LEGION OF LEADERS
	BRACING FOR THE BLOWS
	EDITORIAL
	Wisconsin Favorites Batter Up!

Legion of Leaders
Experience, Training Shape Wisconsin Program’s Graduates

Recent headline events have sparked widespread discussion about leaders and leadership. A national study on confidence in leadership, released in October 2005 by the Harvard University Center for Public Leadership, found that Americans are highly critical of the state of leadership. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed believe there is a “leadership crisis” in the United States today.

Survey respondents are also critical of their fellow citizens, with 82 percent agreeing that Americans who don’t keep up on important issues are a big part of today’s leadership problem.

For two decades, Wisconsin has been doing something to address leadership shortcomings. The Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program (WRLP) is a two-year leadership development program of the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension designed to create “statesmanlike leaders.”

Called more effective than a graduate school program by some, WRLP participants—“leadership fellows”—couple leader traits with a cutting-edge curriculum and set of learning experiences that take them across Wisconsin, the United States, and to international venues. In a variety of cultural, social, and economic settings, participants learn through a combination of classroom activities, field experiences, and readings.

Training Regimen

Program participants come from a variety of disciplines, nominated by businesses, organizations, or by themselves. Through a screening and selection process, they must demonstrate leadership ability and potential, breadth of perspective on issues, knowledge of Wisconsin, the ability to work effectively with people, and being committed to fully participate in the program.

Once picked, participants attend 11 seminars conducted during a two-year period. Eight 3-day in-state seminars are held in various locations throughout Wisconsin and deal with topics such as environmental issues, technology, state government, diversity, global economic development, urban issues, tension between individual and community issues, and leadership. The program also includes a one-week national seminar conducted in Washington, D.C., a one-week regional seminar somewhere in the U.S., and a two-week international seminar held in another country.

A cohort of 32 to 35 men and women representing a broad range of professions and interests from all across the state comprise each WRLP two-year group. The seminars began in 1984, and the 11th group will graduate this month.

Boon to Business

Why is this so important for Wisconsin’s cooperatives’ success? WRLP Executive Director JoAnn Stormer says, “Leadership training develops the capacity in individuals to deal with all kinds of situations. The benefits of making the right decision for individuals in senior positions of leadership can be tremendous while the costs of making the wrong decisions can also have substantial impact.”

WRLP looks for people with leadership potential. Stormer says the program has a successful history of providing businesses, organizations, and communities with leaders—leaders who have a broader vision and an understanding of themselves and the world as well as a clearer appreciation of the interdependence of issues that impact it.

Lynn Thompson, finance manager of Eau Claire Energy Cooperative, (WRLP Group 9 alumnus) knows this first-hand. He commented, “The Rural Leadership Program exposed me to community-based issues that I otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to. Equally, it gave me a forum in which to share energy issues with people who had no background in this industry but now could take their new understanding back home to their communities.” Thompson said WRLP helped him become a better manager and leader in his organization, improving his ability to analyze and solve problems, make effective decisions, and understand various points of view.

“I’ve become more valuable to my organization as a result, and our organization is more valuable to the community,” he continued. “I’d recommend it to anyone in our industry.”

Benefits Felt By Many

Stormer commented that WRLP turns out “committed, knowledgeable, and action-oriented citizens to serve as catalysts in promoting positive change in their communities.” She also said the program encourages creative partnerships and initiatives between the public and private sectors. “WRLP graduates are people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work to make Wisconsin a better place,” she said.

Employers who have had personnel complete the WRLP experience recognize increased organizational leadership and problem-solving skills in these individuals.

John Luehrsen, president & CEO of the Eau Claire Energy Cooperative, a longtime supporter of WRLP, stresses the program’s “employer” value. “We may not be a large corporation, but we still need our people prepared to handle complex problems and issues in the communities where we conduct our business,” he said. “Through WRLP our employees are exposed to different points of view, different visions of the world.” He said the training received by participants is valuable because it gets people involved through first-hand experiences—not just training in a lecture hall environment. “It opens the participants to deeper, more meaningful discussions that can lead to better solutions when they’re back on the job for us,” he said.

Although Luehrsen recognizes WRLP training will take an Eau Claire Energy employee away from the office, “They are still asked to make their commitments here to us. I believe that if they are truly leaders, they’ll need to manage significant, multiple, complex issues. Being in WRLP is a way to learn and deepen these skills.”

He said all Eau Claire Energy employees applying are counseled on what a significant learning opportunity WRLP is. “It’s an aggressive training program outside of the norm and outside of our industry that makes it so valuable to us,” said Luehrsen. “It gives our employees exposure to thinking and problems that other industries face. It helps our people to come back to us with a better understanding of issues and better prepared for problem solving.”

Alumni Recognize WRLP Value

“WRLP is extremely well structured and respectful of the needs of an adult learner,” according to Margaret Bau, an alumna of Group X, who works throughout Wisconsin in cooperative development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “I wish grad school would have been as thoughtfully designed and executed.”

Mary Kay Brevig, communications and public relations manager at Eau Claire Energy Co-op, remarked, “WRLP has been an excellent opportunity for me to develop my skills on a long-term basis. That’s something a one-day or one-week seminar cannot do.”

Most graduates indicate important personal and professional outcomes result from their WRLP experience. The positions in business and government that they come to occupy verify those claims. For instance, alumni of the very first group that graduated 20 years ago this month show a broad range of accomplishments since WRLP. Among them is a state senator, a state assemblyman, Wisconsin’s first robotic milking operation farmer, business owners, community activists, development executives, an international nonprofit relief organization director, an energy company executive, and production agriculture leaders that shape state agriculture policy through their local and regional leadership roles.

Wisconsin Electric Cooperatives Involvement

Nine electric cooperatives throughout Wisconsin have been supporters of WRLP over the years, either as sponsors of participants from their area or as employer sponsors.

Marty Hillert, CEO of the Adams–Columbia Electric Cooperative, is very positive about supporting WRLP. “Watching the knowledge growth and enthusiastic community spirit of participants in the Rural Leadership program has convinced me that this program is one of the best in the nation for utilizing previously untapped potential in Wisconsin.”

Keith Wohlfert, communications coordinator at Hillert’s cooperative, will join the WRLP cadre as a new “leadership fellow” this month as a member of Group 12. Keith, already active in his Adams County community as a youth volunteer and local government official, hopes to develop a fresh perspective on a number of issues and work toward solutions to common problems.

On July 15, 2006, the current Group 11 graduates. That same day the first WRLP Group will celebrate its 20th year since their graduation in 1986. The newest Group 12 begins its leadership journey two weeks later on July 25, 2006, with the members’ State Government Seminar in Madison.—Linda Murray, WRLP director of development

For more information about the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program, contact JoAnn Stormer or Linda Murray at 608-263-0817 or check out the website at www.uwex.edu/ces/wrlp.

Bracing for the Blows
Co-ops, Communities Prep for the New Hurricane Season

 

Swatches of the U.S. Gulf Coast are still hurting eight months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed ashore exploding through homes, businesses, power lines, and lives across nearly 180,000 square miles. Some communities just aren’t there anymore, and many cooperative electric utilities are still tallying the cost of these powerful storms.

Mississippi’s electric associations estimate losses amounting to more than $500 million, with all co-op utilities sustaining some level of damage. Around 497,000 of the state’s 704,000 co-op meters lost power. In Bay St. Louis, Coast Electric’s recovery costs were expected to reach more than $100 million, according to spokesman Ron Barnes.

Louisiana co-ops suffered a similar fate. For example, north of New Orleans, Franklinton-based Washington-St. Tammany Electric (where 80 lineworkers from Wisconsin electric co-ops spent weeks rebuilding that co-op’s shattered system—see October and November 2005 stories archived at wecnmagazine.com) sustained at least $120 million worth of damage, and Jefferson Davis Electric in Jennings, with net assets of $40 million, has sought $75 million in aid for recovery. To date, the co-op has recovered only half of its business. Thousands of residents suffered lost or damaged homes. Their difficulties were compounded by the extended loss of telephone and electric service.

Electric co-ops were taxed by the loss of thousands of poles and miles of line, as well as the homes of many employees among the co-ops’ members. Another challenge was securing lodging and other facilities for the crews that came from electric co-ops in more than 30 states to help with the recovery.

“The real challenge is not building a line,” noted Stan Rucker, vice president for safety and loss control of the Mississippi state co-op association. “It’s the logistics—how to house them, how to feed them, how to do the laundry.”

Chances Are…

Coastal communities are beginning to brace once again. The 2006 hurricane season formally began June 1. A prominent storm forecaster, William Gray of Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project predicts an 81-percent chance that at least one major hurricane with winds exceeding 111 mph will strike the U.S. coastline in 2006.

The East Coast, including eastern Florida, stands a 64-percent chance of getting hit, according to Gray’s team. Their latest report, “Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2006,” also predicts a 47-percent chance for another hit on the Gulf Coast.

The prospect of another huge storm is petrifying, said Billy Gibson, spokesman for the Association of Louisiana Electric Cooperatives. “We hope and pray another big one doesn’t hit. It’s got everybody here on pins and needles, but we’re getting ready,” he said.

Operations leaders from more than 20 electric co-op statewide associations along the coast and from inland states, such as Arkansas and Kentucky, are discussing mutual aid and other means for handling the big storms. These preparedness sessions have been held every year since 1991.

A Rough Chapter in Big Storm History

Being on pins and needles about hurricanes this year is justified, according to an outlook by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released May 22. The agency’s Climate Prediction Center indicated an 80-percent chance of an above-normal hurricane season, a 15-percent chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5-percent chance of a below-normal season.

“NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become ‘major’ hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher,” said Conrad Lautenbacher, NOAA undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere.

That tracks closely with Gray’s report, which calls for nine hurricanes, five of them intense (category 3-4-5), more than twice the average for the years 1950 to 2000—the period against which Gray and his team compared recent storm activity. Gray also predicts 13 days of intense hurricane activity, compared to an annual average of five during the 50-year comparison period.

According to the National Weather Service’s Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC), hurricanes have been on the rise since 1995 and will continue that pattern for the next 10 or 20 years.

A “normal” season generates 11 named tropical storms, including six hurricanes—two of which are major, noted NHC spokesman Frank Lapone. But while more storms in a particular year increase the possibility of one or more coming ashore, “just because you have more storms doesn’t mean you’ll have more landfalls,” Lapone said.

Indeed, both the NOAA report and the December 2005 predictions by Gray and his Colorado State team say we should not expect as many landfalling major hurricanes in the United States as hit in 2004 and 2005, which had an unusually high number of “landfall events.”

Lapone cautioned that it’s hard to forecast with certainty that the coast is likely to be struck during a particular hurricane season. “There has been little focused study providing the statistical evidence needed to make such predictions,” he said. “You have to be somewhat skeptical until you can see the numbers.”

Preparations Continue

As the 2006 season approaches, electric co-op operations chiefs are reviewing mutual aid agreements and taking other steps to prepare for the worst. Among those plans is quickly getting the thousands of crew members and masses of equipment into the affected area, Louisiana’s Gibson said. “You can’t just snap your fingers.”

Rucker in Mississippi said that communications took a big hit when Katrina and Rita hit. “Satellite phones didn’t work very well, and landlines and cell phone facilities were knocked down,” he said. That may call for new types of phones and more diversified means of communications. Gibson agreed, noting, “We’re planning what to do when we can’t communicate by land line, cell phone, or Internet.”

Whatever the case, if and when another big hurricane hits the U.S. coast, co-op crews and equipment will converge from all points of the compass to help their colleagues restore power to the people. The mutual aid agreements, noted one Mississippi co-op executive, “are just one example of cooperation among cooperatives, demonstrating how (we) work together locally, regionally, and nationally.”—Bill Pritchard, plus material from George Stuteville of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

Pritchard is a former reporter for Electric Co-op Today, is a freelance writer, and volunteers as a trainer for the American Red Cross

EDITORIAL
by Perry Baird

Among A Fistful of Firsts

As those of you who’ve been on AARP’s mailing list for a few years might recognize, the headline on this column is the title of a Fats Domino tune from the late 1950s. Fats, recently featured on CNN, is a resident of New Orleans’ flood-damaged 9th Ward who had the means to repair his home and continue living there.

He’s in a distinct minority, as I witnessed on a May trip to the Crescent City.

Fats’ house was unmistakable, painted colorfully and with a “Fats Domino Recording” sign adorning the front. But around in all directions for blocks were vacant houses—a few whose interiors had been gutted and the resulting scrap lumber, plaster, and ruined furnishings piled high on the curbside. Dwellings in a state of salvage sometimes had an adjacent FEMA trailer for housing residents while work progressed.

The majority of houses, however, just sat there, boarded up or open and neglected since the occupants evacuated last August when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and the waters rose. Maybe the displaced residents were indeed “walking to New Orleans” from some far-flung refuge. Because if they were returning at all, they were doing so very slowly.

Water’s Wrath

When I had interviewed Frank Fraas, retiring CEO of the electric co-ops’ insurance provider for last month’s feature story, he had remarked, “Spending a lot of years in claims, I can tell you flood damage is the absolute worst.” That’s because most of the time flood waters leave the structure standing but in need of total refurbishing.

We knew what he meant. The apartment in which my son and his wife had lived—the first floor of an older house located just north of New Orleans’ Garden District—had seen nearly four feet of water from the Lake Pontchartrain levee breach. As we knew from Wisconsin’s electric co-op crews who worked to restore power north of New Orleans in the weeks after the hurricane, the temperatures had soared to the 90s. That meant on the inside of buildings as the waters receded, mold and mildew clung to every damp surface—on furnishings, floors, drapes, and inside the walls where cleansing required nothing short of stripping rooms down to the studs.

When we visited in May, the apartment’s interior walls had been laid bare in just that fashion, but there had been no work to put up new wiring, wallboard, or ductwork. I wondered if a house in this residential area north of the Garden District was only this far along after eight months, how much longer would it take landlords in places such as the economically challenged 9th Ward to restore their properties? When would Fats get his neighbors back?

Grads Gather

I was in New Orleans for the graduation of my son and daughter-in-law from Tulane University, whose students had spent the school year scattered by Katrina to colleges across the South. Symbolic of New Orleans’ effort to rebuild, school administrators had been determined to hold 2006 graduation back in the city, which they did to great fanfare with commencement addresses by George Bush (Sr.) and Bill Clinton. On everyone’s lips, from the former presidents to concession-stand workers at the arena where the grads gathered, were prayers for the successful rebuilding and rebirth of the city.

Fats Domino and his resoluteness about staying in his home remained on my mind, and I bought a “greatest hits” CD of his when I came home. It was uncanny how applicable his song titles were to the situation in his city: “Goin’ Home,” “All By Myself,” “Valley of Tears,” and, eerily, “Let the Four Winds Blow.” And, of course, the ultimate Katrina understatement, “Ain’t That A Shame.”

 

On any given sultry night in the Badger State and around the nation, the thoughts of many are prone to turn to baseball. The old refrain of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” haunts them, and they long to go out to the diamond, munching on peanuts and Crackerjack and hot dogs while they cheer on the heros of summer.

Of course, the granddaddy of all our Wisconsin ballparks is the beautiful new Miller Park in Milwaukee, home of the Brewers. But while an evening with the Brewers is a thrill, it’s far away for some state residents, and a rather expensive experience for many families. Fortunately, the Brewers are not the only game in the state.

Today, Wisconsin families are fortunate to have thrilling baseball right in their own neck of the woods, thanks to two minor league teams and four North League teams, comprised of top college baseball players from around the country.

Our two minor league teams are the Beloit Snappers, affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, based in Appleton and serving as a minor league club for the Seattle Mariners. Both are successful in grooming young players for eventual careers in the Major Leagues. For instance, since 1982, 88 Snappers have gone on to wear the uniform of the Milwaukee Brewers or another Major League organization.

The Snappers and the Timber Rattlers play almost nightly in the summer months, culminating with the Midwest League’s playoffs and championship in early September. Their competitors in the western division of the league are based in Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. The eastern division of their league is composed of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio teams.

Unlike the players of the two minor league teams, the North League stars are unpaid, preserving their amateur status with the NCAA for the coming college season. Otherwise, the games, rules, and the entire experience for these players are very comparable to competition in the minor leagues. Wisconsin’s teams in this league are the Madison Mallards, the La Crosse Loggers, the Eau Claire Express, and the Wisconsin Woodchucks (Wausau). They play nearly every day or evening from early June until mid-August, leaving a week or for divisional playoffs and a championship series before the collegiate stars are off for their respective universities. This league features competition between our Wisconsin teams, one from Iowa, one from Ontario, and six from Minnesota.

Lest you think of watching these teams on glorified sandlot baseball diamonds, think again. Their fields—sporting such names as “The Duck Pond” and “The Lumber Yard”—have been modified and modernized to cater to today’s discriminating fans. Most have catering services, entertaining mascots, facilities for parties, special give-aways, upscale snacks as well as the standard brats and beer, souvenir stores, and even luxury suites. And, of course, first-rate baseball. What else could you want on a summer night?—Linda Hilton

For further information on Wisconsin’s minor league teams, visit www.timberrattlers.com (920/733-4152) and www.snappersbaseball.com (800/846-4700). For information about the Northwoods League, visit www.nwlfan.com or call the office of your nearest team.