Angie Seitler, the college’s associate dean for strategy, operations and finance, began her CALS career 25 years ago – as a program assistant in the Research Division. She first joined the college’s leadership team in 2013, assuming the role of assistant dean for business services, taking care of all financial aspects. Due to various retirements and departures between 2017 and 2023, she has assumed leadership for additional administrative functions over the years, including IT, human resources, and facilities and safety.

Seitler says she “grew to love CALS very quickly,” and that explains why she chose to stick around and grow her career within the college.

In this Q&A, Seitler describes some of the challenges and opportunities she sees for CALS, and explains the what and why of some of the changes that have been implemented over the past two years.

Your responsibilities have increased over the years. To kick things off, can you explain how your leadership portfolio expanded?
My position has adjusted over time to look a lot more like campus’ Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration. There’s so much intertwining of activities in the four areas I oversee – finance, HR, facilities and IT so the adjustments to my position are by design to support the way these areas naturally interact.

Along with the directors of these four areas, we are always looking for opportunities and efficiencies. For me it’s really important to be engaged with the four administrative areas, so I can see a broad view, and then be more strategic in how the college approaches things.

Over the past couple of years, we have done some major restructuring in our IT and HR offices to make sure we have continuity and consistency across all of our departments and centers.

Can you describe how the IT and HR offices were restructured and why?
We decided to reorganize data security and compliance, enterprise IT services, user support and administrative IT resources into a centralized model – at the college level. By combining all the staff time and expertise across CALS, we have been able to strengthen security, standardize practices, and provide more comprehensive services to all employees.

Our IT staff report to the CALS IT director, but many of them spend a portion of their time in our departments and centers. This is a cooperative model, where every CALS employee receives the same service. The goal for this reorganization was to make sure we’re supporting all our units equally.

Another benefit is that all our CALS IT staff are part of one big team, and this provides each person with more opportunities for training, professional development, and career advancement. And when there are extended leaves or position vacancies, now there’s plenty of back-up coverage. This minimizes interruptions in IT support across the college.

How about for the human resources office?
The changes to HR were made to facilitate a successful transition into Workday – and also to ensure that our HR services are delivered in a consistent, efficient and effective way across the entire college.

All HR managers and HR generalists are now centralized in the CALS HR office. They are responsible for taking care of HR functions for all of our college’s faculty and staff, including recruitment, compensation, performance management, payroll and benefits, and more.

I should note that some HR-related administrative work continues to be done by departmental staff – specifically administrative managers and administrative specialists – including grad and postdoc appointments, student hourly appointments and visas.

Working as a large team, our centralized CALS HR staff now enjoy efficiencies and benefits along the same lines as our IT staff, such as training, career advancement and back-up coverage, plus access to high-level HR expertise.

Describe an experience that helped prepare you for your leadership roles.
Over the years, I’ve benefited from process improvement opportunities and administrative re-structuring conversations. In additional to my educational background, I’ve also done a lot of professional development, including Lean Six Sigma and the Harvard Graduate School program “Aligning Strategic Priorities for Financial Resources in Higher Education” For folks in positions like mine, there are limited formal training options. It’s primarily peer-to-peer training and seeking out others that have been in these types of roles and asking for support. I’ve had some colleagues really take me under their wing and help mentor me to get to where I’m at today. I couldn’t have done it without them.

What are the biggest opportunities you see for UW-Madison in your area? What are you doing to take advantage of them?
Some of our big opportunities arise from our challenges. Things are constantly evolving, and we must recognize the continual change and adapt to it.

Like prepping for Workday, for instance – that has been a challenge. But it also opens exciting opportunities for us to do things better, get better information and data, and have more consistency across CALS and the university. And as central campus makes other adjustments – like new budget approaches and administrative restructuring – we will continue to respond with adjustments of our own that put CALS in the best position to prosper.

What was the most satisfying thing you have been able to accomplish in your position? 
I’ll mention a recent one. We’ve created service centers for a few of our units and for those that have lost an administrator due to a retirement.  This ensures our unit’s administrative staff aren’t “one deep” and better aligns our use of precious resources. This approach can protect these staff from the pressure of trying to do “everything” for their unit, and allows for back-up support when they are out of the office. 

For me, this is about wellness. We want people to have a good work-life balance, as well as a sense of community – to be connected to other folks who do the kind of work they do. We are really trying to relieve some of these pressures, make sure people feel supported and have a partner or backup support.

In our restructuring of IT and HR, it’s the same thing. We are trying to alleviate the administrative burden for departments and centers. This way, unit administrative staff can focus on higher-level strategic activities that directly impact their units.

What is something about your unit that you wish more people knew?
All of the college’s administrative units are here to serve, partner, and help departments and centers get the work done. We are part of their team. We’re all in this together. We are all CALS.