{"id":5522,"date":"2020-08-14T09:49:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T14:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=5522"},"modified":"2020-08-14T09:49:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T14:49:54","slug":"uw-whitewater-nontraditional-student-brings-wealth-of-experience-to-board-of-regents","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-whitewater-nontraditional-student-brings-wealth-of-experience-to-board-of-regents\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Whitewater nontraditional student brings wealth of experience to Board of Regents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
UW-Whitewater nontraditional student Corey Saffold was appointed June 1, 2020, to a two-year term on the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents. He is head of safety and security for the Verona Area School District and based at Verona High School. Photos from July 14, 2020 at Verona High School. (UW-Whitewater photo\/Craig Schreiner)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Corey Saffold projects the confidence of one who walks on solid ground.<\/p>\n

As a former Madison police officer, current head of safety and security for the Verona Area School District and a Black man who is an authority on police-community relations, Saffold \u2014 who is also a criminology major at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater \u2014 draws on a solid foundation of experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always tried to bring my life experiences to add value to whatever situation I am in,\u201d said Saffold, 41, who attends classes online as a nontraditional student at UW-Whitewater on a path to earn a Bachelor of Science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Corey<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Saffold, head of safety and security for the Verona Area School District, works at his desk at Verona Area High School. Saffold is also completing his criminology B.S. at UW-Whitewater fully online.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Now Saffold can add serving as regent on the\u00a0University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents<\/a>\u00a0to his life experiences. The UW System, which appoints two student regents \u2014 one traditional and one nontraditional \u2014 to two-year terms with full duties including voting and serving on committees, selected Saffold in a competitive process.<\/p>\n

Gov. Tony Evers appointed Saffold, who also sits on the Office of School Safety Advisory Committee at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, on June 1, 2020.<\/p>\n

Saffold served as a City of Madison police officer for 10 years, learning about community policing and criminal justice from the inside. For six of those years, he was assigned in public schools. But his path to policing began much earlier, during an encounter with law enforcement as a youth growing up in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy influence (to become a police officer) was a detective in Milwaukee who gave me a second chance,\u201d he said. \u201cI realized that I can give people the same opportunity that was afforded to me, which was a second chance and an education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a police officer in schools, I would use moments where there were disciplinary matters as an opportunity to educate students,\u201d he explains. \u201cToo often, teenagers can do things that they don\u2019t fully understand the consequences of. Rather than throw the book at them, if they can receive an education about that one thing they did, that can go a long way for everybody in the society.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy of personal policing brought Saffold to the UW-Whitewater criminology program to further his understanding of why people step outside the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it the environment?\u201d he asks. \u201cIs it a problem with opportunity, joblessness, homelessness, need? Criminology answers a lot of questions for us in terms of human behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saffold credits UW-Whitewater for making degrees accessible to nontraditional students through online learning. By anyone\u2019s estimate, he leads a demanding life.<\/p>\n

On a recent July afternoon, Saffold was in his office at Verona Area High School. He develops safety training and emergency procedures for weather and all manner of other incidents which might threaten his schools. As a staff member, he attends school board meetings, a recent one lasting until almost midnight. He hires security staff.\u00a0 At the end of his day, Saffold met with a salesperson outside the school building to discuss equipment options for the school\u2019s utility vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Corey<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Corey Saffold, left, talks with a salesperson about equipment for a utility vehicle at Verona Area High School on July 14, 2020.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

He is the father of a teenage son who attends high school in Madison and a daughter, 22, who plans to attend law school. Before the pandemic hit, he traveled across the state to speak to groups on police-community relations.<\/p>\n

As he begins his second year at Verona, Saffold and his staff will oversee a new high school building of almost 600,000 square feet and a campus that will accommodate up to 2,200 students in addition to the eight other schools they manage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope to graduate (from UW-Whitewater) next year,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd this will sound funny, but I don\u2019t really keep track of when I\u2019ll graduate. Working full time, I take classes as I can take them. But after I receive my B.S., I plan to apply for law school at UW-Madison.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I\u2019m doing political science, the Constitution and the police,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2019Policing and the Constitution\u2019 is the name of the class. So that\u2019s perfect. I\u2019m reading case law that I\u2019ve already practiced. I\u2019ve lived this, so it\u2019s quite interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saffold embraces his role as the voice of nontraditional students at UW System campuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an honor to be on the board and it\u2019s an honor to even be considered,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a nontraditional student in a rural area who works on a farm or if it\u2019s increasing enrollment for our nontraditional students of color who come out of Milwaukee or Madison, I want to be part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not the nation\u2019s current focus on unity, recovery and stability influenced his appointment to the Board Regents, Saffold calls himself an optimist about the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack lives do matter, and I want to move beyond just saying that, to put in place actionable items that shape that,\u201d he said. \u201cI want the students to feel like they have a voice in this and to feel like they are listened to. I want to empower and equip our leaders \u2014 our chief diversity officers, our student affairs folks \u2014 with the resources they need to make sure our schools are welcoming.\u201d<\/p>\n

And his optimism extends to the UW System\u2019s ability to navigate the challenges ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID-19 has had an impact on the whole UW System \u2014 both financially and on the students. We\u2019re very concerned about the students, faculty and staff and their welfare. Foreign exchange students should be able to stay here to attend school. I\u2019m confident in our president, (former U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary and Wisconsin Governor) Tommy Thompson. I\u2019m confident that he will successfully navigate the UW System through these waters.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he has some words of advice for his colleagues and community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about your classmate or your colleague or coworker and think of ways to help them. If we all thought of someone other than ourselves to support, then we all would be supported,\u201d he said. \u201cOther than that \u2014 be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corey Saffold projects the confidence of one who walks on solid ground. As a former Madison police officer, current head of safety and security for the Verona Area School District and a Black man who is an authority on police-community relations, Saffold \u2014 who is also a criminology major at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[84],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-5522","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-whitewater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/5522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=5522"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=5522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}