Dr. Jack Daniels III Steps Down as Madison College President: The Last Hurrah
Dr. Jack Daniels III took over the reins of Madison College in 2013 and would lead the effort to transform the college to meet the needs of all of the students who lived in its service territory.
by Jonathan Gramling
Back in 2013, Madison College picked the right man for the right time when Dr. Jack Daniels III was selected as Madison College’s president. In LATE 2023, Daniels announced that he would be stepping down as president. But due to a failed hiring process, Daniels agreed to stay on until the end of 2024. When the second process failed to find his successor, Daniels tabbed Dr. Tim Casper to be the interim president and the board approved. Daniels last day on the job is the week of December 16th.
Daniels came to Madison College from a community college in Los Angeles. He cites two major reasons why he chose Madison.
“The decision to come here was made number one was that I knew this institution from afar,” Daniels said. “I knew the level of excellence that the institution had and it focused on students. So that was one reason. The second reason was it was in the Midwest. It was an opportunity to come close to where I’m from, Chicago. But also my wife is from Mt. Vernon, Illinois. I think by and large the real reason it was about what did the institution have to offer. And how could I move the institution to the next level. I didn’t come here to be a caretaker. And hopefully I would use my skills and talents to move the institution to the next level.”
When Daniels arrived in Madison, he didn’t make any sweeping announcements on what he was going to do. Daniels is a friendly, but reserved individual. And so he went out into the community and college and listened.
“Part of the role of president is to be engaging in the role and I welcomed that because my background basically is community colleges,” Daniels said. “And it’s about what are the needs of the community. Well in order to know what the needs of the community are, you have to interact with the community. You have to listen to them. And then you make actions based on what you have found out. If you are not out there engaging folks, you won’t know and you’ll actually be operating in a vacuum. I came here in 2013 and it was a different world than in August 2024.”
The campus alignment in 2024 is much different than it was in 2013.
“When I came here, you still had the four regional campuses, which included DEC, Downtown Educational Center,” Daniels said. “We had Commercial. And we were in other sites. In fact, we are still in Mineral Point and Gammon Rd. We made a considerable effort to get out of our leases. After we left Mineral Point, we went and had a campus that was off of Old Sauk Road. And we closed after our lease was over.”
(Left): Dr. Jack Daniels III, president of Madison College, greets attendees at a “Retirement Party” for him at Garver Feed Mill on December 6, 2024. (Right): Dr. Jack Daniels III officially announces the Madison College plan to convert the Badger Road fire house, which is adjacent to Goodman South Campus, into a day care center on December 10, 2024. Photo Credits: Madison College
Eventually DEC was sold and South Madison would get its long-hoped-for Madison College campus.
“There was a time when we had to make a decision to open another campus at Badger and Park Street, the Goodman South Campus,” Daniels recalled. I go back to my community college background. We are catalytic in many ways. And what was the catalytic type of impact that we wanted to have. And serving that community, helping the community revitalize its economic development was something the college could do.”
For Daniels, building the Goodman South Campus was about serving the students and their families, especially those from the Beltline corridor. The fact that the campus served as a catalyst for development in the area was icing on the cake.
“An anchor, I’ll accept that,” Daniels said about the building’s impact. “I wasn’t thinking of it as an anchor when we were going out there. I was thinking about build and serve the community. You look at Park Street, a lot of folks go up and down that corridor. But there is much more than that corridor. And 2015-2016, they would be pleased to be a part of a change that would upgrade that sector from an economic standpoint. And since that point in time, I was seeing everything that was happening. You have The Hub. Centro has its new home. Access is expanding. The Literacy Network moved into its home. You have the Black Cultural Center that has started building out. And not far off of that, you have One City. And in the other direction, you have the Boys & Girls Club. So lots of good activity focuses on the community, not just community development, but economic development and social development.”
During Daniels’ tenure, the number of students of color attending Madison College has gone up significantly.
“The level of students of color coming in when I got here was somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-14 percent,” Daniels said. “It’s 37 percent now. When we look at our faculty and staff, I think that increase is 12-13 percent per year. What we always try to do is have faculty and staff reflect the student body that we serve. Research shows how that impacts students. When you start seeing folks who look like you that you can actually engage. You have a dual impact because seeing them engaging , you have a mentoring type situation for many of those students. When they see someone who looks like them, they think that maybe they can get there. So we continue to push that. The retention of Black , Latine, Hmong and Indigenous faculty and staff is keeping us ready to serve the community.”
During Daniels’ tenure, Madison College focused on how it interfaced with Dane County’s communities of color with staff responsible for conducting outreach in specific communities and the sponsoring of many activities and events for communities of color at its campuses.
“We’ve talked a lot in the last couple of years about belonging,” Daniels said. “But belonging is much more than a word. How do people feel when they come here? How do the students feel? How should we be making them feel? It’s the engagement that people feel. And that’s not just students. It’s also employees. It’s trying to create that type of atmosphere where ‘I want to be here. I have to be here.’ Or as someone said, ‘I want to be a part of this.’ And that’s key to having a vibrant institution.”
Daniels has also led the effort to strengthen ties with four-year colleges and universities so that students can enter that next level of their collegiate career seamlessly and with as little expense as possible.
“We’ve worked diligently,” Daniels said about the initiative. “Chancellor Blank built a pathway for our former students to be automatically admitted to UW-Madison and Badger Promise. We got a major shift that started with the previous dean of the School of Education where again students could begin as a transfer. We did the same thing at Platteville. We did the same thing at MSOE. We do it in other areas. And we continue to look at that. That is the value of doing the programming transfer. Years ago, we used to do course to course. We want to make sure that when students are graduating from here and they elect to transfer, they are transferring with their AA or AS and they aren’t repeating anything. They are taking some of their introductory courses in the discipline here instead of when they are getting to senior-level institutions, they are in a very good position to move on and progress there. And if we can do anything to assist in terms of finances, we can do that too when we talk about that relationship. We have students who are transferring. How are you going to minimize that bill to them, minimize that cost to them. And that cost is not just tuition and fees. It’s textbooks. How do you work with that? That is stuff that I would want to be done for transferring students. We now have a director of transfer. She’s doing an outstanding job. And she is also working with HBCUs. So there is another option for students to go to. We’re beginning to work with HSIs so that’s another option for students. And we can prepare very well at our level to make sure that they are going to move to the next level. For any student, this is an opportunity to get a quality education and transfer. You also have to understand that when our students transfer, they do better than the four-year students. That’s our history, the history of community colleges.”
Madison College has also efficiently structured the time that promising students in the STEM field have to spend in high school and the first two years of college. It’s two for the price of one.
“We also have the STEM Academy that we operate with MMSD,” Daniels said. “Those students move on as well in STEM fields. And when they leave us, they are leaving with GPAs that are extensive. They’ve taken a minimum of 54-55 credit hours that are transferable. We have a number of students who are in the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Hopefully we are really having those relationships where we can talk about sending more students or expanding the relationship. STEM Academy will save college students two years of tuition. Again, most of them are going to come out with 55 credits and 60 is your junior status. We’ve had several who have graduated with a high school diploma and they are entering as juniors.”
As we talked, there was one last thing that Daniels had on his agenda before he left the college. South Madison has had a dearth of quality day care for years. And the lack of affordable day care can be a huge barrier for students with young children that stops them from attending Madison College. On December 10th, Daniels announced plans to convert the Madison fire station that is adjacent to Goodman South Campus into a day care center.
“It will be built with private funds,” Daniels said. “And we are ready to go and start that. Subsequent to that, we will select the contractor and we will be breaking ground in January. We’re going to gut the fire station and rebuild it and make it what we call appropriate facility. The fire department will go into the Town of Madison facility before they build across the street in a new development. That will replace Centro Hispano and the transfer point as well as the building next to Centro Hispano. The initial project plans were developed. At this point, I don’t know where they are with that.”