[media-credit name=’DEREK MONTGOMERY/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]This is the sixth part of a series profiling members of the Board of Regents, the governing board for the University of Wisconsin System.

Since retiring as vice president of Worldwide Marketing at the Parker Pen Company in Janesville 20 years ago, Regent Roger Axtell has spent much of his retirement speaking on international business and stressing the value of studying abroad.

"The quickest way to globalize the mind of a young person is through study abroad," Axtell said. "If you want to teach tolerance, just send someone overseas. As soon as they get off the airplane, they become a minority."

Axtell's retirement has been a productive one. In addition to serving on the Board of Regents, he has written nine books in his "Do's & Taboo's" series on international business, travel, customs, etiquette, gestures and humor. He is finishing his 10th offering this month, due out late next year.

"I had a wonderful opportunity to get a grounding in it and I've learned that companies that get involved in international business grow faster and prosper more," he said. "There's a growth opportunity both for the state economically and for careers in international [business]."

In the past decade, the number of UW students studying abroad has increased "by leaps and bounds," Axtell was happy to report.

"In 1997 only two percent of the students in the entire system were involved in study abroad. It's now over 10 percent and climbing radically," he said. "Each of the campuses is establishing multiple reciprocal relationships with campuses overseas."

One of the many casualties of recent state budget constraints, however, was the proposed addition of a UW System administrator to oversee system-wide international education.

"When I first came on the board we talked about having one person, a senior officer at the system level, dedicated solely to international education, but because of budget constraints we've not been able to do that," Axtell said.

Axtell is not alone in his concern over dwindling state funding of its public university system, and is one of several regents who have cited persuading legislators to increase funding as a primary objective.

"If I had one single priority, we must get [improvements] in chancellor compensation and also our top faculty, each campus is finding that they're getting some of their top faculty recruiting away," he said.

According to Axtell, the UW System is 16 percent behind its peers in faculty compensation, and said some of its chancellors have been wooed away for increases of $50,000 to $90,000.

"The university used to be 17 to 18 percent of the total state budget. It's now dropped down to 7 or 8 percent," he said. "That's got to be stopped and reversed, [but] I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's what bothers me."

UW System spokesperson Doug Bradley called Axtell an "international marketing guru" and said his public relations expertise has been invaluable to UW.

"I've had the pleasure of working with him in the last couple of years and he's probably got as acute a public relations sense as anybody on the board,'" Bradley said. "He's been personally valuable to me just in terms of ideas or suggestions or just recommendations on how we can properly … articulate the university's [position]."