Sunstad Resigns as Director of University Housing

Norm Sunstad has resigned as director of University Housing effective this month and will soon strap on a new job – and a pair of skis – in Gunnison, Colo.

Sunstad will become vice president for finance and administration at Western State College. He will serve under President Harry Peterson, former assistant to Donna Shalala when she was UW–Madison’s chancellor.

“This has been a really great job,” says Sunstad, “but I’ve been doing this for more than 14 years, and that’s as long as I should have any job. I need to do something new in my life.”

Sunstad has been in what he calls “the key and meal ticket business” for 33 years, starting as an undergraduate residence assistant at Moorhead State College in Minnesota. Before coming to UW–Madison in 1983, he worked for 14 years – there’s that self-imposed limit again – at the University of Michigan.

At UW–Madison Sunstad has enjoyed the sheer diversity of his job. “University Housing is a small city,” he says. In fact, Housing has a metropolitan $41 million budget, a capital maintenance budget of $7 million, 375 full-time employees, 6,700 student residents and 4,000 people living in Eagle Heights and University Houses.

“There’s a very good work ethic here,” he says. “That means more output per person, which helps account for the fact that our housing rates are the second-lowest in the Big Ten.

“There’s also a spirit at UW–Madison that says, ‘If you have an idea, go ahead and explore it.'” Which is what Sunstad did, for example, when he helped develop a new bar-coded campus ID card.

Sunstad thinks University Housing is in good shape. It has rewired all halls for voice, data and cable TV and is offering new options in the form of learning communities, such as the Bradley Learning Community, Chadbourne Residential College, Women in Science and Engineering program and the Global Village. “For these type programs to thrive, the faculty needs to feel a responsibility, and we’ve had that support,” he says.

“I want to thank all those I have worked with at Wisconsin for their good-spirited help, support and friendship. What we have accomplished is a result of our working together toward a common goal: to serve students.”

That goal will continue in Sunstad’s work as a Western State vice president. But he and his wife, Linda Sunstad, will also face vexing questions peculiar to their locale, such as: Where should we go skiing today, Crested Butte or Aspen or Monarch or Snowmass? Oh, the hassles of mountain living …