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We cannot confidently aswer
the question “Where are we headed?” without first considering “Where
have we been?” Before turning to the themes for the future, I begin by
recording what I have heard you report to be the answer to the question of,
“Where have we been?” In so doing, I will share some implications
this past has for our future, mixing in my own analyses so that you may correct,
refine, and improve my understanding.
Rather than the customary academic structure organized
by discipline and the usual colleges of arts, sciences, business, education,
and such, UWGB’s first academic structure was arranged around four themes:
Community Sciences, Creative and Communication Arts, Environmental Sciences,
and Health and Leisure Time (later Human Biology). The academic plan for UWGB,
from its inception and at its core, expressed a commitment to be freed from
the bonds of tradition and to explore new, more effective ways to organize and
apply higher learning. More revolutionary but, perhaps, not as dramatic, budgets
— then and now — flow through interdisciplinary programs rather than
through disciplinary departments.
Here in this dedication to continuing academic
innovation — to radically rethinking how higher education can best serve
society — is where I believe we find our most important and most essential
academic and institutional heritage. We are about figuring out where higher
education needs to be in the future.
Academic themes do not make good headlines; political
causes do; and a somewhat different popular image emerged. Within years of its
1962 publication, Silent Spring joined such classics as The Federalist Papers
and Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the short list of American polemics that had compelling
political effect; thinking about environmental issues was rapidly capturing
the attention of Americans; UWGB’s first entering class was on campus to
celebrate, during its first year, what was the nation’s first Earth Day
(April 22, 1970), and environmental concerns became a key focus for a small,
new institution dedicated to practical problem solving, interdisciplinary approaches,
and engagement in the issues of the day. UWGB gained some national note as “Environmental
U.”
Strengths in various academic areas were a result,
strengths of continuing importance today: those in the life sciences, policy
sciences, ecosystem management, and other related fields, valuable centers and
institutes were created, we developed rich and diverse natural areas for field
research, and tested and proved the value of our overarching commitment to interdisciplinarity.
Also tied to these environmental roots, most certainly, is our good fortune
in having created from cornfields and then protected, a naturally beautiful
campus. In that natural beauty, we are also an important resource for our region.
If you have followed my analysis, though, our
origins are not as the “Environmental U” per se but as the “Innovative
U.” That means to me that, applying the same compelling commitments to
engagement and innovation that are our roots, we will, today and tomorrow, be
grappling with a wide range of social, economic, and cultural challenges including
but not limited to those that are environmental. We should be so doing. We are
so doing. We will continue to do so.
I reach the same conclusion about our roots and
their current implications following a somewhat different line of reasoning.
Thirty years ago, farsighted predecessors established a campus committed to
engaging our students — and ourselves! — in learning that was interdisciplinary,
that involved solving practical problems, and that incorporated engagement in
the community. Today, higher education around the country has realized the wisdom
of the course charted by UWGB. Terminology has changed; for example, aspects
of what we once called “communiversity” and “practical problem
solving” are known elsewhere as “service learning.”
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The
rest of higher education is trying to be where UWGB was 30 years ago. Our higher
education colleagues had a greater struggle because they have entrenched higher
education orthodoxies to battle and because they have organizational structures
not designed to support the approaches demanded by the issues of today. Our
challenge is to figure out where higher education needs to be 30 years from
now. But, unlike our UWGB predecessors, we now also have a legacy of traditional
UWGB orthodoxies that we must mine for their strengths but be ready to alter
when they pose impediments.
Several other aspects of our past are worth noting
as we think about our preferred future in part because they have given rise
to certain persistent misconceptions:
• Curricula: Early on, UWGB’s innovative approaches included
baccalaureate curricula with novel titles. Logical enough. This did create a
popular misconception that UWGB’s programs did not easily transfer and
that such programs prepared students for limited employment possibilities. While
the campus was innovative, 18-year-old students — and their parents —
typically are not, particularly when betting their futures. Enrollments suffered.
The campus transformed certain programs and added others while maintaining a
commitment to interdisciplinary curricula. Professional programs were added
and, like most campuses of our type, today business and teacher preparation
are the most popular undergraduate majors. This is a fact that continues to
surprise many with whom I speak in the community; the image of UWGB as “the
place with all those funny degrees” is amazingly resilient.
• Student
body: In its earliest days, UWGB was a “commuter campus.” People
with whom I speak in the community are often surprised to learn that, today,
about 70% of our students are residential in the sense that they are not living
in their own home or the home of a parent while attending UWGB. About half of
these residential students live on campus. Our population of “traditional
aged” students has been increasing. These changes simultaneously raise
several issues for us to consider. On the one hand, our facilities to serve
traditional students lag behind the change in our student body: in dining, in
other Union support services, in exercise and fitness facilities, and, according
to our students, in the quality of student life, particularly on the weekends.
On the other hand, our attention to building a traditional student body and
traditional campus seems to have left us without the infrastructure or the incentives
to meet the exploding demand for higher education coming from non-traditional
students.
• Communiversity: UWGB, as a founding hallmark, emphasized engagement
with the community. Some, on campus and off, report that that never “really”
happened. Others say that it did. Still others simply say that, in more recent
years, UWGB turned to focus in on itself.
• Size: UWGB, then located in one of Wisconsin’s major economic
and population centers, was planned as a campus of 15,000 to 22,000. Today,
still located in a major and dynamic metropolitan area, we are, at 5,500, one
of the smallest of the UW campuses and have been within 10% of 5,000 for the
last two decades.
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