Up for a Challenge

Fran Parker ’88 Leaves Retirement to Direct UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust

Fran Parker ’88 doesn’t walk away from a challenge—even one as big as creating and then leading a trust that manages the medical benefits of hundreds of thousands of United Auto Workers retirees.

Parker, after “retiring” in 2008 as president and CEO of the Health Alliance Plan (HAP), soon jumped back into the workforce. She was named executive director of the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which manages the benefits of approximately 750,000 retirees of the “Big Three” automakers of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

“(The UAW) came to me to do this because of my background,” said Parker, who has more than 40 years of health care experience. “Taking the membership of three different organizations, Ford, GM and Chrysler, with no infrastructure, you had to create (the trust) from nothing. You knew that come January 1 of 2010, these retirees depended on you.”

When the trust launched in 2010, it became the largest non-governmental purchaser of retiree health care in the U.S. The trust is governed by an 11 person Committee of Directors. All of the retiree health care liabilities were transferred to a new independent Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA). Parker said she is enjoying her latest challenge, and considers it one of her greatest career achievements.

“I kind of divide the day into thirds,” Parker said of her typical day on the job, which usually begins about 7 a.m. and ends around 6 p.m. “A third might be day-to-day running of an organization. Another third (is) trying to keep abreast of regulatory changes. And (then) some time on strategy. I try to interact with staff and others, and I spend time with our insurance carriers and medical providers.”

As a leader, Parker considers herself to be “fact-based” and “data-driven.” However, she said she also values the opinions of others in the decision making process.

One on One With . . . Deb Carter

Editor’s Note: This is a regular Reflections article series, and this issue features longtime Siena Heights faculty member and Dean of the College for Professional Studies Deb Carter, who is retiring in September 2015 after more than 33 years at SHU. Reflections recently sat down with Deb to reflect on her time at Siena Heights.

How did you get your start at Siena Heights?

“Well, it’s an interesting story. I was a teacher of hearing-impaired children in Berrien County, and I had young children (at home). I was working part-time because of my little kids, and administratively they decided to only go with full-time people. I had enough seniority that I could bump somebody, and I just didn’t feel that I could that. So I resigned from my position not knowing where I was going to go or what was going to happen next. This was May of 1982. In the summertime, a friend of mine called me and said she saw a very small ad in our local newspaper … and it was advertising Siena Heights College needs a part-time person to oversee a new degree program for adult students. I hate to admit this because I’ve spent 33 years of my life here now, but I had never heard of Siena Heights College. I had no college experience. No higher ed experience. All my experience was K through 12 teaching hearing impaired kids. … My friend talked me into calling the number, and I got David James, who was the director of Admissions at the time, and I said I was interested in looking at this. (He said) ‘Can you send your resume?’ … So I mailed it. And then a couple of weeks went by, and I got a call, and David said, ‘Our dean is coming out to your area, and he is going to be interviewing candidates.’ … So I met Norm Bukwaz, who was the dean of Admissions and off-campus programs, and we had a conversation. And my curiosity was, ‘what on earth could you see in my background?’ I don’t know that I would have looked at me, because I didn’t have higher ed experience. … (But) I was called and offered the job, and it fit my criteria because I had little kids and (I) worked part-time. And I was hired at, believe it or not, 10 hours a week, roughly two evenings a week. … To this day, I’m grateful for that strange little happenstance … that was I was able to connect with a place that I love dearly.”

A Leap of Faith

This year Siena Heights celebrates the 40th anni-
versary of offering adult
degree-completion pro-
grams. From its humble beginnings in Southfield at a former elementary school (left), the pro-
gram now boasts more than 60 percent of all SHU graduates each year. The ultra-successful Bachelor of Applied Science degree graduated its first students (below) in the late 1970s and has made degree-completion a reality for students from all age groups and backgrounds, furthering the Siena Heights Mission in the process.

Concept of Educating Working Adults Turns into the College for Professional Studies

As the 1960s were known as a time for social experimentation in America, the 1970s had Siena Heights experiencing its own period of educational “counterculture.”

In 1970, then Siena Heights College had named its first lay president, Dr. Hugh Thompson, and was transitioning from all-female student body to a coeducational one. If that evolution wasn’t difficult enough, Thompson brought more of a business and career-focused educational approach to campus, ruffling feathers of some liberal arts-focused faculty and staff of the time.

Thompson’s vision included starting
associate’s degree programs that had a fingerprint more like a two-year technical college, not a private, Catholic, four-year institution. Yet some of these
programs not only survived, but grew and evolved. Soon, the unique Bachelor of Applied Science degree was born.
That degree became the “seed” that allowed Siena Heights to plant campuses around Michigan. First, in Southfield, then spreading to places like Benton Harbor, Battle Creek and Monroe.