| After seeing Jose J. Madera on stage at Dane Dances as one of the lead singers of MadiSalsa performing with ease, it might surprise people that Madera was a studious -- almost nerdy -- child when he was growing up in Santa Isabel on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Madera, assistant dean of UW-Madison's Academic Advancement Program, grew up in Puerto Rico with a love of the sciences and a commitment to do something about the airborne environmental hazards that floated over his city when they dusted the nearby crops with pesticides. While Madera came to UW-Madison to get his Ph.D. -- he received a master's in water resource management -- personal and financial responsibilities forced him to put his studies on hold. "Eventually, the science part faded into the background," Madera said during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "Sometime, you have to make the decision. It wasn't an easy decision to make after all of the professional investment and time and the investment my former advisor also made in me. There were 50 other circumstances that made the decision easier. But eventually that's how it ended up. I still have some of the chapters of my thesis with me. Right now I am ABD, all but dissertation. It could still happen, but it's going to take some major Godly intervention." During his years at the University of Puerto Rico - Cayey and even during his day pursuing a master's at UW-Madison, Madera was involved in student organizations and student life. "Once in Madison, I became a member of the Puerto Rican student union and eventually I became active within the Minority Coalition, which is the precursor of the Multicultural Student Coalition," Madera said. "I participated in social justice related events as well as educational and cultural events." Little did he realize that his activism was actually preparing him for his future role at the university. As he faded away from his science studies, Madera moved closer to the field of student services. In 1995, he began a three-year stint as the coordinator of the Ronald E. McNair Scholarship Program. Through this program, which prepared juniors and seniors for the rigors of graduate school, Madera saw the tremendous need that many students had for supportive services. "I learned that they were in great need of mentoring, role modeling and opportunities for them to advance not only educationally but also as individuals," Madera said. "That's when I started venturing into the area of student academic affairs. That's when I took a more active, participatory approach in programming for students, research opportunities and in supporting student organizations in any way I could. That also gave me the opportunity to understand the academic policies and foundation of this university. But the need was still there. Students needed advice, needed a mentor, and needed the role modeling. I wanted to be able to help students right there on the spot and not tell them 'Well, just be strong and come back in five years and you'll be a new person.' That wasn't the kind of advice that I wanted to give them. So I armed myself with the tools that I needed and the connections that I needed so I could better and more effectively assist students, particularly freshman and sophomore students." When Madera left the McNair Scholarship Program in 1998, he returned to the science lab for another stab at his doctorate degree before returning to the student services field as an advising dean for the College of Letters & Science. He then went on to become the director of the Diversity Education Program and assistant dean on the general dean's staff before assuming his current position as assistant dean in the Academic Advancement Program. While Madera had originally planned to be in Madison for two years and then leave, it has proven to be such a source of personal, musical and professional development that Madera has found it almost impossible to leave. Madera performs regularly with MadiSalsa, Grupo Candela and Trova Viva. He has also been a long-time member of the Call for Peace Drum and Dance Company. On the professional front, in addition to advancing within the student affairs field, Madera has laso been a member of several university committees including the WAA's Diversity and Inclusivity Council. But what has probably kept Madera in Madison beyond the end of his personal two-year plan has been the extent to which he has been able to broaden his own personal horizons. "I totally love academia," Madera exclaimed. "Although I'm not personally pursuing -- or at least I have placed on hold -- the completion of my doctoral studies, being in the middle of the university is better basically. It gives me the opportunity to continue the learning process. And at the same time, I'm contributing to the welfare of all students. For the most part, I've been able to meet people from all over the world. That's very enriching and invigorating." If he had remained in his native Puerto Rico, Madera feels that his horizons would have been much narrower. "We learned a lot about ourselves as Puerto Ricans and our history and a little bit about U.S. history," Madera said. "But basically, we were only given a year to learn about the rest of the world. That was the curriculum back home. So you started learning about the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians and then the Renaissance. And then all of a sudden, we were where we are right now." And if he had remained, his professional life would be much more narrowly focused as well. "If I had decided to go back home and maybe just become a chemist doing quality control for the rest of my life, I don't know what I would have done," Madera observed. "Most of my colleagues who were with me at UPR-Cayey worked for pharmaceutical companies. I wanted to do something else." That something else turned out to be exploring the world within and beyond academia. "In Puerto Rico, I didn't have the opportunity to learn much about the world," Madera reiterated. "Here I've been able to learn more about real history, from Africa, from Southeast Asia, and from Latin America, basically the whole world. It's been a very interesting process because I have shifted my attention from one geographical region to others. Many years ago, I was very interested in the Middle East. I visited Egypt and Yemen. Nowadays, my focus has basically been Southeast Asia. I've been able to visit Japan, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. It has been extremely enriching." Madera has even found interesting what many native Wisconsinites might find mundane about their state. "I wanted to learn where I was in Wisconsin, what the state was about, about the potato and cranberry production," Madera said. "I wanted to learn about the ginseng production in Wisconsin, which is the largest in the world. It's a hot commodity that is highly valuable. Where do cows come from? Was it the cheese or the cow that came first? I was also able to learn the culture of the Midwest, which was personally interesting to me. It still is." All in all, Madera feels he made the right choice when he decided to attend and stay at the UW-Madison for he has become a man of the world right in our own backyard. "The university has given me that opportunity," Madera said. "I'm glad things turned out the way they did. I'm still growing. I'm still waiting for those two years to expire. I keep stalling my plan. 18 years later and here I still am." And Madera -- and Madison -- is the better for it. |
| Immigrant Success Stories JJ Madera: Two years and counting ... By Jonathan Gramling Part 3 of 3 |
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| Jose J. Madera (right) has remained in Madison, in part, because of the opportunity it has given him to learn about and see the world. |