May 9, 2014 at 4:08 p.m.
Burmaster reflects on time at Nicolet College
Burmaster reflects on time at Nicolet College
"I had been coming up regularly and used our place when I had to do statewide work," Burmaster said. "I would often be up here and travel from our cabin."
She said she doesn't intend to lose those Northwoods connections when she moves back east to her hometown of Frederick, Md. where she will lead a local community college. The Frederick Community College Board of Trustees announced this week that it has selected Burmaster out of more than 60 other applicants to be the school's next president. She will assume the presidency effective Aug. 18.
In an interview with the River News, Burmaster said she looks forward to her new challenge but will also miss Nicolet College.
"I absolutely love Nicolet College and the entire Northwoods," Burmaster said. "It's been a labor of love for five years and it's been a tremendous privilege. I can say that I've really loved every minute of it."
She said it's been difficult to leave other positions she's held in her nearly 40-year career in education in Wisconsin and the presidency at Nicolet College is no different.
"When I decided not to run for a third term as state superintendent, that was a hard decision but it brought me to Nicolet and I've enjoyed everything about Nicolet," Burmaster said. "It was hard for me to leave West High (in Madison where she was principal) to run for state superintendent. I'd been there almost 10 years. But the great experience of the state superintendency is something that I feel very privileged to have and I learned so much."
In reflecting on her five-year tenure at Nicolet College, Burmaster said she's most proud of how people in the community came together to support the college's mission in the years following the economic recession.
"I came in July 2009 and the recession had already hit the southern part of the state pretty heavily," Burmaster said. "Of course I had been working statewide so I had really seen the economic effects throughout the state. I knew it was pretty likely that property valuations were going to fall here and indeed they did. I knew exactly what I was coming into. I didn't know the extent of it. But by October we did, and that was the first year in 14 years that property valuations dropped (in Nicolet College's district). We did not raise the tax levy so my first job was to cut over $800,000 out of the budget. I knew coming in that the long-term financial stability and sustainability of the college was extremely important. I'm so very proud of the way people have really come around that idea. We've looked at the way we do our work. We've looked at cost efficiencies through collaboration. We've looked at partnerships."
Examples include partnerships with Head Start to defray the costs of Nicolet's child care program, the Peter Christensen Dental Clinic in Lac du Flambeau to provide facilities for the dental care programs, and area manufacturers who have helped develop new curriculum and write applications for state and federal grants.
"There are all kinds of examples of this," Burmaster said.
She said the overall theme of the last few years has been finding ways to expand and improve Nicolet's offerings for students and the workforce while working within the existing financial constraints.
Burmaster noted that in the last few years Nicolet has remodeled most of the buildings on the Rhinelander campus. The summer of 2013 was the first year in Burmaster's time at Nicolet that the college did not take on a major building renovation project.
"Ensuring that the facilities are up-to-date has been important," Burmaster said. "I'm proud of our ability to be responsive to business and industry by having facilities that truly are state-of-the-art. And at the same time we've been able to save dollars in energy costs. Most of those buildings are LEED certified."
Burmaster said another highlight of her time at Nicolet has been all the work done in creating various "pathways" for students from the classroom to a career. When she arrived in 2009, the college had 50 agreements in place that allowed Nicolet students to transfer their credits to a four-year institution. Now there are 72 such transfer agreements. Nicolet also has a reverse credit transfer agreement with UW-Madison that allows students to attain a Nicolet associate degree by completing their coursework in Madison.
"If you don't finish your four-year degree, the credits you have at UW-Madison can be sent back and you'll automatically get an associate degree from Nicolet," Burmaster said. "That's significant. It's always good to have in your pathway that you've completed a degree."
There has also been a lot of work done on the PK-12 level. There are many opportunities for students in the Nicolet district to do high school coursework that at the same time turns into college credit.
"Dual enrollment didn't exist five years ago and I'm very proud of that because that's one of the first things I did. I came in and pulled together all the superintendents from around the area," Burmaster said. "When I say I did these things, what is most important to me is the recognition that people came together and figured these things out. All I did was facilitate. I convened the meetings or I networked and connected people who could work together. That's my skill - facilitator. I'm a person who can connect the dots."
Burmaster said Nicolet's architectural technology degree program is a good example of how bolstering the college's offerings has been a team effort. The program was developed by Jeff Labs, a building trades instructor who saw a need for more modern, sustainable construction methods to be taught at Nicolet.
"That program is just marvelous and the first class of that group is graduating this month. They're going to be able to get jobs all over the state with what they've learned," Burmaster said. "That was a real high point for me because it was an example of a faculty member, Jeff Labs, being so in tune to the needs in the workforce. He had his own construction company and the recession hit and he came into teaching. He realized there needed to be a little different direction in the building trades program. So he built this whole curriculum and modeled it after some others in the state. It's cutting edge. It's fantastic."
Burmaster said she doesn't yet know when she will officially step down as Nicolet's president, but she has to be ready to take the reins at Frederick Community College starting Aug. 18.
"It's still to be determined. There are some things I have to work through," Burmaster said.
The first step in the transition process will be the appointment of an interim president to lead the college while a search is being conducted. Deanna Pierpont, chair of the Nicolet College Board of Trustees, has called a meeting for 4 p.m. Monday to discuss naming an interim president.
Even when Burmaster leaves for her new position in Maryland, there will be plenty of return trips to Wisconsin and the Northwoods. She and her husband still have their cabin and most of their children and grandchildren live in the Madison area, she said.
Burmaster said she will miss living and working in the state where she has spent her entire career after graduating from UW-Madison in 1976, but the move back east to Frederick, Md. offers a unique opportunity.
"It's my hometown. I was born there. I grew up there. I graduated from high school there," Burmaster said. "It's a really special thing I think to be able to go back after the experience I've had and serve my hometown. I'm excited about that."
Kyle Rogers may be reached at [email protected].
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