Josh Dirske began his University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee career in fall 2004, as a political science major and hopes to graduate May 2008. He plans to attend law school at the University of Wisconsin, but would not mind taking a year off to jump on some campaigns that will heat up for November 2008. Dirske is the chief of staff for Student Association (SA) president Rob Grover.

MV: How would you describe your chief of staff position?
JD: I’m in charge of overseeing the staff, and can call me a “manager.” I make sure they are accountable for their goals. I handle complaints, issues in the office, and I serve as the direct to the president on matters of advising. You need to have a very good relationship with the president and vice president. You need to have good knowledge of student government and good government on what decisions to make. Often I’ll be asked my opinion on a lot of things.

MV: How is chief of staff different from the other SA positions?
JD: It is different that I am not charged with a specific area. I don’t have that type of focus, but I like to familiarize myself with each of those aspects. It is part of my job to know what is going on in the office and what my staff is working on. I am a melting pot of all these different departments.

MV: What would be the most rewarding aspect of being chief of staff?
JD: At the end of the year, I want to see all of our staff achieving their goals. That would warm my heart to see some big wins for students coming from our SA. One of those is lowering tuition. Another might be maintaining shared governance at its level or increasing it because shared governance is unique in Wisconsin.

It is very unique that it’s built into law. State law says that we can govern ourselves, which is very cool. No other state in the union has that. Shared governance is something that we hold dear and if we can expand shared governance to more areas on campus, give students more responsibility, more say in the whole process, I think that would be a definite victory. Goals, living up to the promises we made during the campaigns and expanding shared governance.

MV: Can you describe the atmosphere of the staff this year as many are proposing ideas or goals
JD: I think that we’ve all become a very big, close family. I think that only helps office relations and collaborating. If students have any ideas, we welcome them.

MV: What strategies do you plan to use to help the staff?
JD: Every two weeks I sit down individually with each staff member. There are four groups of goals we go over: their weekly, monthly, semester and yearly goals. Of course some goals are going to weave in and out through each one of those, but we try to break up their goals so they’re manageable. Having that goal structure with each staff member allows me to keep track of what they’re working on. It allows me to maximize potential getting things done and creates accountability.

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