2009 Fall Convocation Speech - Achievements: Year in Review
Speech Segments
‘Achievements’ Video Transcripts
So anyway, year-in review. Let me get going with that.
We had a recession, and it’s challenging to serve your region during a recession and such tough times. Our budgets got cut. Compensation got cut. But our region’s needs are as great as they have ever been.
The UW System set a record of 175,000 students, so enrollment pressure is up. Demand for a UW-Green Bay education is up, also. Adult Degree program is growing. Greatly valued by adult, place-bound students.
I think it’s notable that we kept our application process alive and open for local residents, many of whom have been hit hard by the recession, and have been required to change educational plans. So, that by the way, has gotten extremely positive comments from our community. They appreciate what we did and we actually made available, made it possible, for quite a number of students to attend college this year. Had we not done that, we would have closed them out.
Another nice gesture. Summer camps waived fees for low-income students.
As always, SBDC, Small Business Development Center, did a great job of programming and consulting.
I’m going to skip over some of these because there is so much to say. So if I skip over something about you, I apologize up front, and I’ll apologize again when I’m done.
With sustainability, that’s sort of our thing here. What have we done? Well, we took real step, as David Ward likes to say, reclaiming the title Eco-U for the 21st Century. We launched EMBI, the Environmental Management and Business Institute. Students launched U-Pass, promoting bus ridership. We hosted a successful Earth Day symposium, which by the way, I attended. That’s the one thing I witnessed in all of this. We tested bio-diesel in the campus boilers. Classified staff committed to a toner-cartridge recycling program.
With regard to campus infrastructure, this past year we celebrated a more perfect union; the one you’re sitting in right now. By completing this great University Union and dedicating it, it’s a very impressive, newly expanded facility. Thanks to the students, who helped fund that, and to patron revenue that we generate.
We received a long-term capital budget commitment for Rose and Wood Hall remodeling. Shorewood Golf Course was voted the top nine-hole course in the state. The Kress Events Center won a national innovation and architecture award. We redesigned the campus website, making an already good website even better. CIT, always working to improve learning technology, computing network, found ways to stretch scarce resources and expand our online resources.
Library use is up. In 2008, the gate count went up 6 percent, and circulation traffic went up 16 percent. I think that’s a pretty good sign. That’s a great sign.
We expanded classes, training sessions, by nearly 200, and served nearly 5,000 students in those training sessions.
We’ve added kindergarten to campus. The Green Bay Area Public School District located a 4-year-old kindergarten at the Ecumenical Center, and that turns out to be a tremendous benefit to our campus.
In the words of Edward Weidner, “Every great university has a carillon.” That sounds like him from what I know. That’s what he said. Well, we have our own Edward W. Weidner Memorial Carillon now.
With regard to international education, we made real progress in a number of ways. In 2008-09, the number of study abroad tours increased by 39 percent. The University committed new dollars to create the International Scholar in Residence program. And this fall, we will welcome our first resident scholar.
We’ve committed funds for visits abroad by 15 faculty members. Now that’s a pretty impressive number when you figure we have less than 200 faculty.
We’ve renewed a successful international visiting scholars program with St. Norbert College.
Pertaining to diversity, the new Center for First Nations Studies is opening, a collaboration of our Education and First Nations program with local tribes to improve K-12 instruction in history and sovereignty. What a great program. We are pairing our students with tribal elders in this program.
Also, we made encouraging gains in the number of students of color, topping 500 for the first time.
We expanded our Spanish for Professionals community offerings. We relocated the American Intercultural Center to the heart of the campus, to the heart of the Union.
Also, big initiatives in terms of LGBT. Partner benefits, a system-wide issue, were approved.
We’ve refined our repertoire. This year, Women’s Studies became Women’s and Gender Studies. We awarded two new scholarships in these areas. We hosted our first Ally Conference, so successful that we’re going to do it again in October.
We experienced our Common Theme activities. “Waging War, Waging Peace.” It was very well received. Tremendous example of liberal arts in action. An ambitious and comprehensive and timely series of programs with guest speakers, common readings, terrific student involvement, from student concerts to art exhibits to theatre productions, many activities that tied to the theme. A student U.N. Summit exercise, Human Development unit opened classes to the community.
Now, we have a theme for the current year, and we hope to be at least as successful with regard to the activities associated with “Realizing Our Sustainable Future.”
In fine arts, Balkan Women, which we heard about, earned a bid to Regional Festival Theatre, fifth trip in a decade. They won the team award for backstage work, a national mention for faculty technical direction. The Lawton Gallery acquired part of the Andy Warhol collection. The Music Program contributed greatly to the campus wide Common Theme programming. We presented Handel’s Messiah at the Weidner Center. The 2009 Jazzfest was judged the best ever with a tribute to Lovell Ives at the alumni concert.
In athletics, many of our student athletes receive academic honors, not just athletic honors, by the Horizon Conference and nationally. Sergio Garcia, the No. 5 golfer in the world, donated his time for a fundraiser. Women’s basketball had yet another trip to the NCAA tournament and was identified in the top 25 in the country for scholarship. Men made the post-season, too, and Terry Evans, one of our players, went to the national slam-dunk competition.
We’ve recorded our fifth-straight swimming and diving championship in the Horizon League, and we received national publicity for going green, (being) among the first NCAA schools to discontinue the use of media guides, and instead putting everything on the web.
We were recognized by a national magazine, and I’m switching a little bit here, for being a military friendly campus. We’ve recently created a new position, financial aid advisor with regard to veteran’s services. We had a big increase in veterans enrolled at UWGB. I’m particularly very proud of that, and I’m glad that we are able to meet the needs of our veterans. The annual Veteran’s Day reception has grown into a wonderful campus tradition, and we continue to expand the military care packages effort. Students arranged, in April, a show at the Weidner Center, which featured the Air Force concert band. We try very hard to spotlight our student veterans.
With regard to health and safety, we continue to emphasize emergency preparedness. And I understand we’ve actually shown a lot of leadership in this area. If you haven’t signed up for GB Alert, your text messaging alerts in the event of an emergency, please do so now. Well, not right now. Wait a few minutes.
We survived the Swine Flu scare, and had no disruption to students that I know of. And, I’m pretty confident that we’ll deal with that scare again this year, effectively.
Many other things happened with regard to each of these categories.
Faculty members as public intellectuals. To me, these are very, very interesting. We had professors appearing on PBS and NPR, writing copy for the New York Times, doing Q&A’s with Harper’s Magazine, supplying op-eds for major newspaper syndicates, traveling to Washington D.C. to present a state department symposium and, of course, doing all sorts of local and state interviews, appearances, lectures, conference presentations and so on. They published widely, they won national honors for design competitions, served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate, various other things. A lot of accomplishments with regard to the faculty, with regard to providing intellectual contributions to the public.
Faculty members as researchers. Our faculty secured a number of important grants, one for improving K-12 science teaching, another for testing pelletized fuel, to work with grassland bio-fuels, to conduct a very important container ship study for the port of Green Bay, for studying phosphorus pollution in the Great Lakes, and for studying bedrock under Brown County. I’m sure there are other research projects that I would really love to read, but let me move on.
Our students, as researchers, sometimes we don’t think about our students as researchers, but I think our professors do a great job of using opportunities and their courses to introduce students to good research.
Another great student Academic Excellence Symposium, which I’m really looking forward to attending. A very strong delegation to the Posters in the Rotunda, an event held at the state capitol. Students and faculty do vital work for this community. This University helped Green Bay’s On Broadway program earn state and national Main Street honors.
Advancement, shifting again, to Advancement. The capital campaign last year closed in on the $25 million goal it had had. We will celebrate success soon, as we go over that $25 million mark.
This past year we added three new named professorships, and made appointments to those positions. We continue to grow the number of endowed student scholarships and our alumni phone-a-thon held steady, which is pretty impressive in this economy. We received the Craig A. Mueller bequest for $1 million, which is the largest gift we’ve ever gotten from an alumnus. The funds really went to support students in Arts and Visual Design and in Communications.
We maintained and developed additional partnerships with other students. In sort of a miscellaneous category, we had another huge year for Phuture Phoenix. The program was honored as Wisconsin’s Program of Distinction and received our first major scholarship gifts for Phuture Phoenix. Major grants, also, to replicate the program at UW-Eau Claire. It’s a real compliment and it’s very flattering when you have an outstanding program, the state recognizes that and starts to implement it at other institutions in the state. So great work with Phuture Phoenix.
The Fourth Estate newspaper and TV 20 won student media competitions in the year. And the new Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is gearing up.
Well, there really is a lot more, and I actually have a lot more listed. Forgive me for not naming everything each of you did. But, like a previous speaker said, we do have to move on and I can’t blame Laura (Riddle) for my getting behind.