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Welcome
to campus! Regents visit marks unveiling of 'Northeastern Wisconsin Growth
Agenda for UW-Green Bay'
When your turn comes only once every seven years, you play your best card.
That’s why, this month, the “Northeastern Wisconsin
Growth Agenda for UW-Green Bay” will be on the table for serious
consideration.
On April 6 and 7, the Board of Regents — the citizen
governing board of the University of Wisconsin System — comes to
campus. Once or twice a year, the Board rotates its monthly meetings away
from Madison headquarters to visit outlying UW institutions. This ensures,
among other things, that every Regent, serving a seven-year term, experiences
every campus at least once.
Naturally, this is a show-and-tell opportunity for the hosts.
UW-Green Bay will be no exception. We will make certain the Regents, UW
officials and visiting media take away not only memories of a warm, welcoming
campus but also a detailed understanding of the Growth Agenda.
And just what will such an understanding entail?
First, the Growth Agenda has deep local roots. Practically
since the day I arrived in Green Bay five years ago, I have merely been
repeating publicly what our community has repeatedly told me: UW-Green
Bay needs to grow.
Seemingly frozen in time, capped by enrollment limits and
resource limitations at about 5,500 students for nearly two decades, UW-Green
Bay is too small. Our projections suggest that at a more optimal size
of 7,500 students (a nearly 50% increase), we would finally have that
suitable platform from which to more fully serve Wisconsin’s third-largest
metropolitan area, promote regional development, and ensure access for
all students.
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Regents, UW officials and others visiting this week will
no doubt be impressed by our beautiful campus, our Academic Excellence Symposium,
our focus on "Connecting,"...and the passion of our advocates.
That’s
not our idea, our agenda. It is this region’s agenda. That’s
why the Growth Agenda is the centerpiece of our presentation to the Regents,
and why local business and civic leaders will be the ones making the case.
Our community advocates will describe how Northeastern Wisconsin
is in major transition, with three great shifts happening at once:
• Economic — to a high-tech, new-skills 21st century
global economy;
• Regionalism — for the first time, we are actually
acting together, as a region; and
• Demographic — the reality of a mostly aging
citizenry, with new population growth dominated by diverse newcomers.
The panelists will make another key point: This initiative
calls for state investment.
TO
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