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Good afternoon, everybody.
This is a great sightline.
I just want to tell you, standing up here and looking
out at all of you, this idea that we had
about how this was going to work, two levels,
people up, people down.
This is -- I think this is what we were hoping to accomplish.
So on behalf of the McBurney Center and the Division
of Student Life, thank you very much for coming and welcome
to the dedication celebration
of the McBurney Disability Resource Center
at our new home at 702 W. Johnson.
Thank you all for making time in your very busy schedules to come
and celebrate this event with us this evening.
To begin, just to say, there have been many,
many moving parts in getting this event organized
and planned.
And as you might imagine, it took a real team effort.
I want to begin the evening by thanking the members of the team
at UW Foundation, who were really pivotal
in pulling this all off for us and making it work smoothly.
Particularly recognizing Dani Luckett and Kate Bahr,
in the back, who were the point people at the Foundation
and I think did a great job.
So let 's recognize them.
[ Applause ]
I 'm not great at doing head counts, but I 'm going
to guess we have 70, 80 people with us this evening here
in this space to be part of the celebration.
And we 're here really to do a couple of things.
We 're here to celebrate the new space.
We 're here to thank the many individuals over the years
who have made contributions to our program.
We 'd like to honor our founders.
We 'd like to dedicate the James Graaskamp Conference Room
and establish the Graaskamp Scholarship for Students
with Disabilities on our campus beginning this year.
We are also pleased to offer this celebration to many
of our friends and colleagues who are not able to be with us
in the space tonight, but are joining us via a live web uplink
being hosted on our website, and the screen that you see
to the left, to my right, I think to your left,
in addition to the visuals,
will be what is shown on the web tonight.
So I 'm not quite sure how many of our guests are
with us virtually in the web community, but I do want
to acknowledge a couple of people
that I do know are with us this evening.
Nancy Smith, the first director
of the McBurney Disability Resource Center, is joining us
from New Castle, Indiana.
Nancy, wherever you are, I hope you 're hearing this
and the feed is working for you.
Nancy was the first director and she was there
at the McBurney center from 1981 to 1988.
Trey Duffy, who is currently the Director of Disability Services
at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo is also joining us via the web.
I spoke with him today.
I confirmed that he didn 't have jury duty
and that he would be able to be with us this evening,
and he assured me it was in his calendar.
Trey was the director at the center from 1989 to 2005.
I believe in the audience tonight we also have two women
who were our interim directors, Pat Denoyers,
who was the interim director from 1988 to 1989,
and BA Scheuers, who led the program from 2005 to 2006.
These four leaders were really instrumental
in bringing our program from a very small two, three,
four person shop to the organization we are today,
which employs 14 staff, 16 to 18 students, and several hourly
and academic staff members who work
for us on a part-time basis.
It 's really their passion and their vision
and their leadership that has made the McBurney Center a
national leader in post secondary disability services,
and I 'd like to honor the folks
that came before me in the directorship.
[ Applause ]
We are also here to mark the unwavering commitment
that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made
to students with disabilities really since just
after World War II
when returning vets were coming to campus.
Vets with disabilities who were coming here expecting to receive
and did receive the world class education
that our campus is known for.
UW 's commitment to individuals
with disabilities really proceeds any legislative
directive to make this campus accessible.
Our campus 's approach, which is reflected in the vision
of our founders, has always been one of creating opportunity.
Three of our speakers tonight are Badgers whose stories will
illustrate not only the benefit of this vision,
but also the power for change that is at the core
of the Wisconsin Idea.
I would like to begin by introducing Provost Paul DeLuca,
who will be providing our opening remarks.
After completing a doctoral degree in nuclear physics
at Notre Dame, the Provost joined our campus community in 1971
as a faculty member in the departments of Radiology,
Medical Physics, Human Oncology,
Engineering Physics, and Physics.
He served in Associate and Vice Dean positions in the School
of Medicine and Public Health,
was appointed our Provost in 2009.
I had the opportunity to introduce myself to the Provost
at the Diversity Forum this past fall, ran into him
in the hallway, and introduced myself and thanked him
for his support for the building of this facility
that we 're in this evening.
And he looked at me and he kind of chuckled and he said, well,
we really pulled that rabbit out of a hat.
And I thought, oh, I don 't know what that means,
but I know enough if the Provost says something like that to you,
you don 't ask any questions, but you do invite him
to give opening remarks.
Provost DeLuca?
[ Applause ]
Cathy is very polite.
There is a certain amount of rabbit pulling that took place.
There 's no question about it.
But it 's really a great opportunity for me to be here,
but I think the point of all of this is it 's an opportunity
for our students that they heretofore would not have.
It 's very tough to create this kind of space.
It doesn 't quite fit anything, but it is essential
to the fabric of our existence to be able
to provide this kind of facility.
It 's just spectacular to be here.
The rabbit hat part was there were a range of possibilities,
but there was really only one logical possibility,
and that 's the one we 're standing in.
So somehow we had to arrange the conversation in such a fashion
that everyone followed that same logic tree.
And we were successful.
And I think it 's a tribute to the services that are provided.
The impact that has on our campus is quite spectacular.
I 've seen it over the years in the medical school
where it 's quite important.
But you know where it really struck me
as unusual is we 've been working very *** developing new ways
to manage traumatic brain injury, and unfortunately,
traumatic brain injury as a result of the conflict
in Afghanistan has gone up dramatically.
And I was out at Walter Reed,
and looking at these young people and, you know,
the unfortunate disabilities that they 've encountered,
and the abilities that they have
to participate are going up dramatically.
And our ability to help them in any way we can is wonderful.
But in any case, on a somewhat more amusing note,
when I was preparing for this, I had forgotten
that the original location of the McBurney Center was actually
in the old Park Street bank.
Right? And it was in really bizarre quarters in that bank,
and I remember this very clearly, because my dentist was
on the next floor and I would walk by this every day.
I was going to see the dentist for whatever reason.
I always thought, you got to be kidding me.
That can 't be where it is.
Right? Well, 30, 40 years later I find out,
in fact, where it is.
All right?
So it was really impressive.
And I think Blair Mathews is here with his wife.
Is Blair around?
I think Blair was seminal to this effort.
Maybe a round of applause for his effort.
[ Applause ]
So let me not bore you with too much conversation.
As you can tell, I 'm older than dirt.
I 've done all the jobs that exist.
But this is one of the few jobs and few activities
that I really enjoy participating with.
I think this must be particularly satisfying
to the people who work here
and particularly satisfying to the Foundation.
And I saw Marion earlier.
I 'm sure the Foundation enjoys this kind
of activity almost much more than anything else they do.
So I hope to meet more of you as the evening goes on.
I hope you have a chance to visit all the facility.
There 's plenty of space upstairs and downstairs,
and I understand there 's even wine.
So thank you so much, Cathy.
[ Applause ]
Thank you, Provost.
Bobbi Cordano has a list of accomplishments on the back
of the program and I 'm here to tell you
that that is an abbreviated list.
In addition to serving as the prosecutor
for the Minnesota Attorney General 's office,
Director of Disability Services at the University of Minnesota,
assistant dean at the University
of Minnesota Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Policy,
president of Park Nicollet Institute, interim president
of the Center for Healthcare Innovations
at Allina Health Systems.
That 's all in her past, of course.
Her current role as vice president of programs
at Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, in addition to all of the above,
Bobbi has also been or also is one of the founding members
of Metro Deaf School, a pre-K to eight bilingual charter school
for Deaf and hard of hearing students in St. Paul, Minnesota,
and a founding board member of Minnesota North Star Academy,
which is a bilingual, bicultural charter high school also
in the Twin Cities that opened in 2004.
Bobbi is the 2003 recipient
of the inaugural Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Public
Leadership Award, sharing that recognition
with former Vice President Walter Mondale and Pakou Hang,
a leader in the Hmong community in the Twin Cities.
That list of accomplishments would be enough to bring Bobbi
to our campus this evening, but that 's not why she 's here.
Bobbi came to our campus in 1987 as one
of the first Deaf law students to attend our law school,
and she shook things up around here just a little bit.
UW was really not prepared to deliver services
to a Deaf law student, and quite honestly,
we weren 't entirely sure that we needed to.
But Bobbi did the thing that we really want all students to do.
She practiced effective self-advocacy.
And when you 're on the receiving end of effective self-advocacy
from someone like Bobbi Cordano, you pay attention
and you make the changes you need to make.
And I 'm pleased to say that the interpreter that worked
with Bobbi is now at UW Milwaukee,
but that was one part-time person in '87, and our staff
to service students who are Deaf or hard
of hearing today is five,
and that 's just the staff at McBurney.
We also work with hourly interpreters and captionists
to deliver services when we need to deliver them,
how we need to deliver them, and in the best possible way
so that students can go on and have the opportunities
and take advantage of their education
in the way that Bobbi has.
I couldn 't be more delighted to bring you back to campus, Bobbi.
Welcome back, and please come and speak with us.
[ Applause ]
I would not have given you that hug
after the first semester, but I am delighted to be back.
And thank you for your kind words
and the nice welcome, Provost.
Wow. This is impressive.
I have this at the line at the end of the speech
and I think I have to say it now.
This is the new gold standard.
I am so pleased and so impressed with the University
of Wisconsin, the McBurney Disability Resource Center,
and I really am proud to call myself an alum
and to tell people this is where you need to come.
One thing that -- if you look around and even
with how this event is being conducted tonight,
there are elements of Universal Design everywhere you turn.
And for those of you who don 't know what Universal Design is,
this is a concept that was first coined by Ron Mace
at the University of North Carolina and is defined as --
21 years later, reading classes --
the concept of designing all products
and the built environment to be esthetic and usable
to the greatest extent possible by everyone,
regardless of their age, ability, or status in life.
Higher education has actually led the movement
of adopting principles of Universal Design into teaching,
service delivery, program design,
as well as building more inclusive
and welcoming community for students, faculty, and staff.
And when you look around here, I actually see, and when I was
at disability services in the University of Minnesota,
we did a lot of work there,
and I am seeing a beautiful integration of probably
about 10 years of work related to Universal Design,
and it 's wonderful to see.
And I think you can expect to see a lot of people from all
over the country and the world coming to see this office.
The other thing that I notice
that I think is important compared to 21 years ago,
if you think about the bank, this is strategically located
in the heart of this campus.
The whole concept of when you are welcomed here as a student,
you are welcomed here to state all of your needs as a student,
which is not something
that necessarily happened 21 years ago.
And I think that Mike McBurney,
James Graaskamp would be thrilled
to see this center today, and I just met Mike McBurney 's sister,
and she affirmed that.
John Hockenberry, who is a journalist at NPR
who also has a physical disability, I 'm sure many
of you have heard him on NPR, wrote a wonderful article
for Wired magazine in 2001 entitled "The New Brainiacs."
In that article he says, and I quote,
when you think disability, think zeitgeist.
I 'm serious.
We live at a time when the disabled are on the leading edge
of a broader societal trend toward the use
of assistive technology.
With the advent of miniture wireless tech,
and keep in mind this was written 2001,
and I 'm not even sure the iPods were out much less the iPad
which is my favorite new toy.
Electronic gadgets have stepped up the invasion of the body
and our concept of what it means and even looks
like to be human is wide open to debate.
Humanity 's specs are back on the drawing board,
and thanks to some unlikely designers,
and the disabled have a serious advantage in this conversation.
They have been using technology in collaborative, intimate ways
for years, to move, to communicate,
and to interact with the world.
And one example of this is what you 're watching right now,
that there is a web cam with captioning happening all at once
around the community who want to participate
with this event tonight.
When I was a student here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
I was one of the first Deaf graduate students,
as Cathy explained, and I should say I wasn 't the first
deaf student.
There was actually a man before me who was deaf,
but he was oral, and so he didn 't use sign
language interpreters.
The distinction is that I was one of the first Deaf students
who used sign language interpreters
as an accommodation.
The result of being a first is that you end
up testing the system 's capacity to respond.
At the time the McBurney Disability Resource Center had
very little infrastructure to support the capacity
of a Deaf student in a demanding
and rigorous graduate school program.
This changed a lot during the three years that I was here,
but not without struggle from me, the interpreters that worked
with me and even the staff
in the McBurney Resource Center who also tried
to advocate to strengthen the capacity
to serve a student like me.
But one of my life lessons that I 've drawn from that experience is
that it is healthy to have outliers, creating tension
for an organization, especially one as large
as the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And by the way, I 'm not sure I 'm using the term
in the way Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book, Outliers.
I was just looking at that
and I think my defintion is a little different.
I 'm really talking about if you 've got a mainstream profile of a student
or a faculty or staff person, if the outlier is an individual
who is outside that mainstream vision or profile.
Anyway, outliers are rarely alone, and in fact,
one of the highlights of my law school experience,
and I 'm sorry Cliff Thompson isn 't here,
he was the interim Dean when I was there, was when a cadre
of my peers, and I think it was more than 20, got together
after they had heard that McBurney had turned
down a request that I had made for an event,
because I had not made the request within 24 hours,
which was a minimum and it was a legal standard.
And these students went to the Dean and said, well,
that Bobbi didn 't know about it with more
than 24 hours, so how could that be?
And they marched into the Dean 's office
and said get her an interpreter --
to be honest, I don 't remember
if there was an interpreter at the event.
What I remember is that event of my students
and my peers showing up.
And that was the first time that I understood
that access could be a movement.
This significantly informed my leadership
and has over the years.
I take care in my daily life to find and recognize the outliers
in the community and the organizations in which I serve.
I believe that outliers push communities and organizations
to be better than they are sometimes prepared
to be or want to be.
And when we embrace the challenge they raise,
the result is almost always better for everyone.
But the challenge is usually convincing people
who are not the outliers that -- I 'm sorry.
But the challenge of convincing people to change and respond
to the opportunity is actually more difficult
than what is being asked of us.
And so I have found that the real trick in leadership is
to try to figure out how to guide people to respond
to the call created by outliers.
And in the end, when we 're all able to pull together
to creatively find solutions, we all feel
and find ourselves better off for having done that.
And I strongly believe, especially after arriving here,
Cathy explained to me all the changes, but I have to tell you,
this is breath taking.
And I wrote these words and they have even stronger meaning
for me than when I actually wrote them,
and that is that this opening symbolizes a new era
of creating a stronger and more inclusive community
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Congratulations.
[ Applause ]
One of our program values here at the center is
to provide opportunities for employment
for students with disabilities.
And I have to tell you, this is one of the smartest values
that we could hold because of the quality
of the students we do get working for us at the center.
Meagan Minster has been a disability program aide
since she was a freshman, and this past year she was promoted
to supervisor of our student front desk operations staff,
running the face really of the McBurney Center,
because it 's the students at the front desk that meet
and greet the students that come in the door, speak to faculty
and staff on the phone, talk to parents,
talk to the community members.
They are the face of our center and it is a critical
and vitally important job.
The person who is in charge of that, which is Meagan for us,
really sets the tone for the welcome that any guest
that comes to the McBurney Center will receive.
In addition to being a terrific member of our team,
Meagan is a junior in her program, recently admitted
to the School of Social Work.
She finds time to volunteer in her community.
She 's traveled internationally to Ireland with part
of the Milwaukee Ulster Project, and she 's just all
around an upbeat, positive,
wonderful member of our McBurney team.
We couldn 't be happier to have her with us.
I 'm telling you right now, Meagan, that I 'm expecting
to you get your master 's as well so that we can hold onto you
for as many years as possible.
Meagan Minster.
[ Applause ]
Hi, everyone.
Like Cathy said, I 'm Meagan
and I 'm a junior studying social work here.
I grew up in Menomonie Falls, Wisconsin,
and my whole life I 've wanted to come here to be a Badger.
I started Irish dancing when I was four years old
and I continued competing and performing across the country
until my junior year of high school when I was diagnosed
with a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos
Syndrome that causes my joints to dislocate extremely easily.
This diagnosis was very challenging for me to deal with,
because it meant immediately giving up my life as a dancer
and less than a year later I became wheelchair dependent.
While I 'm still able to stand and walk short distances,
using a wheelchair on campus is really helpful to prevent pain
and preserve the quality of my joints for as long as I can.
I have always loved Madison and my senior year of high school
when I was looking at colleges to apply to,
I knew UW was the only place I wanted to come.
I was very nervous about moving to campus, because I was so new
to being a wheelchair user and I had no idea how getting
around on a campus this big would work out for me.
During my summer orientation,
I met with my accommodation specialist here at McBurney
for the first time and I felt so much more comfortable after that
and was really ready for my transition to campus.
My freshman year here was a huge transition for me,
both academically and in terms of my disability,
but the McBurney Center has provided
so much support throughout the past three years
and it 's just been amazing.
The support the McBurney Center has provided me has been
so important to my success here as an undergraduate,
both as a client and student worker.
The center has played a big role in my life and I 'm so grateful
for everything with which the organization has provided me.
Having support from the McBurney staff in both my academics
and personal life has been so beneficial
to my success on campus.
My lovely coworkers and the McBurney Center
as a whole have been key to my growth as a student
and the progress I have made during my time here.
McBurney scholarships have really helped my family cover
the cost of tuition and books.
Out of the five kids in my family, four of us will be
in college during the next academic year,
which puts a huge financial strain on my family.
And the scholarships I 've received here have really helped
lessen that burden and ease some of the stress that that brings.
In addition to the scholarships, my part-time job here
at the McBurney Center has really helped cover just the
day-to-day costs of being a college student.
Working here for the past three years has been a wonderful
experience and I really could not ask
for a better job as a student worker.
When I found out our office was moving to this new location,
I was so excited, because I knew it would provide us with a way
to create a new and accessible office setting.
Working in this gorgeous new space has been a delight.
Seemingly minor things, like how the doors open or the height
of the file cabinets, were all carefully planned
and they make a huge difference
in the day-to-day work here at McBurney.
Knowing that I can come here and not have to worry
about how accessible things are going to be or if I 'll be able
to even get here is so nice
and it really makes my life a lot easier,
and it definitely creates a safe and comfortable space
for students on campus with disabilities,
regardless of what their disability is.
The support that all of you are providing
to the McBurney Center is so valuable in the day-to-day lives
of students with disabilities here on campus.
Living with a disability can be very challenging for students,
and the McBurney Center really helps alleviate some
of the extra stress that 's put on us and helps us work
through the challenges that we face
as students with disabilities.
Even though my disability has changed my life
in ways I never could have expected,
I haven 't let it stop me from fully engaging in life
and really living as a Badger.
Working towards my goal
of becoming a social worker is something I love,
and the McBurney Center has really played a vital role
in helping me achieve this goal.
So thank you, guys, for everything you 're doing
to support the McBurney Center and students with disabilities.
[ Applause ]
So it sounds like we might have you through your master 's?
Hopefully
That would be great.
We serve over 900 students right now on our campus,
and that 's probably a small percentage
of students registered with our office.
And I have to tell you, so many of them are
as wonderful as Meagan.
It 's a privilege to work with these students.
Our center, as you may or may not know, was actually founded
in the memory of a student, a Badger named Mike McBurney.
Mike was a local young man from Madison
who sustained a cervical spinal cord injury in high school,
and that was in the 1950 's.
Mike survived the injury, but was left with quadriplegia
and faced a future that contained significant physical
and social barriers that were reflective of the times.
Mike was blessed with parents, siblings,
and friends who never doubted his ability,
despite the severity of his disabilities, and had the energy
and the determination to assist him
in reaching his life 's ambition.
Mike was also blessed with a formidable intelligence,
a charismatic personality, and a spirit of determination
that equaled, if not exceeded that of his family and friends.
Mike enrolled at UW-Madison a year after his injury.
He was pushed and pulled up Bascom Hill.
He was bumped down flights of stairs.
He was carried in and out of campus buildings.
On his way to graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1960.
Continuing on to earn his law degree at UW,
Mike graduated third in his class and practiced law
with his father, Floyd, for three years before running for
and being elected Dane County District Attorney in 1966.
It would be easy to imagine Mike 's life would continue
on with one achievement after another following him
into the future, but that was not to be.
Mike died shortly after taking office in 1967 and the dreams
and the ambitions he held were cut short.
Mike 's sister, Georgianna McBurney Stebnitz
and her husband Gary are with us this evening, somewehre.
I know I saw them earlier.
Oh, I see your hand back there.
[ Applause ]
And Georgie tells a wonderful story
about how she brought these two men together.
Georgie spotted Jim Graaskamp in Library Mall.
Jim himself a formidable man in an extra large wheelchair
with a charismatic personality and a formidable intelligence,
and she thought to herself, this is someone
that my brother should meet.
Now Graaskamp was a faculty member
in the School of Business.
He took this young undergraduate student under his wing.
He gave him multiple reasons to leave the house,
to enjoy the full experience, academic and social.
He restored his confidence and he became a lifelong friend.
When Mike died, Graaskamp approached the family
with the idea to use the contributions that had been made
in the name of Mike -- made in his memory,
to start a formal disability services office.
Working with the Dean of Students, Paul Ginsberg,
and Assistant Dean of Students, Blair Mathews,
who is also with us this evening,
the McBurney Center was founded in 1977.
A gifted teacher, mentor, and visionary,
Jim Graaskamp is credited with creating a vision
of real estate education and elevating it to a legitimate
and distinct place in academia.
Recognized by the Urban Land Institute in 2006 as one
of Ten Real Estate Legends, Graaskamp was described
as an exceptional leader with the capacity
to make a lasting profound difference.
To take risks in pursuit of excellence,
and whose perseverance ultimately results
in better buildings, better neighborhoods,
and better communities.
Graaskamp understood on a personal,
as well as a theoretical level,
that the best communities are created when everyone
in the community is included.
That is his legacy here with regard to campus access
and the inclusion of students with disabilities
in the campus community.
And this project of putting together the McBurney Center has
had many magical moments.
But the story I want to share
with you this evening is embedded in our desire
to honor Graaskamp in naming our conference room after him.
Now, this project was a public-private partnership
between EMI, Executive Management,
Incorporated, and the campus.
EMI built the space and then turned it over to the campus
after the renovations were completed
and we were able to move in.
Now, I approached Doug Rose, who is here also
or was here this evening.
Doug was our campus point person on the project
and a terrific partner, along with Doug Sabatke
in realizing the vision of the space that you see before you.
And I asked Doug, what do we need to do?
What channels do we need to go through?
How many committees do we need to form in order
to name this conference room in honor of Jim Graaskamp?
And Doug said, why don 't you write a letter
and tell me what you want to do and why and I 'll move it
through the campus channels and I 'll approach EMI with the idea.
Well, the magic happened when we learned that the CEO
and Managing Partner of EMI, Greg Rice, who was present
at endless, countless planning and design meetings
for the McBurney Center, was an alum of Jim Graaskamp.
And I have to tell you, that just made it feel
like this project came full circle for us, that the man
who was founding our program back in the 60s was instrumental
in pulling together the people and the resources and the voice
that was needed to create our center when it was created,
had one of his students be part of the new
and permanent home for our program.
I was really struck by this, and the fact that I feel
on some level we 're really being watched
over by many very benevolent guardian angels.
I 'm so happy to have Greg here with us tonight to speak
with you, to remember the Chief,
and to talk about his involvement in our program.
Greg Rice.
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
It 's wonderful to be here tonight remembering the Chief.
I had the opportunity to go upstairs and read the plaque
that was put in the conference room that 's named in his honor,
and it brought back many fond memories looking at the Chief
in his modus, in the mode that he moved around campus,
his very large wheelchair, and remembering how he fondly talked
about the old University Square,
the project that was here before this new beautiful building
was built.
He loved the old University Square.
He loved how it was located, the synergies
that brought the campus together with the city of Madison.
As I talked with Cathy, I think that that 's one
of the very interesting stories
that we have here tonight is the McBurney Center being located
in a new University Square at the corner of Lake Street
and Johnson Street
with a conference room named after the Chief.
I think that he 's somewhere looking
down on us smiling very broadly, thinking about that wonderful,
wonderful thing that 's happened for us all here.
And the fact that he was instrumental
in starting the McBurney Center and that it ends
up in a location that I think was very true and close
to his heart many years ago.
It 's always -- it 's also interesting that he
and my father, Gordon, who 's here tonight, were very,
very close friends and that they spent many evenings talking
about real estate, reminiscing about many stories.
And as Cathy said, he was a wonderful professor,
both on a very theoretical level and a very practical level.
And having been involved in a number of those discussions
over the dinner table, it was always extremely entertaining.
You didn 't even think about him having any disability
when you sat visiting with him.
And as a student and really representing a number
of students that have had him over the years, we never thought
about his having a disability.
We just -- he was the Chief.
He was our Chief.
He led the program.
We all loved him.
We would do anything for him.
We went anywhere with him.
If there was a way to get the trash out of the building,
we knew that there was a way to get the Chief into the building.
It 's what he said and that 's how we handled it over the years.
There were a number of times he 'd look up and he 'd say,
a lot of steps going up into the front of that building.
Let 's go around back and see
if we can figure out how to get me in.
Those are some of the memories that I have for him.
I am very, very proud to have been part
of this wonderful project of moving the McBurney Center
into this great location.
Thank you all for coming.
And I can truly say that it was a very,
very wonderful experience, even through all of the meetings,
Cathy and her staff were wonderful people to work with.
The university staff that we worked with, Doug Rose,
Doug Sabatke, the other people
at the university campus were wonderful to work with.
It culminated in just a great, great project.
And I 'm just very happy to have been part of it.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
When I travel and talk to my counterparts across the country,
one of the questions I get asked most often is how did you
do that?
How did you get your campus to send interpreters
with a Deaf student to a study abroad program in China?
How did you get your faculty to agree
to have test accommodations provided in the department?
How did you get to have a pre-doctoral psychology training
site established at the center?
And how are you doing this adaptive technology thing?
And I have to tell you,
the answer that I give most often is we 're really lucky.
And it 's not the sit around and wait
until good things happen kind of luck.
It 's the kind of luck that happens
when you have the right people around the right tables
at the right time who are committed
to doing the right thing.
There are four people I want
to recognize this evening before we close,
because they are the people that I consider my north stars
when we are looking to advance the opportunities
for students with disabilities.
Ken Fraizer, our General Librarian and chair
of the Accessibility and Usability Committee on campus,
is one of the most solution-focused leaders I have
ever worked with.
Ken does not allow our committee to sit
and say what doesn 't work.
He is focusing us on what would work,
how do we do it, and let 's get there.
Ken is passionate about access and he commits time, energy,
and funds toward that end.
Our Director of Legal Services and ADA Coordinator,
Lisa Rutherford, is another campus treasure.
Lisa has never positioned our campus
to let legal compliance be the most we can do.
The law provides a framework for what we must do
and Lisa provides the leadership for what we should do.
In this regard, she doesn 't just protect our campus reputation.
She elevates it.
I know our Dean of Students, Lori Berquam,
has been in many senior leadership meetings
where she has been the voice for students with disabilities.
Lori lives her values and her value is social justice.
In so many ways, this facility represents her commitment
to this ideal.
Through the long history of this program,
campus leaders have stepped up to voice their concerns,
their commitments, their aspirations
for including students with disabilities
in the fabric of campus life.
We would not be here if it were not for those voices,
but we all know that talk is just talk unless it is backed
by action.
And action requires money.
The Vice Chancellor For Administration, Darrell Bazzell,
is the action behind that commitment.
When I first came to campus as the director,
our program had a fairly significant budget deficit,
at least by my standards it was fairly significant.
I don 't know that it would count as fairly significant
in today 's budget times, but I thought it was a pretty big deal
and I thought it might be a good idea for me to introduce myself
to the vice chancellor so he could put a name
and a face together with that budget problem.
And so I met with him and we spent a little bit
of time talking about the budget,
but Darrell pretty quickly turned that conversation
to our temporary home on Linden Drive,
which he knew was not an appropriate spot
for our program.
And he asked me, where do you think your program should be?
Where on campus would the McBurney Center best fit?
And I said to him, it should be where students go,
where students are,
where students will want to walk in that door.
It needs to be in the heart of campus.
And look where we ended up five years later.
Darrell, Lori, Lisa, and Ken have made real the meaning
of the Wisconsin Experience for students with disabilities.
On their behalf, I would like to recognize them and thank them.
[ Applause ]
And to the Provost,
and I hope you carry this message back to the Chancellor.
There 's just one request I have of you.
Don 't ever let them leave.
Keep them here.
My parents, who are here with us this evening, have instilled
in me and my sister and my brothers the importance
of education and an understanding
that education leads to opportunity.
Our program tonight illustrates how education leads --
does create opportunity for students from all walks of life
to become catalysts for change in their community,
in their state, and even on the global level.
We celebrate this beautiful, accessible
and welcoming new space for the McBurney Center while we also
acknowledge that our greatest satisfaction comes
from this privilege of being able to walk part of the journey
with these remarkable young people
as they travel their pathway of learning at this institution.
We thank you for your contributions
and your support thus far and we invite you
to continue the journey with us.
[ Applause ]
Thank you so much for being here tonight.
I hope you 'll enjoy the refreshments,
including the wine and the snacks.
Enjoy the tour.
And thank you again
for celebrating with us this evening. Good night.
[ Applause ]
This presentation was edited to correct the following errors:
Mike McBurney was from Madison, WI (not Sun Prairie)
and died after taking office (not before).