UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #994
WALLACE, ANN

WALLACE, ANN (1942- )
Undergraduate student in sociology (1959-63); Academic Staff (1963-2005); 
At UW: 1959-2005

Interviewed: 	2009 (2 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Becky Ryan
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	2 hours, 4 minutes

Abstract: In her two May 2009 interviews with Becky Ryan, Ann Wallace details her 45+ years of service to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of its academic staff.  She outlines her education in sociology and her early jobs at UW-Madison in the sociology department, which eventually led to a longer appointment in the School of Education. She then discusses her involvement in the growing movement to recognize and empower academic staff at UW, including chairing the PPPC, involvement in the mentorship program, and advocacy at the division level. She concludes with some observations about how academic staff can continue to improve their conditions at UW-Madison. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: University of Wisconsin-Madison; sociology; Madison Academic Staff Association (MASA); Joanne Elder; academic staff; Hayes/Hill, Inc. study (1986); Personnel Policies and Procedures Committee (PPPC) of the Academic Staff Assembly (ASA); Academic Staff Policies and Procedures (ASPP); indefinite appointment; classified staff; Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization (ASPRO); unionization; John Palmer; Charles Read; Henry Trueba.

First Interview Session (May 12, 2009): Digital File

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

00:00:13	Question: Talk about your background. Answer: Wallace said she came to UW as an undergraduate in 1959, where she worked for her advisor in sociology during her senior year. This work gave her a footnote in an article and experience at UW, which helped her to get a staff job working in the department after she graduated in 1963. She noted that there basically wasn’t an interview process and that her post morphed into working with the executive director of the Law and Society Association, where she stayed until 1970, when she moved to the Center for Policy Research in NYC for 9 mos. When her boss moved to Santa Cruz permanently, however, she found she hated CA and moved back to work in sociology until her new boss moved to Rutgers. At this point, she took a position in Education, where she worked until her retirement in 2005.

00:05:17	Question: You interviewed in the School of Education (SoE)? Answer: She was just told about the formal job posting by a sociology professor whose wife was a student in SoE. She noted that in 1963 she had held the same title as graduate students—“project assistant,” rather than the meaningless “specialist”—until the title system later eliminated “specialist.” Follow up: So you became aware of this population of “specialists” when you went to SoE? Answer: No; Wallace had known about it earlier through Joann Elder and the Madison Academic Staff Association (MASA). 

00:07:57	Follow up: What spawned MASA in1975? Answer: She said she wasn’t in a position to answer that question, though she knew what services it provided and had been involved in publishing its newsletter. Follow up: So why did it matter to you? Answer: She was concerned about the broader issue, though it didn’t affect her immediately, and it was a good way to get involved. Follow up: Talk about the early years of people organizing. Question: She observed that the Academic Staff Committee (ASC) was the precursor to AS governance, describing its composition (part-appointed, part-elected), the tendency of appointed members to have an “administrative bias” (unlike Elder who supported AS issues), its terms of service, and the greater interest in elections for these positions then than existed currently.

00:13:56	Question: What were you gaining from involvement in this? Answer: She didn’t think about it in those terms—she liked being involved and informed. When pushed by the interviewer, she qualified that she wasn’t as passionate in the early days as she was later on—she wasn’t a leader, didn’t believe in unions, etc. Follow up: What caused the change? Answer: When she moved to SoE in 1980, Palmer asked her to become the academic staff “expert.” Follow up: What did that mean? Answer: Learning more about hiring, promotion, salaries, evaluations.

00:16:40	Question: When did Hayes/Hill come about? Answer: She didn’t remember, though it significantly restructured titling, which then became her responsibility in SoE—she came to SoE before this, though. Follow up: Your assessment of Hayes/Hill? Answer: It was good in that it gave people meaningful and descriptive titles and built in a promotional structure. The downside was that it instituted salary ranges and maxima, which capped promotional capacity. She said this challenge was compounded by the slow pace of increase in the ranges and the way it conflated Madison’s academic staff positions (which tended to hire more experienced staff) with those from other UW campuses.

00:21:05	Question: Were people demoted during Hayes/Hill? Question: Yes; in SoE during Hayes/Hill, 9 academic staff positions were targeted to become classified once the current jobholder left the position. This affected morale and supervisor decisions. Follow up: What was the campus atmosphere about the change? Answer: People tend not to like change—they made the best of it.

00:23:21	Question: How does governance fit into all the changes that were happening? Answer: Wallace noted that merger happened much earlier than governance, but couldn’t recall dates for other events—when ASC started, when titles changed (specialistsacademic staff), other than that it was before she moved to SoE. Aside from this, she recalled people wanting similar governance rights as faculty, though policies and procedures existed before governance and were enforced through the deans’ offices.

00:27:39	Question: Why were the old rules (ASA) changed to the PPPC rules (ASPP)? What’s different?  Answer: It improved rights of academic staff regarding job security and promotions. Question: Why governance? Answer: She thought there were a number of reasons—faculty had it (appeals, representation, etc.); it would put academic staff “at the table” legitimately; it allowed academic staff to create its own rules.

00:31:49	Question: Does modeling academic staff governance after faculty governance limit it at all? Answer: Using the example of indefinite appointment (like faculty tenure), she recalled that the practice was becoming rarer when she retired, since it limited the campus’ staff flexibility. Ryan and Wallace discussed the specifics of her indefinite appointment—limited by operational area—and her pride in her advocacy for SoE staff.

00:37:22	Follow up: So indefinite appointments don’t have the same job security as tenured faculty? Answer: No; while there was a 2-yr. guarantee in the ASPP for indefinite appointments, if one’s position was discontinued an indefinite appt. could be fired, while tenured faculty could only be fired for cause or if a whole department closed.

00:41:05	Question: Why were Hayes/Hill title series implemented in different ways—for example, UW-Milwaukee offering probationary appointments? Answer: Milwaukee’s system was modeled on faculty tenure, but UW-Madison quickly decided they didn’t want this kind of “up or out” system. Follow up: Is that a bad thing? Answer: Yes; managers should be dealing with mediocre employees quickly. Follow up: But doesn’t it just take one bad unit to mar the whole process? Answer: Yes; but the responsibility for this falls on the management person in a unit, who should be coaching their staff.

00:45:32	Follow up: It’s interesting that you mention Jamie Thompson, since he was academic staff before his fame as a researcher. Answer: Yes; Wallace noted that she’d pointed this out. Follow up: How can we overcome this feeling that academic staff are less respected (and able to participate) than faculty? Answer: Wallace said this was a personal issue, in which individuals needed to be proactive in demonstrating how they are assets to their departments without trying to take the place of faculty.

00:48:29	Question: So talk about classified staff. Answer: She said that it was a category of appointment that was understood differently in different parts of UW—ranging from janitorial staff to lawyers and nurses. Follow up: What distinguishes that? Answer: It’s a statutory distinction—academic staff must have degrees and are specific to higher education, while classified staff can move within any WI state agency. Additionally non-represented classified staff aren’t represented by unions or academic staff governance, though they still wanted to be heard.

00:52:15	Question: Talk about the activism of the Hayes/Hill period. Answer: Wallace didn’t remember feeling oppressed because of her job, but she wanted to use her position to help other who were being oppressed. She thought these other staff were frustrated by the salary system (often determined by faculty).

00:55:33	Question: Is there a way to avoid confusion of academic staff with classified staff? Answer: She didn’t have the same perception as Ryan, since many academic staff are more like faculty (such as CHS in the Med School). But she supposed people don’t care to understand these distinctions as long as their questions get answered. What irritated her was the perception that if one isn’t doing research and teaching, one is close to being a classified staff.

01:01:01	Question: What frustrates me is people who don’t even care about contributing to the university. Answer: Yes; and in her “little world” she tried to educate people about why knowledge and the university mattered to them. Similarly she got much satisfaction from helping academic staff who went out on a limb and “got stuck.”

01:03:07	Question: Have they replaced your position? Answer: No. Follow up: Who’s doing your job? Answer: In terms of paperwork, the other staff do it; in terms of knowledge, it was “comme çi, comme ça.” She and Ryan talked about what they saw as future trends.

01:05:31	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (May 15, 2009): Digital File

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

00:00:13	[no question] Wallace felt the need to provide some basic information.  First, she had not pursued a master’s in sociology because at the time the degree wasn’t respected, and she never felt it was held against her. Follow up: What did that first job require? Answer: She was a project administrator managing all the administrative details for the Sociology and Law Program. 

00:02:55	Question: What were your three academic staff positions? Answer: She had 41 years working at UW-Madison in those three posts. Follow up: Talk about your different roles as academic staff. Answer: Wallace couldn’t say when she became aware of being academic staff, though she always was one. As more grants came into the sociology department, more academic staff got hired, and then when MASA was set up, they were obviously aware of the distinction.

00:06:42	Question: Talk about the urban legend surrounding the pronunciation of MASA. Answer: She felt it came from the more disgruntled employees who felt their boss was more of a “massah”—not appreciating their skills. Follow up: How did MASA proceed from Elder’s living room? Answer: She remembered paying dues in order to put out mailings and a newsletter, which among other things called readers’ attention to upcoming elections and worked out details about how governance would work—including the thorny issue of districts.

00:10:54	Question: How time consuming was this process (of sorting out governance)? Answer: She thought it had to have taken years, since the first assembly meeting was in the late 1980s and she very quickly went into the role of chair of PPPC (at the request of Joann Elder). She outlined the original committees and their initial population. 

00:13:08	Question: How many were on PPPC? Answer: 6 at the beginning, expanding to 9 later. Follow up: Charged with what? Answer: She didn’t remember, but thought there was language written into it that outlined their purpose. She felt that they “could do something important by talking about it,” since discussion naturally raised issues that needed to change. Follow up: Who was on PPPC? Answer: She outlined the original 6 members. Recalling that Steve Lund’s attendance at all the meetings could be construed as administration spying the committee, she remarked that she saw it very differently—Lund guided the committee without directing it, working with, not against, them. She gave the example of a certain “revolutionary” proposal he helped with.

00:17:42	Question: What was the process (of developing governance) like? Answer: She couldn’t remember details but recalled that changes were made so frequently early on that they eventually stopped republishing ASPP with each change. She noted that they spent a lot of time defining and redefining the “indefinite” title, which ironically very few could actually have. Follow up: What percentage of your time were you giving to this? Answer: Quipping that her “definition of 100% changed a lot” she recalled initially meeting 2 hours every week and the 40 hour week being “unknown to me.”

00:21:24	Question: Was the dean supportive? Answer: Yes; deans Palmer and Read were magnanimous about sacrificing so she could be involved, though dean Trueba was less so. Wallace commented on Shalala’s choice of deans and Trueba’s lack of understanding of faculty and staff governance. Follow up: Did this affect your role? Answer: Not her campus role, but her role in SoE, which she thought a positive change. She moved away from being a personal support person for Trueba to being more of a personnel director.

00:24:01	Question: What were the biggest academic staff governance victories? Answer: Things they were able to write into ASPP, like job security and promotions being dictated by annual reviews at the school or college level as opposed to being arbitrary. Follow up: And your role next to the dean sent a certain message? Answer: She thought so, since she was able to advocate with the dean about how the system should work, which gave her great satisfaction. Follow up: Are there still advocates like you around? Answer: She remarked that there were people like her, often in HR positions, in each school or college and cited specific examples. But she and Ryan discussed limitations of advocacy as well—it was only effective if the dean was sympathetic, if the HR person had time and had a stake in academic staff issues or there was collaboration at the department level, and if the budget officers were understanding of academic staff issues.

00:32:55	Question: What did you bring to the table that made you an effective advocate? Answer: She suspected that her knowledge and experience, if not her diplomacy, helped her to tell it like it was. She observed that her approach was to not talk too much in meetings, but rather allow others to air ideas. 

00:34:29	Question: What challenges remain? Answer: Wallace said academic staff continued to struggle to get appropriate recognition from faculty and administrators, though the highly capable academic staff at UW helped. She qualified this observation, however, by noting that she’d been retired too long to have a detailed idea about morale, salary issues, etc., though she offered general speculations.

00:38:15	Question: Have you maintained organization memberships? Answer: She didn’t know about campus organizations, but she had a life membership in MASA. 

00:38:57	Question: Talk about the beginnings of Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization (ASPRO). Answer: Noting that she was only an outsider to ASPRO, the lobbying arm of academic staff to the legislature, she couldn’t recall how it started. She and Ryan discussed connections they thought existed between ASPRO and MASA’s early lobbying.

00:40:56	Question: What impact would it have if UW faculty didn’t want to join with academic staff for collective bargaining rights? Answer: She didn’t think it could be a good thing, since the identification of salary structure with the faculty had been a positive thing, and since many faculty and policy-makers didn’t understand what academic staff did. Follow up: Did collective bargaining not coming to campus have to do with faculty opposition? Answer: She thought so; faculty were afraid unionization would destroy governance. She felt separate unions would be divisive and would destroy some of the progress made.

00:45:12	Question: Talk more about promotions and annual reviews. Answer: Wallace said annual reviews allowed them to identify problem units and confront them—often just an educational phone call to those who weren’t aware what the rules were. Follow up: Were there any who “didn’t get it?” Answer: She could only remember one notable instance of a person who was intransigent about their notions of promotion and job security.

00:47:12	Question: Other notable accomplishments or challenges? Answer: She again pointed to recognition as a challenge, and then talked about the mentoring program as an accomplishment, with which she was involved fairly early. This program matched senior academic staff with junior staff who signed up for mentoring. After the application process, mentors and mentees were “matched”; and Wallace talked about several of her mentees.

00:51:30	Question: Anything else? Answer: She talked about academic staff activities she’d been involving, expanding on Committees on Academic Staff issues at the division level, of which SoE’s was the first, the committee on equity and diversity, and the committee on issues of disability. 

00:56:01	Question: Thoughts about your role in governance? Answer: She said it was a very positive experience since it was so complementary to her job and helped her do her job better. She didn’t think she’d have changed anything. 

00:58:47	End of Second Interview Session

End of Oral History #994