On February 21, former Downtown Rotary member, Alison Prange, shared with us the role the 2024 Host Committee plays in working with the National Republican Committee to prepare Milwaukee and Wisconsin for the invasion of 50,000 additional visitors including 5,000 delegates attending the National Republican Convention July 15th to the 18th. She is the COO of the Host Committee, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization.
Alison emphasized the role of her organization is to help the RNC have a smooth convention by facilitating 8,000 vendors in their effort to serve the convention and its attendees who will spend $200M as well as promote Milwaukee and Wisconsin to 24 million television viewers.
Tania Ibarra, co-founder of Step Up: Equity Matters) and Jeannine Bindl (Step Up: Equity Matters advisor, facilitator and project manager) described their organization’s journey as a start-up in Madison which began as a volunteer organization in 2014. By 2019, the organization added its first full time employee. The growth of the organization began to address the big DEI problems in our local organizations and to help them build the confidence and skills to keep moving forward for diversity, equity and inclusion improvements.
The Step Up: Equity Matters change management process includes assessment, strategy development, and implementation in that order – while recognizing that the process is not strictly linear. It is critical that the business’ leadership be a sponsor of the process and committed to the plan. The plan takes 3 – 5 years to fully create positive and sustainable change. The speakers indicated that, to be successful, business leaders must see the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion as a business problem to be solved at all levels of the organization. Their ‘Recognize – Own – Disrupt’ approach was described as ‘never easy’ and ‘never linear’. Continuous learning, and open feedback from all levels within the organization will help lead to inclusive growth.
Emotional intelligence is key in this process – clients must learn to understand their emotions and biases (while recognizing that the word, bias, is emotionally loaded). The speakers are clearly committed to their mission. They have guided many local businesses and organizations to continuous learning by embedding DEI in leadership, all business functions and employee learning opportunities. They definitely made it clear that DEI is good for business, and we know it is good for Rotary.
UW-Madison’s College of Engineering Dean Ian Robertson explained the growing demand for engineers in Wisconsin and how he plans to recruit and educate more students to meet the demand. UW-Madison ranks 7th best in the nation among public universities for the quality of its undergraduate program and nearly all undergraduates seeking jobs have one before their senior year. However, there are thousands of more jobs than graduates at this time and the demand is growing because of retirements in the field. Dean Robertson highlighted how “Badger Engineers” are involved in research that will improve the economy and the quality of life in Wisconsin – from better environmental sustainability to health care technology – to happier cows! The one thing holding back the College of Engineering when it comes to educating more students and even more research breakthroughs according to Dean Robertson is its aging infrastructure and lack of space. He shared plans for a new $355-million dollar state-of-the-art engineering building that he believes will attract more students, faculty, and employers to UW-Madison.
Author Doug Moe pictured here with Club President Teresa Holmes
On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, Doug Moe, local author extraordinaire, regaled Rotarians with stories from his new book on Kit Saunders-Nordeen and her advocacy of equality in women’s sports. Title IX, which forbid discrimination on the basis of sex for any activity receiving federal funds, started a sea change in women’s sports, but was initially met with resistance and legal challenges. Two years after enactment of Title IX, when Kit was named UW-Madison’s first director of women’s athletics, the sports editor of the Wisconsin State Journal advised her “don’t be a bitch,” and said he would never put news of women’s sports on his sports page. As late as the 1950’s, women were prohibited from running distance races for fear their uteruses might fall out. Even today, local ski jump Olympian Anna Hoffman said despite concerns over women jumping from highest ski jumps, she had gone off the highest jump many times and bragged that she was “still intact.” Doug advised that while we should celebrate this momentous anniversary, there was still much to be done to ensure that our daughters have the same athletic opportunities as our sons.
Nelson Cummings pictured here with Renee Moe (left) and Club President Teresa Holmes (right)
Our club’s Joseph G. Werner Meritorious Service Award is granted in recognition of outstanding club service in the Rotary tradition of “Service Above Self.” Joseph G. Werner was a committed Rotarian. He chaired many significant committees, both before and after serving as club president in 1953-54. He served as district governor and became the second member of this club to serve as director of Rotary International. He later served Rotary International in many other positions. Following his death, in 1974, the club established the Joseph G. Werner Meritorious Service Award as the club’s highest recognition for club service. The Werner honor is not an annual event, but is given under special circumstances when warranted.
Today we are going to recognize Nelson Cummings, a valued member that we all adore, with this prestigious award. We are pleased that his four sons and other family members are in the audience today as we recognize Nelson.
Nelson was born in Springfield, Illinois on August 18, 1934. He received an A.B. Degree from Texas College and holds a Master’s Degree from St. Francis College.
He came to Madison in 1968 to become the first Director of the Madison Urban League. He later became a counselor at Beloit School System and worked for Madison Public Schools and Wisconsin Education Association.
Within the community, Nelson has served on the boards of Catholic Charities, Dane County Mental Health Center, Madison Hospital Foundation and Four Lakes Council of the Boy Scouts. He also was a member of the Madison Redevelopment Authority for 10 years.
In 1969, Nelson was the first African American to join our Rotary Club. He maintained 100% attendance starting in 1973 until the pandemic caused us to stop holding in-person meetings last year. In fact, Nelson holds the third longest record of 100% attendance in our club, and he has enjoyed seeing 52 club presidents up here at our podium.
He was on our club’s bowling team and led the Civic Bowling League for 40 years. He bowled every year until he retired. Nelson says that even though it was sometimes lonely because others in the league did not look like him, he was accepted and enjoyed the company of so many Rotarians. He says “I love Rotary! You meet so many fine people you would not otherwise meet. I come to meetings because I enjoy it. It has broadened my opportunities, and it is educational.” He takes Rotary’s Four-Way Test to heart, and he is especially proud of the scholarship program and the many students we are able to assist each year in obtaining a college education. Nelson says the greatest Rotary event he recalls is when women were allowed to join in 1987. Nelson has been a long-time volunteer of our annual Rotary Ethics Symposium, and he loves greeting the students and helping them feel welcome at our event. Nelson has also served on our Club Board of Directors.
Nelson is a pillar of our Rotary Club. He is always a friendly face in our audience, and he makes everyone he meets feel welcomed. We enjoy his company, and the recognition we are providing to him today is so well deserved.
It gives me great pleasure to recognize Nelson Cummings as our 30th recipient of the Rotary Club of Madison Joseph G Werner Meritorious Service Award. Congratulations, Nelson!
The impetus for Eleanor Burgess’s play “The Niceties” was a 2015 incident at Yale, Eleanor’s Alma mater, that involved a disagreement between faculty, administrators and students about whether Yale should be setting guidelines about which Halloween costumes are appropriate. Those in favor of guidance were trying to ward off controversies over students seen in black face, or stereotypical Native American costumes. Those opposed believed one of the purposes of college is for kids to learn to self regulate and make their own decisions.
Friends lost the ability to talk to each other as the controversy continued. While this is common today, it was unique in 2015. People felt the need to pick a side: the university doesn’t have the responsibility to coddle whining snowflakes vs. there should be consequences of making students of color feel uncomfortable.
After two months of obsessively reading op/eds about the incident in her pajamas, Eleanor realized this incident should become a play.
Eleanor said she naively thought the play would be out of date by the time it was produced. But in today’s era of Trump, and the killing of George Floyd, we are still having these conversations. The difference is, in the play, the professor and student have faith and admiration for each other and believe they can change each other’s minds if they just make the right arguments. Today, we would back out of those conversations much faster and realize it’s hopeless.
Eleanor hopes we can learn to talk together again – to thread the needle and realize that two things can both be true at the same time. In the play, the professor says, “no matter how much we disagree, we’re still stuck in a country together.” But today, we don’t even share the same reality or set of facts. Eleanor believes we can’t live this way forever. Restoring our capacity to have conversations with people we disagree with is not just a nicety, it is a fundamental necessity.
Our thanks to Eleanor Burgess for speaking this week and to club member Julie Swenson who interviewed her. We also thank Janet Piraino for preparing this review article. If you missed our meeting, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/SkGEtyy_sCE.
Rotary Club of Madison, Wisconsin 