WAUKESHA – In January 1977 Janet Brown started working at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha as a part-time Minority Disadvantaged Reading teacher but retires at the end of August 2002 as director of the campus Study Center and of the UW Colleges’ federally-supported Student Support Services (TRIO) program, which operates on four campuses. The self-described “queen of little positions” resourcefully has whittled out staffing for these from grants and budgets for 25 years. Throughout, her leadership has had a singular focus: provide the services students need to succeed academically.
Comprised of 13 campuses statewide and headquartered in Madison, the UW Colleges offer local access to the University of Wisconsin with freshman and sophomore foundation courses. Waukesha has the highest enrollment among these campuses.
After she graduated from Knox College, Galesburg, IL, in 1958, Brown spent more than a dozen years teaching middle school reading and social studies before entering Chicago State University. She completed her master of science in the teaching of reading in 1973 and then launched her own creatively-designed career in assisting adult students.
First, she founded a program in reading and English-as-a-second-language for prisoners at the Army’s Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where her husband was stationed as a faculty member at the Command and General Staff College. A few months later, he
retired and they moved to Wisconsin. She began teaching English-as-a-second-language, reading, and adult basic education at Waukesha County Technical College, and, in a while, was appointed to an inter-institutional curriculum development committee. By January 1977 she was teaching at both WCTC and UW-Waukesha, in some cases, the same students.
Several of the UW-Waukesha English faculty sent students to her. She met one of these faculty, Fred Moss, who was putting together a writing lab. Walt Sadler from the math department found space in the lab to tutor students as well, and they welcomed a reading teacher to their alliance, soon called the Learning Lab, and her position became full time.
In 1979 Brown helped write the application for a federal TRIO grant. With the infusion of some funding from a 4-year grant for TRIO Student Support Services, serving first-generation, low-income, and special needs students, the lab gained permanency. In the years that have followed, Brown has continued to win grants, and the TRIO Student Support Services program has been funded at the UW Colleges without interruption. A new 5-year award, an uncommonly long term, takes effect September 1 and covers programs at UW-Waukesha, UW-Marathon County, UW-Baraboo/Sauk County and at the Federal Correctional Institution-Oxford, and UW-Rock County. Last February Governor McCallum invited her to the executive residence, where he honored a select few UW faculty and staff who have brought the most grant dollars to the state. For her, that was approximately $4 million over the past 10 years and about a half a million this year alone.
Money helps Brown accomplish her goals, but it is not what she is about. Rather, her mission is to lower the barriers for students to succeed in college – and to get them to the door. In 1979 she wrote a federal grant to fund “A College Orientation Program for Adult Students,” focusing on those who had been away from school for at least 10 years, and by spring 1981 had introduced “Back to School: The First Step,” with evaluations, refreshers, advising, discussions, and child care.
In 1987 she and Sarah Connor established University Camp, a program aiming to bring junior-high Hispanic girls to campus to introduce them to a full set of educational options. With the help of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Milwaukee Foundation grants, it has expanded, and now offers the same incentives for any minority middle school students. Several years later, in 1990, she assisted in obtaining federal funding for an Upward Bound program at two of the UW Colleges campuses and started a pre-college program in Waukesha in 1994 to give minority high school students a taste of higher education.
With major construction on campus, the increasingly popular Learning Lab moved into new, enlarged quarters and changed its name to the more descriptive Study Center in 1996. Brown had been director since January 1982, assuming leadership after Fred Moss, the lab’s only other director, was promoted to associate dean. In 1987 she completed her Ph.D. in urban education at UW-Milwaukee, and in 1990 she became the head of the UW Colleges Student Support Services.
While she has managed the bigger operation adeptly, she never allowed the administrative duties to keep her from concentrating on the students as individuals. She employs some of the same creative skills in devising ways to reach, cajole, and nudge them. She posts pictures of some of the hottest rock stars, which she gets from her daughter who is a promoter in the music industry (and was in 6th grade when Brown first came to UW-Waukesha) – drawing in students more apt to walk on by. She prods them with motherly advice on getting their work done and hopes it is effective.
Apparently her efforts to provide all the help students need to make possible a decision to succeed have worked. “Anyplace I go, somebody knows me. It’s hard to keep track of all the students who have been here – and when.” Yet they are her successes. She has posted a record of some of them. On the wall outside the Study Center she proudly exhibits framed lists of names of former UW-Waukesha TRIO students and the years and institutions from which they earned their bachelor’s degrees.
Her success, too, has been noticed. She was nominated for a UW System Regents Academic Staff Excellence Award in 1998, was recognized as a Woman of Distinction in 1990 by the Waukesha YWCA, and twice was chosen for UW Colleges Kaplan Fellowships, in its inaugural year in1993 and a second time in 2000.
Besides her university work, Brown reviews applications for scholarships offered by Quad Graphics to children of employees and reads grant proposals submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. She has funneled the stipends she’s received from Quad Graphics into an emergency loan fund. UW-Waukesha students caught in a temporary financial bind can borrow short-term from it interest free. Her work as a field reader has helped her hone her skills in writing grant proposals, resulting in the UW Colleges continually receiving some of the largest TRIO grants awarded.
“I will miss the students,” says Brown, 66, “and the staff,” but adds, “when the staff are younger than your children, it’s time to retire.” And step aside she will. “I don’t want to work until I’m 70, so I don’t think I should get involved with the new grant that begins in September.” She is willing to read more proposals and review more scholarship applications, but she’ll leave the campus work in the hands of the well-qualified people for whom she’s eked out positions and whom she’s trained. |
