Q&A: Kent Weigel shares reflections from his time as department chair

Kent Weigel spent 14 years serving in a department chair role within CALS before becoming the university’s Vice Provost for Faculty & Staff Affairs earlier this year. He started in 2010 as chair of the Department of Dairy Science. When the department’s merger with animal sciences became imminent, he became interim chair of that department too, before transitioning into chair of the merged Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, a role he served in from 2020 through 2024.
Throughout, Weigel maintained an active research and outreach program focusing on applying the tools of data science to dairy cattle selection and management. Recent efforts include multiple multi-state, interdisciplinary projects to select animals for improved utilization of consumed feed energy, improved enteric methane emissions, and resilience to management and environmental stressors.
In this Q&A, Weigel shares his experiences and thoughts about his time as department chair. This is the first in an ongoing series designed to shed light on some of the opportunities, challenges and satisfactions of serving in this leadership role.
Describe an experience that helped prepare you for being department chair.
I participated in the LEAD21 (Leadership Training for the 21st Century) Program very early in my term as department chair, and it was extremely helpful in terms of understanding my strengths, weaknesses and leadership style, and how these traits might impact my interactions with our faculty and staff.
What surprised you the most after you became chair?
One thing I appreciated most about my role as chair was the opportunity to see the full spectrum of talents and contributions of our faculty and staff. The chair position is unique in that way – others might see what a colleague is doing in a specific class, or they may collaborate on a particular research project, but the chair gets to see it all. Everyone contributes something really important, but each does it in their own way, and seeing these myriad contributions was the most satisfying part of the job.
What are the biggest opportunities you see for UW-Madison in your area?
Speaking about the Animal and Dairy Sciences Department… I think there are endless partnership and collaboration opportunities associated with being the top-ranked university in the nation (e.g., by annual research expenditures) that has an animal sciences program. The quality of the schools, colleges, departments, centers, institutes, and the faculty, staff, and students that inhabit them is literally second to none among our peer animal sciences departments.
What did you do to take advantage of these opportunities?
By myself, I did very little. But in partnership with our faculty, staff and stakeholders we did many very cool things. Creation of the Dairy Innovation Hub brought us much closer to others working on topics related to dairy farming, beyond dairy cow biology, including those studying environmental challenges, food and nutrition opportunities, and socioeconomic issues. We also strengthened our partnership with the School of Medicine and Public Health in the use of pigs as biomedical models. And we built new internal and external collaborations through the Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery program.
What are the biggest challenges facing UW-Madison in your area?
Speaking from both my old and new roles, I think the polarization that has accrued in our society in recent years has created tremendous challenges, particularly the widening gap between rural and urban/suburban populations. The Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences serves stakeholders that range from dairy farmers in Kewaunee County to sheep breeders in Vernon County to pet owners in Milwaukee County, just as UW-Madison aims to serve all citizens of the state through the Wisconsin Idea. No one benefits when our constituents are unable to show compassion and appreciation for each other.
What was the most satisfying thing you were able to accomplish as chair?
I’ll cite two things, among many possible examples. One was increasing the gender diversity in our department, which serves a student population that is now overwhelmingly female. When I became a department chair, the Departments of Animal Sciences and Dairy Science had one female faculty member in total, between the two. I think when I left that number was twelve, and the fact that the number is too big to be easily memorized indicates significant progress. Another was our recent foray into companion animal biology, which led to the hiring of two new tenure-track faculty last year. I’m very pleased that our faculty and staff felt that serving undergraduate students with companion animal interests was important enough to invest in tenure-track faculty positions – a decision that many of our peer institutions didn’t have the courage to make.
How do you think your time serving as chair is impacting the next stage of your career?
My time as department chair, about 14 years, provided exposure to all aspects of the functioning of a major land-grant research university. The chair job is a bottleneck that brings a lot of demands and challenges, but it is a window into many things beyond our research, teaching, and outreach programs, such as facilities construction and maintenance, personnel management, and donor relations, to name a few.
Can you briefly describe your new position as vice provost for faculty and staff affairs?
Broadly speaking, this office is responsible for the recruitment, retention, and well-being of UW-Madison’s 20,000+ faculty and staff. Countless campus partners are involved, including all the schools and colleges, as well as numerous campus administrative units, such as the Office of Human Resources, Office of Compliance, and Secretary of the Faculty. We are directly responsible for some programs, like onboarding workshops for new department chairs, dual career couple hiring programs, and faculty awards competitions, and we partner in many others, such as new faculty tenure workshops, faculty misconduct investigations, and strategic hiring initiatives.
What is something about the ADS department that you wish more people knew?
I would say that, despite our efforts, many of our students and stakeholders don’t understand the extent to which our faculty, staff and graduate students are working on projects that extend far beyond producing more milk and meat. We have folks who are working on projects that have tremendous possibilities to improve human health, others who are doing work that is essential to environmental sustainability, and still others are studying topics with important social components. I think most people think about “animal science” far too narrowly, and this is something we’ve tried to address up front with students in our first-year seminar course.