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2006
Faculty and Staff CONVOCATION |
| THE YEAR AHEAD |
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So, the basic priorities and strategies remain relevant: connecting
learning to life and campus to community. What more specific activities
will capture our attention during the year we, this morning, are beginning? Weidner Center Let’s start with a challenge on many minds, here and throughout the community: the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts. During the fiscal year just concluded and even after the dramatic staffing changes I announced last December (staffing has gone from 24 employees to 3), the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts ended the fiscal year having lost over $2,000,000. Elsewhere, I have written at length on the causes but, basically, the market changed. And not just for our community’s Weidner Center. Consider that, according to forms filed with the federal government, revenues for the performing arts center to the south of us fell short of operating costs by over $3,500,000. A shortfall of $2,000,000 is not sustainable. Neither is $3,500,000. A task force of community leaders jointly appointed by the Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce and UWGB studied many possibilities, regional, county-wide, and local. From that work, it appears the best approach is a partnership requiring major contributions from the community and from the University. The University has made an ongoing commitment to fund the Weidner Center at $250,000 annually. This will support about half the Weidner Center uses you have been accustomed to: fine arts performances, community and campus uses, and the frequent nationally touring performers and shows that ask to rent the house. A non-profit corporation known as Weidner Center Presents will take the lead in further main-stage programming and in generating the philanthropic support that, at houses like the Weidner, must generate revenues on average of 40% of operating costs. For the University, we make a major but known commitment. We avoid putting at risk, with the Weidner’s operating reserves now depleted, millions of dollars, dollars given to us by our students, their parents, and the Legislature to teach classes and support learning. For the community, there is an entity that will allow additional programming at levels that audiences and donors, together, support. Change, yes. And change is difficult. But, I truly believe we are taking a leadership position, here, well ahead of others in adjusting to an environment that has irreversibly altered. Higher Learning Commission Accreditation Preparation for institutional reaccreditation is upon us. It will require significant effort by many in this room. Many task forces are hard at work already, under Dr. Tim Sewall’s steady hand. Your involvement is critical – technically to meet the requirements of reaccreditation but, more importantly, if all the required effort is actually going to make a difference in the kind of university we wish to work to become. Please do become meaningfully involved in the self-study process. Mission Statement One accreditation focus is undeniable. We must revisit our mission statement. It is outdated and no longer fully accurate. Central to our debate on mission will be the role of interdisciplinarity. I will argue until no breath is left that interdisciplinarity is ever more relevant to our mission. I will argue. But, you will decide, and there is increasing debate on our campus about the continuing importance of interdisciplinary approaches. And, if not interdisciplinarity, then to what will we commit as a hallmark of our educational approach? As chancellor, I have emphasized commitment to community – AASCU uses the phrase “Stewards of Place” – as a distinguishing feature of all universities like ours. Communities support universities that support communities. Is that just the chancellor talking or should that become formalized as an integral part of the mission statement? Two mission-related questions. You will have much better subjects, provocative ones I hope, for the campus to mull as you create a mission statement for the next UWGB. |
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Curricular
Improvement The self-study provides us the opportunity – really, the requirement – to critically examine what is the most important aspect of any university activities: the curriculum we offer. We already know the data flag many opportunities for improvement. You have heard me refer repeatedly to the challenges we face with our general education program. It’s time to actually act even if it means experiments that may fail. We will learn in the doing. Let’s do this for ourselves and our students and not to meet the pressures of an outside entity. NCAA Certification While on the subject of accreditation, let me also emphasize that intense preparation and self-study required for the NCAA’s recertification that will occur during the year ahead. This is not an activity of the Athletic Department. Just the opposite: the whole idea of NCAA accreditation is driven by the intention that the student in student-athlete comes first and that it is the University and its agenda that is driving the athletic programs. The self-study is being ably led by Vice Chancellor Maki, and has participation by people from across the University. Please take advantage of opportunities to comment and critique as drafts of the self-study are drafted, revised, and revised again. The Equity Scorecard and Diversity Drawing from successful experiences at other major universities, the UW System offered campuses the opportunity to be among the pilot institutions for implementation of the “Equity Scorecard” approach. We jumped at the chance, and a number of you have become involved. This is a “data driven” approach, and that is its appeal to an academic like me. We use analytical approaches to identify the biggest roadblocks to what, in my mind, is our most important challenge: reflecting the diversity that increasingly enriches our community. Indeed, you, the pioneers in UWGB’s piloting, reported back to me that the UW System was moving too slowly and asked if we could break free to move even more quickly. That we have done. That commitment must continue and will expand to include most of campus. And, again, as I have emphasized last year, diversifying our faculty and staff is the single greatest challenge we have in order for UWGB to have the capacity to succeed as Green Bay’s University of Wisconsin. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the self-interested thing to do. And, as the appointing authority, I follow every hire and am greatly heartened by the progress you are making, day-by-day, in what is, I know, a difficult priority. Please join with me in rededicating ourselves to continuing success in diversifying our faculty and staff. Phuture Phoenix Phuture Phoenix, with your wonderful support, guidance, and innovative thinking, has grown from a one-day campus visit to a complex and award-winning program with continual presence in the K-12 schools, an academic research component, programs for multiple grades, opportunities for our Education students to try out their career ambitions early in their time with us and to develop abilities to serve critical educational needs, and a model for the governor’s premier K-12, higher education initiative called the Wisconsin Compact. Run to date on volunteer efforts – many in this room, and thank you, philanthropic support, and successful competition for grants, we have avoided institutionalizing it. No state money, no governing board, …. Lots of great volunteers. No governing boards or administrative infrastructure. That was essential for the rapid evolution of an experimental and innovative idea. The Phuture Phoenix program has also become a key component of our Growth Agenda. Something that important to the future of our community and our campus, if it is to continue, must now become a regular ongoing part of the University. Achieving institutionalization of Phuture Phoenix is an essential task for the year ahead. |
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TOP OF PAGE Office of the Chancellor, David A Cofrin Library, Suite 810, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 Phone: 920-465-2207 E-mail: shepardb@uwgb.edu Comments to: Chancellor's Web Manager Revised: 08/23/2006 |