| LaMarr Billups, special assistant to the UW Chancellor, was minding his own business and doing his job when a job offer came along that he couldn't refuse. Billups was in Washington, D.C. last February as the University of Wisconsin's representative to a national committee working on licensing and sweatshop issues. His counterpart from Georgetown University was leaving Georgetown to take another position. He informed Billups that they were restructuring the position into a new position and asked Billups if he was interested in speaking with a Georgetown senior vice-president about it. Although Billups thought the position was pretty narrowly construed, he still said he was interested in talking about it. "We talked quite a while and he was willing to restructure the position to address the issues that I wanted to deal with," Billups recalled in an interview with The Capital City Hues. "And they did that. They said if I was interested enough to come, then they would rewrite the position to my specifications as long as those specifications included needs that they wanted to address." After five weeks of negotiations and rewrites and interviews, Billups signed an offer letter to become Georgetown's new assistant vice president for business policy. He assumes his duties next month. As assistant vice president, Billups will be working on some of the same issues he had at the UW while taking on some new areas of responsibility. "I'll be responsible for their non-intellectual licensing policy on products and apparel made with the Georgetown name or logo on it," Billups said. "I'll also be responsible for the labor-management systems. They have a just wage policy for their employees. We impose that policy on vendors. Anyone doing business with Georgetown University also has to pay their workers a fair or living wage equal to or greater than the wage that Georgetown sets. I'll be leading negotiations with their unions. I'll also be developing an office of corporate relations. It's a job through which I'll be engaged with the leaders of the university and also the leaders of the Washington, D.C. corporate community." This is Billups' second time around in Washington, D.C., having worked in Washington in the early 1990s as an aide to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold when he was first elected in 1992. And while Billups enjoyed the political backdrop of Washington, being in Washington isn't what attracted him to the Georgetown position. "Even though I'm now going to a private institution, what attracts me to it is their focus on service to community," Billups said. "And that makes it an attractive milieu. I can still have use of a major institution, manipulate their resources strategically and deploy their resources to the benefit of a community that surrounds the place. Even though it is a private institution, I'll still be able to do the same type of thing I do at the UW." Indeed, community service has been what it's about to Billups for his entire career. "I did that purposely because I believe and was raised to do what you can, use the talents and the gifts that you have to uplift everyone else or as many people as you can," Billups emphasized. During the past 10 years, Billups has worked extensively with city government as the major point person for the university in university-city issues. But his involvement has gone above and beyond the job. He has served stints on the Madison Police Fire Commission and the board of the Overture Center in recent years and held other committee positions before that. Probably the biggest impact that Billups has had in Madison is the shaping of the relationship that the University of Wisconsin has with the city of Madison and the neighborhoods that surround the university. While the university could probably act like an 800 pound gorilla in effecting what it wants in its part of the city, the university instead works strategically with its partners, no matter how big or how small, to collaboratively plan the university's moves in the community. "We have a super relationship with the city," Billups said. "Every building we build has to be approved by the Plan Commission. Our event planning for everything from football games to concerts to major conferences -- all that activity that is natural to a university but has an impact on the city -- have been redeveloped and improved and nurtured over the last seven years. So we have very smooth relationships with city government. That takes an effort. It takes relationship building and then the maintenance of that relationship." There is little public rancor over the moves that the university makes. "I would like to say and hope that we -- meaning the University of Wisconsin -- has demonstrated that it is serious about engaging the community, involving the community, being sensitive to community needs, as we go about conducting the business of the university," Billups said. "We engage our neighborhoods. How do you engage community? Part of the university's mission is embedded and framed by this notion of the Wisconsin Idea to use the resources of the university to benefit the community. We do that in a variety of different ways and then the community that you live in, the community that the university finds itself in, has issues that need to be addressed too." In the spirit of the first efforts to implement the Wisconsin Idea, when UW advances in agricultural science were spread throughout the state through the UW-Extension, the UW now finds itself using the Wisconsin Idea to address major urban issues that Madison is and will face. And by using its resources to address the issues that the city is facing, it is also helping to shape the community it will find itself in in the future. "The university now is becoming a community development resource for the city of Madison for everything from urban design guidelines and planning to land use," Billups said. "We're even going to begin an experiment with workforce housing so that people can live closer to work and maybe walk or bike instead of getting in their cars and holding steady with the number of parking spaces and creating a myriad of options for people to get to and from work. If you have to drive, just drive once or don't even use a car. These are the sort of impacts the university can have on its home environment, the place where it lives. We don't need to grow crops in Madison, but we do need to get around. Our contribution to the relief of that congestion is just as important as soil science on Northwest Wisconsin." The city has also used the Wisconsin Idea during Billups' tenure to reach into the community to address social issues. One of the biggest moves was developing a university presence at the Villager Mall in South Madison. "We are part of the non-profit community and community development," Billups said. "We insert resources into strategic areas so we can play a role in the life and development of the community, individuals and families. We've developed an extensive series of partnerships with the k-12 systems and the surrounding systems as well. Opening up the university to populations of people, communities of color, poor people, folks who have typically not been regular users of the university is another big achievement that has changed in the 11 years I've been here." While Billups' service has been of enormous benefit to the university, it has also benefited the African American community and other communities of color as well. It has been a two-way street that has benefited the university and the community as a whole. It is probably that relationship that is Billups most lasting legacy. Next issue: A changing of the guard and political engagement. |
| LaMarr Billups heads to Georgetown Moving on up to the East By Jonathan Gramling Part 1 of 2 |
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