Kimball ends long RF career

This winter, UW-River Falls will bid farewell to one of its most loyal staff members.

Interim Director of Public Safety Mark Kimball has announced his retirement after nearly 35 years of service to the University.

According to Kimball, the retirement will become effective Jan. 5, 2007.

“The University will be losing a dedicated employee,” said UW-RF Public Safety Officer Ralph Towberman.

As interim director, Kimball is in charge of managing the daily operations of the Department of Public Safety and Parking office. His duties veer more toward the public safety aspect of the spectrum, which includes managing the officers, he said.

In addition to his director position, Kimball also serves as the environmental health and safety manager on campus.

His work includes risk management as well. He is responsible for processing property and liability claims at UW-RF.

“I’m sort of like the insurance agent on campus,” he said.

Although the 57-year-old has been working for the University for nearly 35 years, he has been actively involved with the school community even longer.

Kimball first arrived on the UW-RF campus in 1968 as a student. An agronomy major, he harbored dreams of becoming a farmer.

“That’s why I came to River Falls,” he said. “To get an education in agriculture.”

The minister’s son recalls the experience of attending college during the Vietnam era as an “eye-opener”.

“Being from a small little town, you see a lot of new, different things when you come to a small university,” he said.

According to Kimball, there was a considerable amount of unrest on the UW-RF campus at the time, due to student opposition to the war.

“I literally saw the downtown of River Falls shut down in the middle of the day with student protesting,” he said

Upon his graduation in 1972, Kimball became the University’s greenhouse manager.

“It was an opportunity in my major field of study,” he said.

His main duties involved providing plant material for the horticulture and agronomy classroom labs. He also did research plots and assisted instructors in classroom and greenhouse settings.

In 1991, Kimball joined the risk management division, which was housed in the former General Services department at UW-RF. He was hired specifically to help reorganize the capital inventory system, which was “kind of in disarray” at the time, he said. 

Kimball’s tasks eventually evolved to include those of occupational safety and hazardous waste concerns, hence the environmental health and safety manager job title.  These concerns became his main professional focus.

“Over the past 10 years, I’ve dealt the majority of my time with hazardous waste and occupational safety,” Kimball said. 

He assumed interim director duties a year and a half ago, after former director Priscilla Stevens’ resignation.  He said that he wasn’t expecting the position.

“They needed somebody to fill in,” he said. “They asked if I would do it, and I said yes.”

Because Kimball had temporarily acted as director two years previously while Stevens was on leave, the switch proved to be a smooth one for those working in the Public Safety and Parking office.

“It was an easy transition,” said Operations Program Associate Wendy Penny.

Some of the initiatives that Kimball has helped to implement over his tenure at UW-RF include a screening program for Essential Job Functions, and safety courses for University maintenance staff.

The Essential Job Functions screening, which Kimball developed in collaboration with Director of Human Resources Kathy Schultz, is used to determine whether a prospective University employee is able to withstand the physical demands of their intended position. Employees are screened by a physical therapist, who runs them through a series of fitness tests designed around the bodily requirements of the job in question.

The process “has identified people that don’t have the physical qualifications to do the physical job,” Kimball said.

The program was adopted by the University a year and a half ago. Other UW schools and state agencies are looking into utilizing the plan.

Kimball’s supervisor, Director of Purchasing Services Thomas Weiss, has nothing but praise for Kimball’s efforts.

“I’m guessing that the state is going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars because of this plan,” Weiss said. “If I could have given him a bonus for it, I would have.”

Kimball has also developed monthly safety training workshops for maintenance staff at the University. The workshops function as “an educational process” for the staff members, who are more susceptible to injury due to the high-risk nature of their jobs, Kimball said.

Currently, Kimball is working to put into service a training program for the 18 automated external defibrillators (AED) that have been placed in academic buildings around campus. The AEDs are medical devices designed to cease a person’s heartbeat. After getting “shocked” by an AED, a person’s heartbeat either starts back up on its own, or CPR is required, he said.

Kimball’s dedication to the AED training program is an example of what Weiss calls his “stick-to-itiveness”.

“Mark’s still out there working hard to improve things,” Weiss said. “He’s still working on his job despite the fact that he’s retiring.”

Other colleagues also have fond words for Kimball.

“Mark’s a good person,” Towberman said. “Of all the directors I’ve worked for, I’d put him right at the top.”

Penny cites Kimball’s vast knowledge about the University as something that she feels the school will be losing when Kimball retires.

“He’s like his own little archive,” she said.

“Mark’s contributed an awful lot of love, care, passion, and leadership to the University,” Weiss said. “I believe that this will be his lasting legacy.”

Another long-time University employee, Facilities Director Waldo Hagen, is also set to retire Jan. 5.