Roland 'Buzz' Nelson retiring

Roland “Buzz” Nelson has served Viterbo University as the vice president of enrollment and director of Admission for 25 years. During those years he has watched the university blossom.

“When I first started, back in 1975, we enrolled maybe 800 students that year,” Nelson told Lumen. “Today we get about 3,000 new students. Viterbo has really changed since I first got here.” Nelson will be retiring at the end of the 2009-2010 spring semester, wrapping up 35 years working at Viterbo.

Nelson said, “Obviously the biggest thing that has changed besides the enrollment is obviously its size, both its footprint and in the number of options for students here. When I first came here, there were mostly nursing students, and the Fine Arts program wasn’t as large. There were only two main buildings too, the Murphy Center and the new Fine Arts Center. Viterbo’s physical geography has definitely changed, with new buildings like the Mathy Center and the Reinhart Center, and now we have many more programs for students.”

Nelson is a Wisconsin native, who earned his B.S. as an English and history double major at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and his M.S.T at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

“My main claim to fame at the time was a book I’d written about Edgar Allan Poe. There were a lot of writers writing essays explaining their view of the world, like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau,” Nelson said. “Poe was a bit of an outsider, because he didn’t have an essay like these other writers did. He started writing an essay similar to one Emerson wrote, and he called it ‘Eureka,’ but it was never published because Poe died before he could complete it. My book was basically an attempt to complete it,” Nelson said.

His book, titled “EUREKA: A Prose Poem, The Definitive Edition,” is now considered the most influential treatise on the essay. “It was my dissertation, and it got me my Ph.D,” Neslon said. Nelson’s Ph.D from Bowling Green State University led him to a position as an assistant professor of English at Dakota State University in South Dakota, where he became chair of the humanities division. “Later, however, I decided to come back to Wisconsin, and that’s what brought me to Viterbo, where I taught English,” Nelson said.

Nelson got his start in English, but he didn’t stay there for long. “Ten years after I started teaching at Viterbo, my writing skills actually led to the president at the time asking me to write a grant for a new program for adult learners,” Nelson said. “This led me out of the English department and into admissions. The program that the grant helped start was called the Evening School Program (ESP). I was made the director of the program, which eventually led to Viterbo launching the Business Program. Later, another President saw me as a potential Undergrad Admissions Director, and in 1985, I was asked to apply and I got the job.”