“In some respects, I’m the institutional memory

here at Iowa State.”

– Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance

Iowa State University has 15,000 telephones – the fourth largest telephone system in the state. It has 403 acres of grass, 34 miles of sidewalks and 12.5 million square feet of buildings. It employs more people than any other business in Ames.

Warren Madden knows this because it’s his.

“In many respects, the university is a small city,” said Madden, vice president for business and finance, the gruff man who has lived, eaten, slept and breathed Iowa State University almost continuously since he first lived in Friley and took his first class as an engineering student in 1957. “I play the role of city manager for the campus.”

Iowa State has almost always been part of Madden’s life. He met his wife, Beverly, when they were in high school together in Glenellen, a suburb of Chicago. Both of them attended Iowa State, he for industrial engineering and she for home economics. He was a Pi Kappa Phi, she was an Alpha Delta Pi. She played clarinet in the marching band, he played contrabass. They were members of the pit band when “Stars Over Veishea” first moved inside the Armory. They married after he graduated and they became the supervising couple in Fisher-Nickell, which was then a practice home for home economics students. His wife oversaw three dozen women who ate, slept, cooked and cleaned in the house for six weeks in order to graduate. In exchange for eating the creative cooking of the residents, Madden became the chaperone, chasing boyfriends, fiances and “whatnot” away at the 10:30 p.m. curfew.

“I like to call them the first 36 women I lived with,” he said.

After Beverly graduated, they moved to Minnesota so he could work as an engineer for 3M.

“I can literally make red tape,” he said.

After a move to Pennsylvania, they returned to Illinois so Madden could complete a master’s in business at the University of Chicago. They finally came back to Ames so Beverly, who is now the director of career planning and placement services, could finish her graduate education. Madden was asked to become an assistant in the office of the vice president for business and finance.

“We were going to stay two to three years,” he said. “It turned out to be 35 or 6.”

Madden, who was named vice president in 1984, has seen the university evolve. He remembers when the Student Services building was a functioning hospital. As part of overseeing of the grounds, he has served on Swan Patrol, herding wayward waterfowl from Lincoln Way to Lake LaVerne. He is an expert on beavers and crows, two unwanted animals that frequently infest campus. He remembers when there was no I-35, when there were no bars in Campustown, when Iowa State had only 7,000 students and when only 30 percent of them were women.

He has nearly been brained with a brick after wading into a hostile crowd during Veishea riots, has kept an eye on demonstrations after the Kent State shootings, and has mourned with the campus when a plane carrying members of the ISU track team and a personal friend crashed.

He has sat down with student activists and discussed the development of the university’s investment portfolio and corporate connections around concerns about South African apartheid, Dow Chemical’s Agent Orange and sweatshop manufacturing.

He came to Iowa State with everything he had in two suitcases. He put himself through school by washing pots and pans at a fraternity house, working his way up to a managerial position at the University Book Store and working as an engineer in the summers. And, despite the ever-increasing tuition hikes, he still believes Iowa State is a bargain.

“You can put yourself through this place with relatively little or no debt,” he said.

And now, this alumnus has to separate the wheat from the chaff as his alma mater deals with the biggest budget cut in its history.

He’s not worried.

“I’m a reasonable optimist, that one, it’ll get better, and two, the university will come through it,” he said.

Iowa State faced an $11.3 million budget de-appropriation at semester, and next year’s budget probably will be slashed by the Iowa Legislature. Tuition will increase by 18.5 percent, and departments and programs across campus are being cut. Buildings are falling into disrepair, and faculty will lose their jobs.

But Madden’s done it all before, and he is the man for the job, colleagues say.

“He’s one of the best in the country in the position, and his colleagues around the country recognize that,” said ISU President Gregory Geoffroy. “Before I came here, the person that held the position in Maryland told me that Warren is one of the most highly regarded business and financial vice presidents in the nation.”

Geoffroy, who took the helm of the university last summer just as it began to flounder financially, said working with Madden has given him confidence.

“He has a vast knowledge of the university and a great historical context,” Geoffroy said.

William Robert Parks, the first of four presidents Madden has worked under, said the current administration needs Madden in this difficult time.

“I think they would tell you they lean on him pretty heavily,” Parks said. “He’s seen budget cuts before.”

Parks said he knew Madden was perfect for the job when he first worked with him. Finagling a way for Madden to move from associate vice president to his current position became one of Parks’ main goals during his time as president.

“We shifted duties around . not only because I recognized his work, but because other universities were hot on his tail,” he said.

And, Parks said, he made the right choice.

“Warren performed marvelously – he’s really very good,” Parks said. “He has a very good mind, of course. He’s very well-trained, very well-educated in the field of business and finance, and he has, I think, a very good personality insofar as he relates to his administrative colleagues.”

Madden continues to be a strong point in the administration, said Parks, who advised his successors to stay on good terms with the man.

“In fact, I told them `The most important thing for you to do is to stay close to Warren Madden, because he knows the history of the place, and he’s also very, very good.’ “

Madden is the “supreme survivor,” said Bill Kunerth, who has wrangled with Madden about the sale of university media outlets and has witnessed much of Madden’s career.

“I think that Warren Madden is a supreme loyalist and that he is loyal to whoever he is working for,” said Kunerth, professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication. “I think through the years he may have had to do things that he probably may not have had his heart in. He tends to protect the establishment sometimes at the expense of the individual.”

Kunerth said he questioned the change in Madden’s actions before and during the sale of the Iowa State University Press under the Jischke administration.

“Warren was kind of a prime wooer in the sale of the Iowa State University Press and under other presidents he was a very strong supporter of the [press]. He’s just too loyal a soldier, I guess,” Kunerth said.

Overall, Kunerth said, Madden has turned out to be a very competent vice president for business and finance.

“I have a great deal of respect for him in terms of his intelligence and understanding of the university,” Kunerth said. “He’s a hell of a good businessman.”

Madden’s competence has done more than run the university’s finances smoothly; it has also influenced and educated the students he’s worked with over the years.

Finn Bullers served as editor in chief of the Iowa State Daily in 1985. During his time as editor, President Parks was being replaced with President Gordon Eaton, and the university sold its rights to WOI-TV. All through the ordeals, Madden demanded the best from Bullers and his reporters while he himself remained accessible.

“He’s sort of the kind of educator you run across and you hate him at the time,” said Bullers, who is now a reporter for the Kansas City Star. “He had this plodding kind of voice.”

But Madden played it straight with the students who came to him.

“He knew his job and he knew what he should say,” he said. “You had to ask him the right questions, but he was very fair and honest and really believed in the role of academia. I would reserve a little place on the good-guy column for Warren Madden.”

Madden is still highly involved in student activities. Government of the Student Body President Andy Tofilon said if he isn’t meeting with Madden on the Student Fees Committee, he’s working with him on the budget task force.

“He’s been a resource so that if we have questions about what the regents are doing, what the president is doing, he’ll lay it all on the table for us,” Tofilon said.

Madden said he enjoys seeing the changed perspectives of former student leaders he occasionally runs into at the many football games he attends.

“They tend to find out that those of us that work in administration aren’t quite as irrational as they first thought,” he said.

The networking to be done at football games is one of the most enjoyable aspects of his job, said Madden, whose work life has become one with his personal life. He works from about 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., sometimes coming back in the evenings to spend more time on the 40 to 50 e-mails he receives each day. Even his weekends are booked with sporting events and university gatherings.

“I get half my work done Sunday morning in the grocery-store aisle,” said Madden, who also is active in the Ames community.

To escape, he swims in the pool or works in the garden on his acreage three miles from campus. The Maddens and their two sons, Walter and William, spend their family vacations skiing in Colorado or biking in Burgundy, France.

His wife said the university is simply a way of life for her family – their two sons both graduated from Iowa State and were always very active in the ISU community.

“They were in the band, they both recruited for Iowa State, they’re lifetime members of the Alumni Association,” she said. “For me, that’s very special.”

After their sons moved out, the Maddens truly began to become immersed in running Iowa State. Beverly was named to her job as director of Career and Placement Services and Warren became a vice president.

But what do the Maddens talk about when they aren’t discussing Iowa State?

“Well, when we do,” Beverly Madden said, laughing, “I think there’s the nice normal stuff – leaves, the garden, the kids. We’re both involved with Ames and the United Way. The national scene right now.”

They receive calls from the Department of Public Safety late at night and weather warnings early in the mornings of snowstorms.

“I think there’s a 24-hour aspect to what we do,” she said. “It’s something we both do because we enjoy it.”

And they may enjoy it for a while longer, said Warren Madden, who is 62 and not even considering retirement.

“I serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said.