Spring 2010 Issue

New Chapters

As his retirement date approaches, Chancellor Ringeisen and his wife, Carolyn, talk about their time at UIS

By Shannon O’Brien

Ringeisen speaking at Commencement

Letting go of your children can be hard. You do your best to help them grow, to give them what they need to succeed, and then it’s time to step aside and see how they do on their own. Or, in this case, how they do under someone else’s care.

“This place is like our child. I mean it is really hard to think of not being here to care for it,” Chancellor Richard Ringeisen said about the University of Illinois Springfield.

In March, Ringeisen announced his intention to retire from the post of chancellor, effective October 31, 2010. His retirement caps a nearly ten-year tenure in which the University saw tremendous growth and faced some of its biggest economic challenges with state budget deficits that forced the University to take money-saving steps, such as freezing positions, layoffs, and furlough days for employees.

However, the struggle with budget issues was not a factor in his decision to retire. “I’ve been here nine years, and we’ve had nine bad budgets,” he said during a press conference announcing his retirement. “This is almost biblical; the bad budget shall always be with us.” Instead, he and his wife Carolyn simply felt it was time to spend more time with their children and grandchildren. “We literally see them [the grandchildren] growing up too quickly. We want to be more a part of their lives, and our children want us to be there, too,” he said during his press conference.

When Ringeisen accepted the position of chancellor in 2001, the University had not yet welcomed its first class of freshmen. It would do so later that year, when just over 100 Capitol Scholars would move into the newly built Lincoln Residence Hall and begin classes at UIS. Since then the UIS has bloomed with additional residence halls, more undergraduate and graduate students, and more faculty.

“If you have not had a presidency or chancellorship before, you have to understand that there is no difference between life and job... 24/7 doesn’t really quite describe it,”

He also accepted the position knowing he would have a partner in his new endeavors at UIS: his wife, Carolyn. The two met as freshmen at Manchester College in Indiana; they were in the same English class. “I think our first date was a basketball game,” Carolyn said. “She actually was dating a friend of mine,” Chancellor Ringeisen said, and then laughed and added, “…but it’s not like that.” Ringeisen’s friend had reunited with his ex-girlfriend, someone he’d dated for a long time, clearing the way for Carolyn and Chancellor Ringeisen to begin their relationship.

The two have been married now for 44 years, and Chancellor Ringeisen credits Carolyn with playing an important role in the success of UIS. “She’s a fulltime, unpaid assistant,” he said when discussing his wife’s role in the UIS community. “Although Carolyn had a separate career, we made the conscious decision, when we came here, to make this a two-person job,” he said, referring to his chancellorship at UIS. “If the new chancellor is fortunate enough to be married, she or he, and is in a situation where the spouse can be a partner in the way Carolyn has been, there is just real tremendous advantages in that.”

Carolyn has an appointment with the University and is legally a state employee, but she doesn’t receive any money. She has been a constant presence on campus, at University events, and in the community, and her assistance has been greatly appreciated. Chancellor Ringeisen touts the University’s close relationship with the community as one of the accomplishments he’s happy to have achieved during his time on campus, and he attributes much of that success to Carolyn. “We have incredible community support now, and that needs to continue to grow,” he said. When asked about the qualities the new chancellor might need to be successful, Ringeisen chuckled and said, “If you can find a Carolyn…”

For all that Ringeisen achieved during his tenure at UIS, there were still a few dreams left unrealized. “I always wanted this campus-town idea across 11th street, that’s an unfulfilled wish. We’d had several things we hoped to do and that’s the one we didn’t get done. The recession hurt us there,” he said. “It would be so nice to have a campus-town, maybe with a little coffee shop and a grocery. Things the students and staff could walk to, just across 11th street. But we need a partnership with a developer and right now people are very careful about how they’re spending their money.”

"I think every time we're with students is special," Chancellor Ringeisen said during a recent interview.

 

“But a lot of the things we’d hoped to do, we’ve done,” he said. Included on this list of achievements are such things as successfully transitioning to a four-year university with increasing freshmen enrollment, hiring new and talented faculty members, building the fine arts, increasing the number of the school’s athletic teams and joining the NCAA Division II, and growing stronger relationships with the community.

Becoming a member of COPLAC, the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, was another success that happened under Ringeisen’s tenure, and an achievement that Carolyn named as one of her proudest. According to its website, COPLAC “advances the aims of its member institutions and drives awareness of the value of high-quality, public liberal arts education in a student-centered, residential environment.” The council currently consists of 26 colleges and universities representing 24 states and one Canadian province. UIS is the only Illinois university represented in COPLAC.

Even with his departure on the horizon, Ringeisen is confident that UIS will continue to make great strides in his absence. “There’s no place but up,” he said. “The trajectory we’ve been on for the last few years is phenomenal.” He said he sees plenty more recognition happening for UIS in the future. “It can’t stop now, the momentum is too strong,” he said. “Carolyn and I both hope that the change in leadership doesn’t slow the momentum.”

There are some things he thinks the future chancellor should know. “If you have not had a presidency or chancellorship before, you have to understand that there is no difference between life and job…24/7 doesn’t really quite describe it,” he said “In terms of UIS, I think the new person needs to realize the fragility…we’re still learning what we are and we’ve made great strides in that, but it’s still fragile.” Ringeisen said being part of a university system that includes a big, land grant, flagship institution as a member can make it easy “to get swallowed up if you don’t continue to strive toward excellence in your niche, and so it’s important to continue advocacy at the highest levels of the state for such an institution. Now that we are the public liberal arts university in Illinois, we need to continue to have people notice.”

Chancellor Ringeisen believes alumni play an important role in advocating on behalf of the University. “One of the great successes is how strongly our UIS Alumni Association has evolved,” he said. “I think our alumni need to advocate for the institution wherever and whenever they can, whether it’s with the state or private fundraising.” He also noted that UIS is one of the only universities he’s aware of that receives more private funding from non-alumni than alumni, and encouraged alumni to consider providing support to their alma mater however they can. “A lot of small gifts are just as good as a few big ones,” he said. “I would hope that alumni would give us their hearts and time as well as, perhaps, some of their pocketbook.”

The Ringeisens

Though Ringeisen has high hopes for the future of UIS, he is wary of the changes he sees happening in publicly funded education. “I really worry for it,” he said. “All my career, up to the last decade or so, there’s this balance between the public good and the private good of a college education. That is to say, it’s good for a state, or a region, or a country to have a lot of college graduates. Therefore, we’re willing to invest our state money to see that that’s true. That’s public good,” he said. “What’s happening is that public support for higher education is dropping, so tuition has gone up, so we’re focused completely on the individual [private] good. And that’s bad for the country. So I really worry for public education.”

“When Carolyn and I came [to UIS], 60 percent of our main operating budget came from the state and 40 percent tuition. Now it’s 51 percent tuition and 49 percent state. So that’s an example of what I’m talking about,” he said. “There is no public university without that public support.” He described public higher education as a “peculiarly American thing,” and he said he sometimes fears for its future. “I really do, in my bad days, sense we could be losing it. And I hope that’s not true,” he said.

While it’ll be difficult to say goodbye to friends they’ve made in Springfield, the Ringeisens are happy to be returning to Clemson, South Carolina, the place where they raised their family. They’ll be closer to their children, too. “We’ve missed a lot of ballgames, swim meets, and dance recitals,” Carolyn said. “We’ll get to go to them now.” Chancellor Ringeisen said he loves Springfield and if they were going to have two homes, one would be in this city. “But we really don’t care much for ice, snow, sleet, and stuff, so going to a place where winter is the shortest of the four seasons is much more attractive than being in a place where it’s a third to a half.”

When asked about some of his favorite memories from the University, Chancellor Ringeisen recalled a scene from a few years ago, when the young UIS basketball team won their conference tournament. That tournament game took place at UIS. “We were playing McKendree, who’s a powerhouse, always,” he said. The small gym was packed with faculty, staff, students, and friends of UIS. “And we beat them. And this was a place…I’m not sure you’d ever heard ‘UIS’ chanted,” he laughed. But they chanted it that night. Everyone in the audience stuck around to watch the award ceremony, chanting “UIS.”

"It was much more than an athletic event, as I felt it,” he said. “It was the sense that everyone there knew this was "different" and it was a portent of the big strides ahead—US News rankings, joining COPLAC, etc. That is, we knew that night that we could do many great things. And that was a wonderful feeling."