Dr. Jennifer Berne Is the New Madison College President: The Work for Academic Excellence Continues
Dr. Jennifer Berne brings decades of experience with community colleges to the table as Dr. Jack Daniels III’s successor.
by Jonathan Gramling
Dr. Jennifer Berne, Madison College’s new president, as seen and experienced community colleges from the ground floor up.
“I started as a community college faculty member teaching English and ESL,” Berne said. “About a year into doing so, I realized I had no idea of what I was doing. And community college faculty are sometimes hired without any teaching experience. And I was hired without any teaching experience. I went back to school to learn how to work with the students whom I was teaching. And they were mostly adults. While I was studying that, I realized that what I was really interested in was working with teachers who are also adults. So I transitioned to another sub-career, which was teaching future teachers and practicing teachers how to teach reading and writing. I did that at four-year institutions and wiggled around a little bit and ended up back in community college land where I belonged and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve been everything you could be in academics. I’ve been a faculty member and a department chair and a dean and a vice-president of academic affairs and a provost and now I am so honored to be the president of Madison College.”
Berne is succeeding Dr. Jack Daniels III who accomplished much during his 10-year term. Berne won’t be trying to fill Daniels’ shoes as she will be guiding elements of it to fruition.
“I’m very appreciative of the work that Dr. Daniels did and the commitments that are so obvious, physically obvious in the Goodman South Campus, in the erection of the new childcare center, which is going to open in January and also the people whom I meet who had positive and really productive interactions with him and partnered with Madison College, a lot of it by his own doing,” Berne said. “So I feel very grateful for that. I’m also grateful that he said when he was leaving that this was all of the work he did and here is the work that remains. So the work that remains is to make sure that we continue to treat our students with dignity, that all of our outcomes are equitable across sub-populations and that our students complete what they started, which is a degree, a certificate, or an industry-recognized credential. We want to support any of those things. I don’t pretend I could ever fill his shoes. But amazingly, he did a lot of the things that he wanted to do and now they are ready for us to capitalize on them.”
And it is probably elements of what Daniels put in place that attracted Berne in the first place.
“Madison College is well-known in the community college world as a place that is supportive of students and has equity at its forefront and is well-resourced and well-regarded in the community,” Berne said. “Those were all things that were of interest to me. I was also interested in staying, practically, within a drive of Chicago where two of my four children are. I have many roots there and I lived there for a long time. I much prefer to be in the Midwest. And I had already worked in Michigan and Illinois. All of those things contributed. And I actually kind of didn’t know what I was getting into. I applied for those reasons. But when I got here, I realized it was actually much more special than I had known. The commitment of the faculty and staff, the earnestness of the students, the variety of programs, the community support, all of those things make it a really attractive place to work.”
In Berne’s view, Madison College is a primary force that keeps Madison moving forward and on the grow.
“Madison College is the workforce solution in the community,” Berne said. “We educate many, many of the people whom you interact with every day. We educate nurses and fire fighters and welders and people who fix your cars. In addition, we provide the first two years of a four-year degree. If students would like to come in their community and get the first two years of college at about a quarter of the cost of going straight to a four-year college, that is our role. But more than that, we are a community convener and a place where people go to restart their careers, to start their careers, to learn things they didn’t know. The business community comes to us because we help with professional learning for their incumbent workers. And we also help them find workers whom they haven’t found yet. So we’re part of the community in very intimate ways. Without us, we are not as healthy, not as safe and not as productive.”
Madison College is a beacon of hope and opportunity for all members of the Madison community. They literally take anyone and everyone.
“We are proud that we are an open-access institution,” Berne said. “We take students from wherever they are. We don’t ask students to be college-ready. We ask the college to be student-ready. And so whatever it is the students come with, whatever experiences, whatever academic background, we know how to serve them. And we are grateful to have the opportunity. We don’t have the pressure of deciding. We’ve decided to take all of our community members.”
And Madison College plans and works hard so that all students, no matter their status, can afford to come to the college.
“Pell grants for students who are on the lower end of socio-economics are very important to our students. We also have a robust foundation — The Madison College Foundation — that fills in the gaps of federal financial aid and supports students for whatever reason need a little bit more. So we also have some other funding, so we patch together all we can so that every student has the opportunity. It’s an investment in the community and an investment in the future. It doesn’t do us any good to say to a student, ‘Well you can’t afford to come here. Go back in the world and do your best.’ We say, ‘Let’s make it work.’”
Madison College strives to create a welcoming and supportive environment that will nurture and fulfill the student’s desire learn and better themselves.
“We provide small classes,” Berne noted. “We provide wrap-around services, coaching and tutoring and financial literacy. We really wrap ourselves around our students and their intellectual growth. And we are so happy for them to be here for two years and go right into a career or go on to a four-year college.”
And the Supportive Services that Madison College is often a game changer for students, making the difference between success and failure.
“Student Services is big,” Berne said. “Before I came, we did a large remodel of student services so that counseling, mentoring, advising and financial literacy are all part of one entity so that a student can go and get their needs met. Sometimes they see an office and didn’t even realize that was a need. We have career services down there and we can help students with their resumes and planning for their future. We have a closet for students to borrow interview clothing if they need something to wear to an interview. We have a food pantry across the street in our health building for students who have food insecurity or just need a little help that week. We feel very confident that we can serve our students. We ask our students, ‘If you have something that you need, let is know. If you have transportation issues, childcare issues, food insecurity, mental health mental health struggles, please let us know so we can help.’”
Madison College has also taken strides to connect to the Madison area’s communities of color, bringing students into the college long before they enroll at the college.
“We go to them,” Berne emphasized. “We go to the high schools. And we have our navigators enrolling students right in the high schools. We go to as many community events as we possibly can to introduce ourselves to students and their families to make sure that they know that we are available to them. We also are present because there are seven campuses. We have three Dane County campuses and four campuses in other counties. It’s hard to drive very far without seeing a Madison College building. And that’s a really great way to assert the fact that we are here.”
As Madison increasingly becomes an IT hub, Madison College will be training students to fill their employee needs.
“We have an enormous IT program,” Berne said. “We have state-of-the-art technology. We have faculty who are leaders in their field. IT is always changing. So out IT faculty are on the cusp of all innovations. They are spending a lot of time understanding what industry needs, how the new technology functions and how best to teach it. So we look forward to training and educating all future IT professionals. And I think we are positioned to do so.”
And with recent advances in artificial intelligence, Madison College has positioned itself to deal with the advantages and the challenges of IT.
“AI is everywhere,” Berne emphasized. “We think of AI in three different ways. We think of it as a way to help our business processes. We are a business and AI can improve our functionality and in some cases, free up human resources to do other things that AI can’t do. We also know that other businesses are interested in expertise in AI, so we are working in out IT programs to make sure that our students can meet the needs of those employers. And then we also know that AI is contextual and that it seeps into many different disciplines. And so we have our faculty members working on the particular gift and challenges of AI in their particular disciplines.”
While Berne is getting to know the college and ensuring the Daniels’ initiatives come to fruition, she will eventually lead the college in enhancing its vision for the future.
“I have ideas. I have committed and I am just starting to do a tour where I have 100 conversations with faculty, staff, students and community members,” Berne said. “And I am compiling those conversations into a model so that I can see what it is that the internal community and external Madison community needs from the college. I’m then going to take that and combine it with my data, my own experience in many other states and with thought partners all over. And then present a truly unified vision for the future of Madison College. I think it would be premature to do that today. I certainly have commitments. My commitments are to help every student achieve their goal, to work with students where they are and to ask the employers how we can do a better job meeting their needs.”
Dr. Jennifer Berne is poised to take the quality of a Madison College education to the next level.