and they said we recruit engineers from out of town they don't stay we need to grow our own engineers and so this program is the result of those kinds of conversations so we're hopeful we can do more programs like engineering to meet the needs of this community and to help students get four-year degrees right here in Sheboygan it shows the responsiveness of leaders like you the people on your foundation the faculty Jackie Joseph Silverstein Dean of UW Sheboygan thank you for joining us well thank you this was a lot of fun thank you for joining us and again if you have more questions or want to learn more about UW Sheboygan don't hesitate to contact the Dean or a member of the staff here we're all very proud of this facility next month our guest will be the new IT director Chris Lewinsky and we look forward to talking about the ring of fiber initiative and some other key improvements to our community that will not only be good for Sheboygan County but taxpayers and UW Sheboygan believe it or not so until then have a great fall and thanks for joining us