Joseph G. Rossmeier (’65) received the Distinguished Alumni Award for his outstanding career achievements, his dedication to ensuring the power of education remains accessible and for the positive impact he has made on both his profession and UW-Stout Polytechnic.
“My greatest accomplishments have been working in higher education, experiencing life in both academic and administrative positions as well as serving higher education with high-quality products and services,” Rossmeier said. “My experiences allowed me to help institutions achieve their mission of improving the success of their students.
Rossmeier grew up on a dairy farm near Hilbert, about 14 miles east of Appleton. As he was finishing high school in 1961, his industrial arts teacher, Richard Werblow, persuaded him to apply to UW-Stout Polytechnic, then known as Stout State College.
“After considerable thought, my only real alternative was to become a dairy farmer, something my mother was dead set against, given the daily work requirements at that time with no vacations, no real downtime,” Rossmeier said. “I applied, and the rest is history. Stout became my springboard. My time there was a life-changing experience, one that I will always cherish as the first real steppingstone to a long, long, successful career.”
Rossmeier’s sisters Anne (’66) and Mary Kay (’67,’73) and brother, John Joseph (’69), attended UW-Stout Polytechnic after him. The legacy family created an endowed scholarship, which Rossmeier continues to support annually in honor of his siblings.
Most of Rossmeier’s career involved strategic and operational planning, improving business policies and processes, increasing the use of data in decision-making and modernizing institutional operations in the use of technology, all in the interest of improving services to students and increasing business efficiency.
“Continuous improvement in all of my professional positions has been a salient priority. I have always strived to be a trusted and valuable colleague in whatever position I was in,” he said. “Throughout my career, I have been involved in shaping strategy, identifying new business and operational opportunities, challenging outdated assumptions, and reducing risk.”
After earning his B.S. in industrial education in 1965, Rossmeier received a scholarship to attend Michigan State University, where he went on to earn his master’s in college personnel work/sociology, graduating in 1967. During that time, he became heavily involved in residence hall management and other university functions serving students. This experience would serve him well throughout his career.
“As I was graduating, I received a call from Dewey Barich (’33), president of the Detroit Institute of Technology. DIT was a 2,000-student night school university, mostly for veterans, and he offered me the position of director of Admissions,” said Rossmeier, who spent two years at DIT building a respectable enrollment, until he was offered a scholarship to enter a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher Education.
During the first year of his doctoral program in 1969-70, he served as director of a 1,200-student living-learning resident hall, where he managed the overall operation of the entire facility. He graduated in 1972. It was also during this time that he met his spouse, Mary. They have been married for 54 years.
Rossmeier interned in the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, working on the Survey of Consumers Index, the quarterly national consumer opinion research survey still produced today. And in 1974, after completing his thesis on a national study about organization and decision-making at multi-unit community colleges, he was offered a job at Northern Virginia Community College, where he was promoted several times during his 10-year tenure, ending as dean of Management Services at the five-campus, multi-unit community college
In 1984, Rossmeier decided to enter the corporate world and joined Datatel, a company that marketed enterprise administrative systems to colleges and universities. He worked in several sales positions, achieving No. 1 in sales during 12 of his 17 years at Datatel.
In 1997, Rossmeier joined PeopleSoft, selling enterprise administrative systems to larger institutions, including the Virginia Community College System, which became the largest higher education organization to implement the company’s software.
Then in 2002, Rossmeier returned to higher education management and was appointed vice president for Information Technology/CIO at Prince George’s Community College (PGCC), where he was one of several key administrators for 17 years.
It was also during this time that Rossmeier served on the UW-Stout Foundation & Alumni Association Board for 12 years. “Given my historical Wisconsin roots, and the nature of my professional experiences, I stay informed about what is happening in both the Wisconsin universities and the technical colleges,” he said. “In my judgment, they are very well-run institutions. However, Stout remains one of the most transformative institutions, with its very progressive workforce-oriented programs.”
Upon retirement from PGCC, Rossmeier joined CampusWorks, his present employer, where he will have completed 11 years. He currently serves as vice president of Executive Advisory Services.
“I manage a group of trusted retired higher education executives who provide guidance to CampusWorks’ leadership, as well as open doors to new business opportunities as a result of my group’s extensive higher education networking capability with current real-world experienced higher education leaders,” he said.
“As I moved through my three higher education institutions and then my corporate work experience, I have become a very, very strong advocate of supporting diverse people – people of different faiths, different ethnicities, different races,” he added. “Individuals who have been historically underrepresented or marginalized remain a very sensitive issue in my life as I strive to push for fair treatment and representation.”
When reflecting on his long-term success, Rossmeier values staying positive, attending to good health habits, looking forward rather than backward, and maintaining contact with professional and personal colleagues. “My ultimate goal has been to never burn bridges when making work or location changes in my life,” he said.
For students and young professionals who aspire to leadership roles in their fields, Rossmeier offered this bit of advice: “Achieving a post-secondary education, whether through public or private institutions, still remains the best lifetime investment chance to be successful – career-wise, financially and for community involvement.”
After spending 45 years in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., Rossmeier and Mary moved to the Sarasota area in Florida. “Mary remains the heartthrob of my life; she is truly a wonderful partner. Mary, our children, grandchildren and close friends remain the pillars of support in my life,” he said.
