The only thing anyone should be for life is oneself.
Dr. Philip Blank, an activist, earned a doctorate focused on leadership in vocational and technical education from Michigan State University in 1979. Before receiving his PhD, he worked 35 years as an educator. Dr. Blank was one of the first delegates to the Milwaukee County labor council, serving as president of the American Federation of Teachers Local 212 from 1962 -1963. Notably, Dr. Blank is recognized for having helped the Union win collective bargaining rights in June 1963.
He chose to fund this endowment to honor the late Robert Repas, professor emeritus of the Michigan State University School of Labor and Industrial Relations, and the late Max Raines, professor emeritus and faculty member in the Department of Educational Administration from 1965 to 1993. Both were members of Dr. Blank's dissertation committee at MSU. The dissertation involved a feasibility study on Public Planning, Proposal, and Research work.
"I went to MSU because of Max Raines," recalls Dr. Blank. As Dr. Blank puts it, Dr. Raines was a "most humanistic" individual; "he was a great role model." In 1971, when Dr. Blank was a Public Enterprise Committee member in Milwaukee, former Milwaukee Mayor Frank P. Zeidler recommended that Dr. Blank look up Professor Bob Repas. Professor Repas urged Dr. Blank to take his course on Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector so that Dr. Blank could write about how Dr. Blank led his union to win the first contested teacher union representative election in Wisconsin. Professor Repas was at the University of Wisconsin in Economics with a specialty in labor relations and later joined MSU. A dynamic union activist, Professor Repas was passionate about improving the lives of workers through collective bargaining. Professor Repas was highly respected on the campus. Dr. Blank's hope in establishing this endowment is to honor these two MSU faculty leaders' legacy of a humanistic approach to collective bargaining. Dr. Blank discovered early in life that “the only competition you should ever have is with yourself.”