Chancellor's FYI | December 2004

	2004: Watershed year for our region? Greetings from Green Bay’s University of Wisconsin! By the time you are reading this, Cyndie, Paul and I will have already put away several sizeable helpings of Thanksgiving dinner, spent the weekend stowing away any remaining warm-weather gear, and turned our attention to the December holidays. Soon, I will have my lighted Phoenix cutout — complete with Santa’s cap — installed in its place near the mailbox at our Bay View Drive residence. We host many campus and community receptions this time of year. The big Phoenix is a fun way to help visitors find us. I enjoy the holiday season. I enter this one with smile already in place, thanks to a pair of seemingly unrelated gatherings in Green Bay last week, one on campus, one at the KI Center. The topics were “The Future of Education in Northeast Wisconsin” and “Regional Economic Partnership.” Sound heavy? Each program was actually a welcome bit of fresh air. Let’s start with the University’s annual Founders Association Dinner. We had a great turnout, about 200 people, for a marvelous meal and social hour. The “dessert” was a fast-moving panel discussion on education. For the first time at a Founders event, I was joined by my distinguished counterparts from the College of Menominee Nation, the Green Bay Area Public Schools, St. Norbert College, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and Bellin College of Nursing. We took turns addressing education issues of the day. Naturally, we couldn’t completely resist tooting our own horns about our respective institutions... but we sang each other’s praises, as well. I confessed that I wondered beforehand whether such a gathering would even be possible — open evenings are scarce at the height of the semester — but the perfect attendance shouldn’t have been a surprise. The group photo that night basically tells the story. We stand together, we work together and we will pursue even more partnerships together. “We collaborate in this community, and I’m proud of that,” President Hynes of St. Norbert College told the audience. Superintendent Nerad: “Most of the boundaries are artificial... we need to continue to blur these lines... we are stronger when we work together.”		The local education community, especially in recent years, has shown the way toward regional advancement through collaboration. Posing at last week's get-together were Verna Fowler, president of the College of Menominee Nation; Green Bay Schools Superintendent Dan Nerad; Bill Hynes, president of St. Norbert College; myself; Jeff Rafn, president of Northeast Wisconsin Technical College; and Jane Muhl, president of the Bellin College of Nursing. “I see the day,” added Jeff Rafn of NWTC, “when a student will be able to move freely among these institutions.” Each of us talked about partnerships already in place. Those of you familiar with UW-Green Bay know I speak proudly of our visiting scholars program and language-instruction deals with St. Norbert; our articulation agreements with UW colleges in our region, NWTC and CMN; the fact Bellin students take their liberal arts courses on our campus; the MSW program we share with UW-Oshkosh. Most of you know about the Phuture Phoenix program, too, but for many it was new and flattering to hear Dan Nerad praise it from a local-schools perspective. There was excitement in his voice as he described rising aspiration and awareness among the 5th-graders who visit our University. Jane Muhl told of a tremendous addition for our region with her new master’s in nursing. Students will come not only from Bellin’s baccalaureate nursing program, but from the ranks of nurses finishing the UW-Green Bay degree-completion program and, ultimately, NWTC diploma students, CMN transfers and some of those very same Green Bay school 5th-graders. Local health care, of course, is the ultimate beneficiary.
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