Barbara Gannon, vice president of Plymouth’s Sargento Foods, was recently elected as chairperson of the Lakeland College board of trustees. She has been working closely with the current chairperson of 16 years, Sheboygan attorney Robert Melzer, to learn about the ins and outs of being chairperson in order to be prepared for when she takes office in February.

Both individuals were board members before becoming chairperson and were selected for the board based on their work with prolific local companies—Melzer, in 1971, with Reiss Coal, and Gannon, in 2003, with Sargento. The board of trustees is made up of a wide variety of people with different skills; some are financial aficionados, some are marketing gurus and some are human resources experts.

“As a group, we can provide better counsel to the faculty and staff of the college, and that’s really what our job is, to help guide major decisions and strategies of the college along with the administration,” Gannon said.

“We provide oversight and guidance and counsel,” Melzer said. “We don’t, so to speak, run the college. It is the president and his staff that runs the college, but we provide the oversight.”

In their time on the board, Gannon and Melzer have witnessed and contributed to incredible changes to Lakeland College. Gannon explains that it has been a mission of the board to constantly look ahead to determine the present and future needs for the college.

“One of the things that I’ve seen in my shorter tenure is just really tremendous growth at the college and very good strategy toward continued growth of the college,” Gannon said. “We’ve done a lot of work and listened to a lot of the information that the administrative group has

brought forward in terms of, ‘What do we need to do to be successful today?’ and ‘What do we need to do now to be successful tomorrow?'”

Melzer notes the introduction of Lakeland College Japan as an important development. Built during a time when it was popular for colleges to establish Japanese satellite campuses, it is one of the few colleges in Japan certified by the Japanese government and continues to flourish despite the failure of other satellite campuses created around the same time.

“Any number of the schools that started 20 years ago in Japan—they’re gone,” Melzer said. “We’re one of the few survivors.”

As far as the present, the pair is excited about the current projects happening at Lakeland, particularly the development of campuses in other Wisconsin cities such as Madison, Milwaukee and soon Green Bay.

The growing information technology infrastructure of Lakeland is also of interest, which has been really important not only for students to be able to access Wi-Fi, but also because it is being used by the instructors in the classroom. It gives them the ability to have SMART Boards and to use software called Blackboard that they use a lot for the online and BlendEd programs.

Gannon and Melzer also provided some insight as to the process of getting changes on campus initialized. It is the responsibility of the head of facilities and the president of the college to develop projects to be taken care of when finances are available. One recent example is the work being done on the roof of the William A. Krueger building.

“Sometimes it’s a very lengthy process and sometimes it’s a quicker process, but I think one thing I could say for certain is that it always takes into account the audiences or the stakeholders of Lakeland College,” Gannon said. “So, if we were going to do a project that involves capital, meaning building or major-scale renovation, we would take into account what the students think, what the staff thinks, what the faculty thinks and what the administration thinks.”

Additionally, there are enrollment and retention goals that must be considered. Overall, Gannon compares the process to the budgeting of a college student—figuring out how much money you have to work with and how it should be spent according to the importance of various necessities, such as transportation and school supplies.

Chairing the board of trustees involves a lot of planning, discussion and number-crunching, but at the end of the day, it is certainly rewarding. Gannon is excited about one of her duties in particular.

“I think that one of the duties of the chair that is probably a highlight is being able to be present at graduation and congratulate all the students that have completed their course of study,” Gannon said. “I think that will be definitely something to look forward to, that all their hard work has paid off and Lakeland has worked with them to give them a great education.”

Melzer, a Sheboygan local with a lot of pride for his hometown, is passionate about Lakeland and what it provides for Sheboygan, saying, “I’ve been involved over all these years because I’m in love with Lakeland College. I often tell people, ‘Thanks for your love for Lakeland College,’ and I’ve seen all kinds of progress and changes and whatnot and I like what has happened over these past number of years.”