A wizard, ‘Mean Girls’, or teamwork?
In late December Will Lipske, associate registrar for academic services, was given a distinct recognition by the College of Letters and Science chairs, directors, and administrators as a show of appreciation for his tireless work and commitment to partners and support of the L&S departments.
During the recognition Will was referred to as “the problem solver extraordinaire” and “UW–Madison’s chief wizard” by Dean Wilcots.
John Zumbrunnen commented, “I feel incredibly fortunate to work with Will. He is of course a wizard with course and room scheduling, but in that work he draws on skills in analysis, creative problem solving, and collegiality that make him an incredibly valuable contributor to all sorts of mission critical work in the teaching and learning space.”
Will has always contributed to and aided L&S departments, but it has been more notable over the past two years. Will, in conjunction with the academic services team, assisted the dean’s offices through various room scheduling challenges caused by the pandemic, specifically the Chemistry and VanHise buildings.
Will has been in countless meetings and aided in work to accommodate the chemistry flood and unexpected, large-impact challenges with the building. Additionally, Will worked with the departments, deans and Facilities Planning and Management (FP&M) during the VanHise construction issues in Summer 2021 and Fall 2021. He and the academic services team also helped L&S with general assignment classroom scheduling during the Humanities building construction.
Shirin Malekpour, associate dean for teaching and learning administration in L&S, shared, “Will is a creative, people-centered, and enthusiastic problem solver. No problem is too small or too big for him. He solves problems for folks in Bascom, schools and colleges, departments, individual instructors and students. L&S did not lose one minute of instructional time during the floods of 2019 because of Will. He and his team did pure magic this summer with classroom assignments. I have suspicions that he may have trained at Hogwarts! My life during the pandemic was easier and my days were brighter because of him. Any project he is on, I know it will be a success. We at L&S are eternally grateful to him for what he has done.”
Will has even gone above and beyond, helping answer individual instructor questions and responding to inquiries outside his normal scope. This work exemplifies one of the core RO goals to “provide schools and colleges with superior service, to aid in the distributed support of students and staff.”
Will is the face folx in L&S and FP&M see, but he makes it all possible with the tireless work and support of the academic services team. In response to the honor, Will Lipske has this to say, “Receiving this recognition from L&S is a great honor. That said, this is a recognition of efforts completed by dozens of talented and dedicated individuals in RO who moved mountains in response to the pandemic. If I could take a card from Cady Heron in Mean Girls, I would gladly split this recognition into various pieces and share it with the RO team. Since I can’t, I’ll simply say I’m honored and maybe wear pink on Wednesday.”