Fred M. & Barbara J. Arndt Writing Center — Established by Fred '70 and Barbara in 2020
Frederick Arndt has held executive and leadership positions in human resources in Fortune 50 corporations as well as startup and early-stage ventures for more than 45 years, including McKesson Corporation, SegaSoft, Capitol Records, Apple Computer, Searle Pharmaceuticals, Frito-Lay, and Baxter International.
Arndt admits that when he was a senior in high school, it wasn’t clear he would make it to UW-Whitewater — or any college campus. “My high school counselor said that, given my test scores, I wasn’t really college material,” he said. His brother had gone to UW-Madison, but he felt that campus was too big for him. He knew about UW-Whitewater because an uncle had graduated from Whitewater State Teachers College in the 1930s, and while Arndt was in high school, his grandmother was a house mother in one of the fraternity houses, so he’d go to Whitewater to pick her up and bring her home for the holidays.
Once he arrived on campus as a freshman, he knew he’d found his fit. He started out as a business major, but a first-semester accounting class made him consider political science instead. He took a Shakespeare course and was fascinated. He took every English class he could so that by the time he was a junior, he was 3 to 4 credits away from a second major in English, so he added it. One of the classes was creative writing.
“I knew writing would be helpful. The professor was a wild-haired guy with horn-rimmed glasses. I wrote an essay, he read it, and then he said, ‘I looked at this, and you only wrote a page and a half. I read it again, and it dawned on me, you wrote what needed to be written — it was an economy of writing.’ But the grade was a C+. I asked the professor why I didn’t get an A, and he answered, ‘Your grammar.’ Although I ended up with a D in the class, it was the best class I took. Throughout my career, people have complimented me on the way in which I write.”
After graduating, Arndt spent three years serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. When he returned, he began working in human resources, eventually holding executive and leadership positions with Fortune 50 corporations as well as startup and early-stage ventures until he retired from corporate leadership roles and established a consulting practice dedicated to leadership and human resource practices. He attributes much of his success, both professional and personal, to his experiences at UW-Whitewater. He especially credits his professors in liberal arts studies — in particular, writing and literature.
In 2020, the Arndts donated a major gift supporting Campus Tutorial Services in the Mary Poppe Chrisman Success Center. The Fred and Barbara Arndt Writing Center is an accessible space that will support tutorial services for students who need guidance in writing. “Writing contributed 50% to my success in the corporate world,” said Arndt.
