After over 30 years of dedicated service to UW, including the past 15+ years in the Sociology Department, Ted is embarking on his next great adventure: retirement. Those who worked alongside him know that his impact was profoundly far-reaching.
The Man Behind the Desk
Ted is often described as the department’s steady hand, Graduate Advisor Charlotte Frascona states that he is always, “reliable, calm, kind, and funny”. To those entering the office, Ted is a fixture; as Professor and Chair Eric Grodsky notes, “He’s the first person you see when you come in if you know where to look, and he may well startle you from behind his counter if you do not.”
For Ted, this presence was intentional. Reflecting on his role, he shares: “I wanted to be the bureaucrat you were happy to talk to that day. Always be helpful.” This philosophy was born from his own early days in the department. Starting in the Sociology Department in late August 2010, the height of academic chaos, Ted recalls wearing a path in the carpet between his desk and his predecessor’s office. “He never expressed frustration and answered every question,” Ted remembers. “I vowed to pay it forward and be that person for others.”
One of Ted’s greatest legacies is his willingness to step outside his official role to solve problems. When he heard colleagues mention the “dismal,” time-consuming nature of the annual graduate student review, he built a solution. Driven by what Eric Grodsky calls an “inquisitive, motivated, and very, very capable nature”, Ted designed custom apps that transformed the review process and faculty teaching preferences into a “walk in the park.” Eric puts it simply: “I cannot go back to before we had those.” More than just a creator, Ted remains the hero of these systems, continually managing the databases to keep the department’s data sources running smoothly.
Tina Hunter, Ted’s supervisor for more than a decade, asserts that, “Ted has been a uniquely wonderful colleague. His formidable intellect, dedication to not just his responsibilities but also the improvement of the functions under his purview, and his kind, witty, positive approach to every challenge or opportunity will be sorely missed. We are all better for having known and worked with Ted.”
A Connection to Campus History
Ted’s ties to UW–Madison run deep, stretching back to his own time as a student in the 1980s. Even as the campus has evolved, he finds comfort in the places that stay the same. “The Rathskellar has remained surprisingly the same since I was a student,” he says. “If I close my eyes, it feels like I am sitting there in the late 1970s.”
The Next Chapter for a Renaissance Man
As Ted trades the Sewell Social Science Building for the freedom of retirement, he leaves behind a department that is significantly more efficient and a lot more colorful.
Ted famously claims he is “never bored,” and Eric Grodsky describes him as a true “Renaissance man,” busy writing screenplays, reading philosophy, and pursuing interests many of us have yet to discover. Our collective retirement wish for Ted is that he finds it easy to decide which of his many passions to pursue first (chess, genealogy, languages, math, a personal Great Books program, baseball, urban design, and working to counteract the corrosive effects of political polarization on our democracy – just to name a few!), and, as Charlotte Frascona hopes, that we eventually see one of his screenplays winning an Oscar.
Congratulations, Ted! Thank you for paying it forward and using your skills to improve our teaching community.