UW-Green Bay, Chancellor, FYI, February 2007

	With energy, vision, we're staying 'green' at UW-Green Bay Greetings from Green Bay’s University of Wisconsin, where, with your help, we connect learning to life every day. Even after five years as chancellor of your University, I marvel at how each season brings out the stunning beauty of the campus landscape. Recent coats of snow have created postcard-perfect scenes all across the campus. I’d like to spend some time today exploring another feature of the campus, one that has a time-honored tradition at UW-Green Bay: our commitment to sustainability and environmental awareness. This commitment has long been shared and led by students, faculty, staff and community friends. From its earliest days, UW-Green Bay has been a national leader on the environment and sustainability. We have graduates throughout the country in positions of leadership on these issues. What do I mean by sustainability? For the clearest explanation of the concept, I will turn to the language used in UW-Green Bay’s new Master Plan. According to the Master Plan, “Sustainability is generally defined as meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Broadly speaking, sustainability leads us to consider the environmental impact of all our actions, from the goods we purchase to the buildings we build. The Master Plan, our new long-range development plan for the campus, goes on to note that UW-Green Bay, like other colleges and universities, has tremendous potential to increase the understanding of sustainability through classroom learning as well as through the University’s actions and policies.		Gov. Jim Doyle (right) visited last fall to announce UW-Green Bay is one of four campuses selected to pilot a promising energy-independence initiative. Also supporting the plan is state Sen. Dave Hansen, a 1970s alumnus who joins us in touting our proud history in environmental education. We clearly have been a leader in reaching our potential through educational offerings and classroom activities. UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Center for Biodiversity is an educational jewel that provides learning opportunities for our students and the community. Our Environmental Science and Policy graduate program is recognized nationally, not only because of top-notch faculty but because of its unique emphasis on both the policy and scientific sides of environmental issues. It’s a great example of how interdisciplinary education should work. Our graduate and undergraduate students have offered many innovative ideas for making UW-Green Bay more sustainable. I watched with great pride as our graduate students explained their recommendations for a sustainable campus to the UW System Board of Regents when the Regents met at UW-Green Bay last year. The students developed their recommendations as part of the graduate program’s capstone seminar. Students also displayed leadership by spearheading the NatureWise issue on campus, a plan to purchase electrical energy from renewable sources through a program offered by Wisconsin Public Service Corp.
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Office of the Chancellor, David A Cofrin Library, Suite 810, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
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Revised: 02/09/2007

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