UWM-Waukesha Closure Sends Adjuncts Hunting For 'Satellite Office' Space

WAUKESHA — The university is closing. The spreadsheet is not. Three adjunct instructors who taught evening courses at the former UWM-Waukesha campus are now holding office hours wherever a table and an outlet happen to be free, ahead of a planned 212-unit housing development on the site.

Math instructor Maria Gonzalez has claimed a booth at the Panera Bread on Sunset Drive three days a week, from 2 to 4 p.m., a window she picked because it falls between the lunch rush and the after-school crowd that wants the Wi-Fi password written on a napkin. She has informed the staff that the booth is hers. The staff has not objected, though a laminated 'Reserved' sign she brought from home was removed by a manager after one shift and has not reappeared.

"I grade in 50-minute blocks because that's how long a bread bowl stays warm," Gonzalez said. "It turns out that's also how long a quiz takes to grade. I don't know what that says about either one."

Billable Hours, Unbillable Parking

English professor Robert Chen has negotiated what he calls "drop-in hours" at the Carroll University library, an arrangement that required two emails, one in-person meeting, and a laminated visitor badge that expires at 6 p.m. sharp. Chen pays a $12 parking fee each visit, a cost he has started tracking in a separate spreadsheet tab labeled "Overhead."

"Nobody has asked me to leave," Chen said. "But nobody has asked me to stay, either. I exist in a kind of academic easement." Chen estimates he has met with 11 students so far this semester at a round table near the periodicals, six of whom he is fairly sure were not his students.

A third instructor, communications adjunct Priya Nair, is weighing a $250-a-month membership at a co-working space on East Broadway rather than teach entirely from her kitchen, where her dog has taken to attending every video call by sitting directly beneath the webcam.

A Campus Becomes 212 Addresses

UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha, which stopped offering courses at the site earlier this year, confirmed the property is moving toward residential redevelopment. A campus transition spokesperson, Denise Okafor, said the university "remains committed to supporting displaced faculty during this period of change," a statement that Gonzalez, Chen, and Nair have each independently described as "generically true."

"Commuting to nowhere is still commuting. You still have to find parking."

— Robert Chen, adjunct English instructor

Okafor said the university has not yet finalized a replacement office model for the roughly dozen part-time instructors affected, though a shared email thread titled "Satellite Office Options??" has been circulating among them since August and currently contains 94 messages, most of them about outlet availability.

The Commute Remains

Nair, who lives in Pewaukee, said the irony of her situation is that her actual commute got longer after the campus closed, since the Panera and the library are in opposite directions from her house and the co-working space is downtown, past the East Avenue roundabout, which she has not yet learned to navigate correctly.

"I used to teach eight minutes from my house," Nair said. "Now I teach from wherever has a free outlet and doesn't mind if I stay past closing to finish a rubric." She has begun bringing noise-canceling headphones to block out the espresso machine during virtual office hours, a purchase she says has already paid for itself in uninterrupted grading time.

Construction on the 212-unit development is expected to begin next year. Gonzalez said she has already scouted a second Panera location on the off chance her current booth becomes unavailable, though she declined to name it, citing "competitive reasons."