UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview # 1175
DANIELS, HEATHER

DANIELS, HEATHER (1973- )
UW-Madison Classified/Academic Staff, Madison Academic Staff Association Secretary, Academic Staff Executive Committee and Representatives Council
At UW:  1996-Present

Interviewed:	2011 (2 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Troy Reeves	
Index by:	Troy Reeves
Length:  	2 hour, 11 minutes
Series: 	Capitol Protests, 2011 & Campus Governance

Abstract:  In her two August 2011 interviews with Troy Reeves, Heather Daniels talked about her career at UW-Madison.  She discussed her early years before starting work at Madison and her classified and academic staff jobs and academic staff involvement on campus and focused on the time period from 1996 to the present.  Daniels also discussed getting a master’s degree from UW-Madison through the School of Library and Information Studies. This interview was conducted for inclusion in two series: Capitol Protest, 2011& Campus Governance in the oral history collection at the UW-Madison Archives. 

Key Words: Waunakee, WI; Coe College (IA); UW-Madison Center for Neuroscience; UW-Madison Neuroscience Training Program; Madison Academic Staff Association; Academic Staff Assembly; Academic Staff Executive Council; UW-Madison Graduate School; UW-Madison Chancellor’s Scholars Program; Wisconsin State Capitol Protests, 2011; New Badger Partnership; 2011 Budget Repair Bill; 2011-2013 Wisconsin Biennial Budget

First Interview Session (August 17, 2011): Digital File
Time	Keywords

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

00:00:42	Question: Early biography? Answer: Heather Daniels (HD) grew up in Waunakee, WI. She talked about her parents’ careers; her mother worked for American Family, and her father taught college and worked in development for non-profits. HD earned her undergraduate degree at Coe College in Iowa. She briefly explained why she chose that institution. She played in the band at Coe, and when asked by the interviewer she talked about her interest in music.

00:04:20	Question: After undergraduate? Answer: HD went to graduate school in Boston, studying Marine Biology. After she earned that degree, she and her husband moved back to HD’s family home in Waunakee. She explained why she did not try working in the field of Marine Biology. 

00:06:14	Question: First job at UW-Madison? Answer: HD got a job as an LTE (Limited Term Employee), organizing Paul Sondel’s lab in Hematology/Oncology. She worked there briefly before seeing a UW-Madison job in the newspaper, a project position in the Center for Neuroscience. She explained the Center for Neuroscience, her specific job, and the events around another job in the Center that allowed HD to basically do two jobs. 

00:09:30	Question: Did you understand UW-Madison? Answer: HD noted the “shock” of being on a huge campus, as well as the dichotomous shock of finding out a lot of the faculty in neuroscience cared about their student, not just pushing them off on the TAs. When asked about mentors, HD mentioned Ron Kalliel (sic?) as her immediate supervisor, and how he introduced HD to Lynn McDonald (sic?), who helped HD learned some of the systems and processes. HD worked in the Medical Sciences Center, inside the old University Hospital. 

00:12:31	Question: Typical day? Answer: Not really a typical day. HD talked about special projects & training programs. She also talked about how her job basically melded her job and another one for the first year, so she learned about a lot of different things, such as IT, payroll, etc. When asked if being a “jack of all trades” helped her, HD said she thought about this idea a lot. She felt that it helped and hindered her as she looked to advance on campus and explained why she saw it that way. 

00:15:21	Question: Did you become active on campus those first years? Answer: Not really. HD noted she merely tried to keep things together. When asked about her personal life those first years, she noted that she and her husband did move out from her parents’ house to an apartment on Gilman St. HD’s husband got a degree from Coe College and had started in a temporary job in Waunakee. 

00:17:42	Question: What to do after project position ended? Answer: HD knew it would end, so she looked for other position on campus. Ron Kalliel (sic?) asked for a 100% academic staff position within the Neuroscience Training Program, and HD applied and got that job. When asked about a learning curve in this new job, HD reminded the interviewer that she had done some aspects of this new job in her old job. HD also took this opportunity to review the policies and procedures to try to make sure they aligned with the actual practice of the program. With a full-time person (HD), the training program blossomed. She offered examples for this thought. 

00:21:18	Question: Neuroscience training program? Answer: HD called it a “great time in her life.” She furnished the reasons why, including that she felt a bond with the students, because of their similar age range and life experiences. This job gave HD increased confidence in her ability to make decisions. Decisions, in this case, that affected others’ lives and the viability of the program. She enjoyed doing outreach at schools and the Madison Childrens’ Museum, specifically on teaching students more about the brain. She noted she worked a lot in that job, as much as 60 hours a week. She still worked in Medical Sciences Building in this job, and Ron Kalliel (sic?) served as her supervisor for about half of her time there. HD briefly stated her opinion on Kalliel, including how his confidence in her helped her confidence. 

00:24:59	[No question.] HD discussed the “long history” of the Neuroscience folks not getting along, stating that it fell into two factions. After a bit of détente, tempers flared and the Medical School hierarchy moved to replace Kalliel (sic?) as chair. This specific instance led to HD’s lowest point in that job. She felt herself caught in the middle between both sides. HD held a good relationship to both factions and never took a side. Kalliel was voted out as chair, and Ann Kelly took over. HD’s office moved into a different space; she described the good and bad aspects of move, but she said that the benefits outweighed the downsides. 

00:28:38	Question: Library school while working? Answer: HD enjoyed working in Neuroscience Training but wanted to keep her options open. She applied for library school for several reasons and got in. She went to school part-time, taking four classes during the academic year, including summer. She explained the busy periods during her job and how that affected her spring semester. She tried to balance school and work, meaning she wanted to get the degree as soon as she could. 

00:31:25	Question: Classes/professors at SLIS? Answer: HD liked two professors (Ed Cortez and Kristen Eschenfelder) and their classes. She explained the classes they taught that she liked. She noted that some of the core classes, such as cataloging, appealed less to her than electives, particularly electives taught by Cortez and Eschenfelder. She talked an indexing class taught by Cortez, which helped HD in some of her husband’s work, and a special libraries class, where the class took field trips to some interesting “hidden” libraries.

00:35:14	Question: Did you try to get work in libraries? Answer: HD planned to move into libraries. She volunteered at Olbrich Gardens library and Wendt library here on campus. She also indexed a book, written by a SLIS professor. So, she built up some experiences. When asked why she did not move into libraries, she said she applied for a couple of campus jobs. She realized that she would take a pay cut to move into libraries. She wanted to stay on campus, which also limited her job prospects. 

00:38:21	Question: Final thoughts about library school? Answer: HD started by talking about the part-time students, including herself, getting a master’s degree. While she hung out with these part-timers, she still felt pretty isolated from the graduate school experience. She described one experience, where the part-timers had to create an independent study class, when SLIS stopped listing a class they needed to graduate. She said that her job helped her navigate the protocols of graduate school easier. When asked about the full-time students, HD said she knew some of their names, but she never saw them enough to build a relationship. When asked if the degree bettered her, HD said yes. After a couple of years of classes, she found herself very efficient at finding information and knowing what keywords to use in searches. She could not pin these benefits on one specific class, but all the classes seemed to help her become a better researcher. 

00:44:41	Question: Academic staff, starting with mentors? Answer: Beth Holden asked HD to run for Madison Academic Staff Association (MASA). By this time in her academic staff (a year or so), she knew a bit about being academic staff but not much. She ran and won. Several long-time MASA members took her under their wings, and HD listened to them talk about academic staff history. When asked what does it mean to be academic staff, HD said it meant different things for different people. She talked about the unit clarification letters (process of possibly changing academic staff positions to classified ones) and how academic staff talked to HD about their concerns. Academic staff can participate in governance and can control policies & procedures relating to academic staff. HD served as secretary from 2000-2007; she explained why 

00:48:33	Question: MASA Secretary dates? Answer: HD stayed as secretary for 7 years, because it became her primary way to get information. Once HD realized that her Academic Staff Assembly representative should serve as her conduit for information. So, HD ran for Assembly rep and won.  When asked about the difference between MASA and Academic Staff Assembly, HD gave her thoughts on campus governance history, from what she read and what folks told her. Once Academic Staff earned governance back, they created the Assembly as a governing body. HD noted that over time folks have asked if MASA still should exist. HD offered the reasons why MASA will continue to exist, at least for the near future. 

00:52:53	Question: Academic Staff Assembly set-up? Answer: HD explained the district structure, including trying to get folks who work at similar jobs or on similar parts of campus together. She explained why the district will lean towards homogeneity. When asked what an Assembly rep did, HD listed the following: attend meetings, vote on resolutions or changes to policies & procedures, and communicate with district members. In those years HD recalled few key events, focusing on getting a feel for how things happened. She offered one specific issue: when to give notice to an employee that funding for his/her position will end. She explained the arguments between giving 3 or 6 month notice. 

00:57:36	Question: Academic staff mentor? Answer: HD thought being a mentor would be a nice thing to do. She recalled Lynn McDonald as a good mentor. And she realized a large campus needed people to help guide new employees through the process. She offered her mixed reactions to the two mentoring experiences. Her experience as mentor helped her lobby to change the beginning date of the process. The program started with being matched in the spring but starting officially in the fall. Now, they readjusted the calendar, so being matched became the start of the process, with no delay.

01:01:00	Question: Final thoughts? Answer: Nothing too specific. Upon reflection she can see the progression from MASA secretary to Academic Staff Assembly. Once she saw the Assembly set up as MASA secretary, she knew she wanted to be in the Assembly and help mold policy. She would not have believed that would happen in less than 10 years.   	 

01:03:04	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (August 23, 2011): Digital File
Time	Keywords

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

00:00:26	Question: Memories of 9/11/2001? Answer: Heather Daniels (HD) was in a library school class when a SLIS staff person came into the classroom to give the students some initial details, which ended up being not quite true. HD’s professor, Ed Cortez, had family in New York City, so HD remembered how shaken it made him. She and other students went into the SLIS Commons to listen to the news on radio. (She noted that when they tried to go online, they could not access the internet.) 9/11 did not disrupt her job too much. 

00:03:07	[No question.] HD noted that the effect on international students did become a short and long-term effect of her work. She called it a “chilling effect” on the students, because they felt afraid to return home, because they did not know for sure that they could return. 

00:05:05	Question: Chancellor’s Scholars’ mentor? Answer: HD has served as a mentor to high-achieving but disadvantaged or underrepresented students. The scholars will meet as a group during their time here and build a community. HD was asked to serve as a mentor and has consulted with one student from beginning through graduation and has started mentoring her second student. She offered an overview of each student and her thoughts on the program. When asked, HD confirmed that she only mentored one student at a time and said she enjoyed watching the two students mature from freshman year beyond. 

00:08:16	Question: PEOPLE program? Answer: As part of her job in neuroscience, HD assisted PEOPLE by including neuroscience in part of one of PEOPLE’s 3 week summer program. This contribution then led HD and neuroscience to have a full 3-week intense program. This endeavor led the program to hear graduate students to teach the youngsters who participate in PEOPLE. HD offered an example of giving an undergraduate a chance to teach these students; he enjoyed the experience and ended up teaching at a private K-12 school.

00:10:56	Question: Chancellor’s Award for Service to the University? Answer: In 2007 HD’s boss, then chair of neuroscience, nominated her for the award. She had no expectations of winning, since she had spent only a decade or so on campus. When told she won, she found it hard to sink in. When asked by the interviewer, HD talked about what her boss did to create the nomination packet. While she never read some of the support letter, she knew that the other part of the packet outlined her work outside her job for the university. She figured that equal parts of her job and her service helped her win the honor. She talked briefly about the award ceremony, including that now through ASEC, she has continued to attend those events. She felt the ceremony helped the Chancellor seeing tangible examples of staff achievement.

00:14:45	Question: Move from Academic Staff Assembly to ASEC? Answer: HD noted that she had ran twice before and lost. She decided to run one more time, and due to a couple of reasons, including increased name recognition, she won. When she started Susan Crowley served as chair, and HD spent her first year trying to figure out what was happening and why, as well as putting names and faces to key campus personnel. She become more involved her second year, including putting resolutions together and watching the faculty senate. She noted that during year two, she found out of her pregnancy. Soon after she came back from maternity leave, Crowley asked to meet with her and asked her to be chair. Crowley wanted to break from tradition and nominate a chair that would be a good fit, not just the next in line. 

00:18:48	[No question.] HD had been serving her 3rd and final year as chair during this interview. She noted why that was unusual. She also stated some of the logistics of the ASEC, including the number on the committee and the staggered terms of the member to keep some cohesion from year to year. When asked HD furnished a detailed overview of an early 21st Century ASEC meeting, including possible topics of discussion and possible non-ASEC attendees, such as the Provost. 

00:23:34	Question: Secretary of Academic Staff? Answer: The Secretary of the Academic Staff has reported to the Provost, and his/her office has been located in Bascom Hall. The current secretary does submit a report to the Provost every year, and ASEC will attach an addendum to summary their thoughts/feelings about the Secretary’s work. When asked about ASEC’s learning curve, HD called it “steep.” One thing an ASEC must learn quickly, for example, was the politics. 

00:25:55	[No question.] For example, HD got called by the media for ASEC’s opinion on unit clarification. HD offered a concise overview of unit clarification, which arose as a way for unions to find out whether campus positions should fall into their purview. The interviewer then asked HD to discuss unit clarification further. HD then offered a more detailed monologue about this procedure. HD noted she received a letter from a union, too. HD took hers to Steve Lund, head of academic personnel, to get clarification herself. HD described how academic staff came to her to express their concerns about what this change could mean. HD claimed that this effort led to increased awareness by academic staff about their governance rights. 

00:30:34	[No question.] HD continued the unit clarification discussion. Petitions over unit clarification were filed but not at Madison. HD said that the UW System and OSER (Office of State Employee Relations) both said they would fight these petitions, which HD called a “strange” coupling. She explained how OSER & System chose to fight this effort. UW-Madison had created a committee to provide information on collective bargaining, but when unit clarification arose as an issue, this committee morphed into a unit clarification/collective bargaining clearinghouse for information. HD said Russell Diamond chaired that committee and excelled at bring information together. ASEC passed a resolution against unit clarification at those other UW System locales. 

00:35:28	Question: Does this unit clarification issue take us to the 2010 election? Answer: HD said the “first wave” of issues (mentioned above) went from 2009 to early 2010. This discussion on time frame led HD to discuss ASPRO (Academic Staff Professional Representation Organization) role in unit clarification, including finding legislative fixes to determine who can decide what position could be deemed academic staff. Those proposed changes became inserted into the budget bill, so they became law. HD offered her memories on MASA’s role in unit clarification. They held a brown bag, where over 100 people attended, which led folks to see how the issue held a firm place in academic staff’s minds. HD returned to the idea that this helped people see how academic staff worked within the university. 

00:39:48	Question: February/March 2011 Protests, first through post-2010 election thoughts? Answer:  HD began by saying most folks knew something different regarding collective bargaining would occur. Those folks did not realize that the Governor and Legislature would move to rescind almost all collective bargaining rights. The interviewer asked about HD’s initial thoughts about the New Badger Partnership. HD said that ASEC heard a bit about it in the fall, through a presentation from Vince Sweeney. HD’s initial thoughts revolved around the vagueness of it in the beginning, including what it meant to have “flexibility around personnel.” ASEC also knew that the Chancellor had begun a conversation with both gubernatorial candidates and then Governor-elect Walker about this “flexibility.” 

00:44:51	[No question.] HD recalled the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article that exposed the idea that the UW-Madison wanted public authority. When asked what public authority meant to her, HD referred to the UW Hospital’s public authority and how it allowed them to laud staff in ways that UW-Madison could not. This led the interviewer to ask about HD’s thoughts and actions after the February 2011 email from Governor Walker about the Budget Repair Bill, which basically led to the 2011 Capitol Protests. HD said that due to the timing of Governor Walker’s bill, ASEC had scheduled a meeting around that time, and ASEC passed a resolution against the bill. 

00:48:26	[No question.] When HD found about the hearings regarding the bill, she felt she could offer an interesting story, as someone who had fought against unions on campus but who understood the importance of unions and collective bargaining. HD went down to the Capitol one night to get in line, write her testimony, and present it. She arrived during a moment of “chaos,” meaning no one outside the hearing knew what would happen inside it. The Legislature shut down testimony at 2am, and HD could not testify. She gave her statement to her state senator and went home. 

00:51:30	[No question.] Even though she did not testify, she found the experience “exhilarating.” She told her husband before she left that if she did not go she might regret it. After that night she went to the Capitol as much as she could. She testified on her birthday to the Democratic-led hearings on the bill. It felt bittersweet, because it was not given in front of a bi-partisan group.

00:53:41	Question: Her opinion on the aftermath of the protests, the bills being passed, and the New Badger Partnership? Answer: She called the morale of academic staff at “an all-time low,” at least in her 15 years on campus. She said this based on the increased payment into health care/retirement (meaning lower net pay) and on the already low pay compared to not only the private sector but also peer institutions. These realities led to good academic looking for their financial and personal happiness elsewhere. 

00:56:25	[No question.] HD used this discussion on academic staff morale to describe the lack of attention on an administrative/college level of increased work at the department and program level. She explained how this idea has materialized, including her own example of being overworked while at neuroscience. When she moved into a role in central administration at the graduate school, she has entered into a more manageable work level. HD stated here that perhaps the fault did not rest completely at the dean’s level, because they truly may not understand the workload at the lower level.
 
00:59:29	[No question.] HD sent out an email about the “positive side” of the recent events; she focused in it (and in the interview) on personnel changes through some of the New Badger Partnership initiatives being codified. She offered examples of how the system worked before the new budget bill and how it can change in the future. These changes can lead to a better business model.

01:01:51	Question: Job change to graduate school? Answer: HD started by stressing the importance of looking for new jobs and even interviewing for new jobs, regardless of how one does feel about his/her current situation. Then she focused on two things. First, Anne Kelly, who served as program chair after Ron Kilel (sic?), developed cancer and passed away. That experience affected HD deeply and left a “gap” for her in neuroscience. Second, HD served on a campus-wide committee on tuition for training grant (NEH). Through that work she found out about a job in the graduate school and was asked to apply. HD pondered, then applied and earned the job. She stayed on in neuroscience for a couple of months then moved onto the graduate school. She found it hard to leave, and she has kept in touch with many of them. On top of these two things, she had a baby and knew she needed a job with a more 8-5, Monday-Friday schedule.

01:07:34	End of Second Interview Session

End of Oral History #1175