UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1083
MILLER, ROBERT

MILLER, ROBERT (1936-)
Undergraduate and graduate student; former Assistant Director of Admissions, Assistant to the Dean of the School of Education for Student Services, and Secretary of the Academic Staff
At UW: as undergraduate (1954-55; 1959-62); as graduate student (1964-67; 1970-74); as academic staff (1964-93)

Interviewed: 	2010 (1 session)
Interviewer: 	Charlene Tortorice
Index by: 	Amy Rettammel
Length: 	58 minutes
Series:		Academic Staff Governance

Abstract: In his April 15, 2010 interview with Char Tortorice, Robert Miller details his time at UW-Madison, both as a student and as a member of the academic staff. Miller talks about leaving UW-Madison to join the Army, and then getting married before returning to UW-Madison to earn his undergraduate degree. After teaching high school English in Kewaunee WI, he took a job with the UW-Milwaukee Registrar’s Office and then a job with the UW-Madison Admissions Office. Later he worked as Assistant Dean in the UW-Madison School of Education, where he simultaneously attended graduate school. After working as Assistant Dean, Miller took a position as the first Secretary of the Academic Staff.  Miller discusses the relationship between faculty, academic staff, and classified staff and provides some of the history of the formation of academic staff governance. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: Secretary of the Academic Staff; academic staff governance; School of Education; student advising; campus policies; admissions; Charles Quinn; Fred Harvey Harrington; Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization (ASPRO); Donna Shalala; John Wiley.

First Interview Session (December 12, 2006): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:10	Question: Educational background? Answer: Miller started at UW in 1954 in electrical engineering and then got drafted into the Army, where he spent 2 years. After that he worked 2 years, then got married and came back to school in January 1959. At that time he was hesitant to jump into second semester chemistry or calculus after being out of school for almost 5 years, so he chose a philosophy major first and then gravitated toward radio and television, then moved into the School of Education where he was a Commercial Arts major. He also minored in English. He got certified to teach public speaking and theater. 

00:01:45	[No Question] Miller taught high school English in Kewaunee WI for 1 year; worked 60 hours/week “to do what I thought wasn’t a good enough job.” Although, he says that in the previous 5 years before he taught there, 9 students had gone to UW-Madison from Kewaunee. Of the seniors he taught, 46 came to UW-Madison – “so I figure I must have had some influence on them.” Finding a job the summer after teaching high school was difficult because employers were hesitant to hire teachers for fear they would quit and go back to teaching in the fall. So he took civil service tests and ended up taking a job as an Admissions Counselor 1 in the Registrar’s Office at UW-Milwaukee. Then he had a chance to come to UW-Madison to work in Admissions in an academic staff position, an opportunity that he “jumped at” because he wanted to go to Graduate School. Miller earned a Master’s Degree in Educational Policy Studies at UW-Madison.

00:03:32	Question: Did you work full time while you were getting a Master’s Degree? Answer: Yes, and Miller also worked full time when he was an undergraduate student, except for the semester he student taught. He finished school with no debt, “which you can’t do today.” During the summers, he loaded trucks for Gardner’s Bakery, where he could make $1500/summer. Tuition was $110. Question: Were Graduate School classes at night so you could work during the day? Answer: Yes. The only class Miller took during the day was over his lunch hour. He thinks he was the first one to get a Master’s Degree in Educational Policy Studies because everyone else bypassed the Master’s to get a PhD. Miller wasn’t sure he wanted a PhD in that department, so wanted to stop with a Master’s. 

00:04:54	[No Question] Miller worked as Assistant Dean in School of Education and decided he wanted to do a PhD in Educational Administration, Administration of Student Services in Higher Education. He finished his PhD coursework and discovered students were not allowed to work full time and go to Graduate School full time simultaneously. Question: The 150% rule? Answer: Right. Miller thought that was an unfair rule because it was only enforced for Grad students who were employed on campus – “they’d run a list of UW employees and a list of graduate students and compare them.” Grad students working off campus would not get caught. So instead of writing his dissertation (“I no longer needed one because I was no longer in awe of anyone who had one”), he spent 3 years working with administration and Board of Regent Debardeleben, (“my favorite Regent of all time”) to change this rule. He was successful and now the Grad School can no longer require this rule unless they are the employer – then they can tell their own employees that work and school cannot ever be more than 150% time. Interviewer and narrator discuss the current rule. Question: When did you work on this rule change? Answer: In the 1970s.

00:08:18	Question: What was your thesis topic? Answer: To evaluate the student advising services offered by the School of Education, Miller designed a study with 3 groups of freshman: 1 group received nothing, 1 group received 1-2 letters per semester inviting them to come in to the Education Student Services office; 1 group where students were called in to talk with staff once per semester. Then he did a survey listing all available campus student services for students and asking which ones they used and valued – and compared across groups. The survey reflected positively on the Education Student Services office, compared with student services offices in other schools/colleges. Miller and Tortorice then discuss the quality of advising services offered by Miller’s office.

00:13:51	Question: How did you get from UW-Milwaukee to UW-Madison?  Answer: Miller inquired about openings in the UW-Madison Admissions Office. Miller and Tortorice discussed structure of Admissions and Registrar Offices. Question: So it was casual then – ‘we have an opening; come on over’? Answer: Yes. Question: Were you a specialist then? Answer: Yes – “a very common designation among academic staff.”

00:15:49	[No Question] In 1966 or 1967, he talked with Martha Peterson (“guru of student services for the campus”) about how UW-Madison was losing good academic staff because there was nowhere for them to move up in terms of responsibility, and the institution wasn’t doing anything about it. He thought that at least people could move parallel to other departments if there wasn’t anywhere to move up within their department. His idea was not taken up. Interviewer comments that 1966-67 was “way before” academic staff “woke up” and tried to change some things. According to Miller, this was a time when UW System was proposing rules, some of which were disadvantageous to academic staff. He went with 6 or 7 colleagues (Joann Elder, Karen Carlson, Alistair McCormick in Ophthalmology and some others) to meet with Regent Levine to propose 4 changes that would allow enough openness that if academic staff wanted to affect some rule changes at UW-Madison, they wouldn’t be prohibited from doing so by UW System rules. Levine proposed 3 of the 4 at the next Regent meeting. The vote was postponed until the next meeting so University administration could “do some homework.” Two of the rules were passed unchanged and 1 was modified but passed. Miller doesn’t recall the 4th but thinks it had to do with job security similar to what faculty and civil service had. Interviewer mentions a number of academic staff job security measures that have been implemented since Miller retired. Miller mentions that he was Secretary of the Academic Staff at one point and did not accomplish half of what he wanted to.

00:22:21	Question: How long were you in Admissions and then with the School of Education? Answer: 6 years in Admissions; 17 years in School of Education. Miller got a call from the Assistant Dean Quinn in charge of the student services office because he was looking for a full-time assistant. Several faculty told Quinn that they had worked with Miller and that he would be good, so Quinn called and offered him a job. When he started, Quinn was home recovering from a heart attack and so the Dean would call Miller to ask what the School of Education policies were on a variety of issues. Miller would tell him what he thought was good for the students and not an affront to the faculty, “and those have been the policies ever since.”

00:25:10	[No Question] Miller also made some changes in the Admissions Office, for example he describes that when he was in charge of transfer students, MATC was formed and started a college prep program. Normally it takes a 5-7 year process of accreditation to get other colleges to accept credits. President Harrington gave a speech in support of MATC as a place for people to try college courses to see whether they want to go to college. Miller told [MATC President] Mitby that Admissions would accept all the parallel courses from MATC. Then Whitewater, Platteville, and Eau Claire accepted them too, based on Madison’s acceptance. Thus MATC was “de facto accredited.”

00:26:44	Question: In Admissions you had classified and academic staff. In School of Ed you had the whole spectrum of positions. Did you see differences in terms of work flexibility or climate? Answer: There was a lot of flexibility in School of Ed. Dean Palmer said he wouldn’t do things the way Miller was doing them, but based on widespread positive results/feedback from across campus, Palmer decided he needed to let him be. 

00:27:48  	Question: What about classified staff?  Answer: Unfortunately classified “gets put down in ways that are totally wrong as far as I’m concerned.” Miller spoke at the state legislature in support of Academic Staff and added at the end of his comments that there ought to be easier ways to move some of the best classified staff into academic staff positions without necessarily requiring a college degree. Miller and interviewer discuss their agreement on this point and the challenges in making that happen, as well as recent changes in civil service emphasis on experience over degrees.

00:30:26	Question: What’s your sense of the relationship between faculty and academic staff at this point on campus? Answer: It works best when good faculty and good academic staff work well together (“not good when an academic staff person has a chip on his/her shoulder because he/she can’t become faculty”). Miller’s hope was that the relationship would evolve to where faculty see academic staff as partners rather than helpers. Question: Do you think that has happened? Answer: “I haven’t paid a lot of attention since I retired.”

00:31:23 	[No Question] At the time when Academic Staff was moving in the direction of setting up a governance system, Dean Quinn announced his retirement. Quinn had been very supportive of Miller’s work with the Academic Staff and had even taken on some of Miller’s duties so that Miller had time to work on Academic Staff issues. Miller backed off of Academic Staff work when Quinn was retiring because Miller applied for Quinn’s job. He did not get the job. Miller discusses the dynamics around filling that job. 

00:33:26	Question: Did you work in that office very long after that? Answer: That’s when Miller applied for and became the first Secretary of the Academic Staff. Miller discusses the situation around equity adjustments at that time. Question: What was it like being Secretary of the Academic Staff, especially with a well-established Secretary of the Faculty in office at the time? Answer: First thing Miller did was develop a good relationship with Secretary of the Faculty – they got along well. Miller felt this was very important for the relationship between faculty and academic staff. Miller and interviewer discuss differences between University Committee and Academic Staff Executive Committee. Miller mentions that in writing personnel rules for academic staff, there could have been better communication with other campuses who were writing their own rules, as the other campuses did not write in the same level of job security that UW-Madison did. Miller and Tortorice discuss UW-Milwaukee related to this issue. Interviewer mentions that with the advent of ASPRO, there is a lot more exchange among campuses.

00:42:48	Question: What were some of the most important issues for academic staff in terms of governance? Answer: Chancellor Shalala said academic staff need to get to the point where academic staff opinion on issues affecting the broader campus gets into the paper the same way that votes from the Faculty Senate do. Question: Has that happened? Answer: No, not to my knowledge. Tortorice and Miller discuss the importance of academic staff needing to comment on campus-wide issues. Miller notes that student advising is almost entirely done by academic staff, so any system-wide policies affecting students are issues for academic staff.

00:46:56	Question: What are you most proud of?  Answer: Of all his work, Miller loved working with students in School of Education. He took on some of the most challenging cases, and feels he did well with that. Of his work as Secretary of the Academic Staff, he is most proud of getting more academic staff interested in the governance process. Tortorice discussed the impact of effort reporting on academic staff who are fully federally funded to do research, and credited John Wiley with finding a way that these academic staff could still be involved in governance. Tortorice and Miller reminisced about John Wiley. Then they discuss the process that was used to fill the Secretary of the Academic Staff position after Colleen McCabe left and have high praise for the person who filled it, Donna Silver. Miller mentions he plans to stop by to see Donna and to bring one of his hundreds of walking sticks for her to display.

00:57:07	Question: Is there anything you’d like to end with? Answer: New academic staff did not appreciate what a tremendous effort it took to get academic staff governance up and running.

00:58:18	End of First Interview Session
 
End of Oral History #1083