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Pardon
the pun, but if you are on target, success snowballs. Our dynamic new Summer
Session (poster inset) is emblematic of how entrepreneurship can boost academic
initiatives. A win-win for the region and our partners, Summer 2006 promises
expanded learning opportunities and revenue. Why
summer?
Because this isn't your father's Oldsmobile
Greetings from Green Bay’s University of Wisconsin!
This week’s snowfall is much appreciated by those who favor outdoor
sports and crisp, clean landscapes, but I must confess the overall mild
winter has me looking ahead.
Each morning, when I step from the elevator and glance out over the lower
bay, I see a dark ribbon where in normal years there is an unbroken expanse
of white. The open channel reminds me to make time later this year to
enjoy the wonderful water resource at our doorstep. (With all signs pointing
to an early warm-up and ice “out,” there will be fewer excuses
not to get the boat “in.”)
I encounter another sign of warmer days to come in the hallway outside
my office. The sign, actually a poster, is one of many across campus urging
us to “Think Summer!”
The headline and its eye-catching Phoenix sunglasses graphic target students,
encouraging them to register for Summer Session 2006.
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The
poster itself represents a significant shift for UW-Green Bay. While I
generally heed the advice of my English-teacher mother on mixing metaphors,
I will, in the interest of illustrating this larger point, mash together
two advertising tag lines; our own “Think Summer” and the
familiar “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”
Our Summer Session campaign, nothing more than basic marketing, is nonetheless
noteworthy as a departure from past practice. It’s a new model entirely
— neither your father’s Oldsmobile nor his University —
and a model we’re excited to have driving our future development.
Clearly, today’s University is more entrepreneurial.
The shift has been taking place for some time now. Many of you have heard
me raise the distinction of UW-Green Bay being a “tax-assisted”
institution. We stopped being “tax-supported” long ago. Today,
only 30 percent of our expenses are covered by state funding.
It’s an alarming reality I won’t belabor
here, the privatization of public higher education, but I will express
pride we have done a fair job staving off the damage. Academia can be
an easy target for those who complain we are glacially slow to accept
change — aren’t those commencement gowns a fashion holdover
from medieval days? — but I believe our increasing flexibility has
served our communities well.
The “Think Summer” initiative is an example.
Little more than a year ago, summers here were noticeably
quieter than either fall or spring semester. Our popular youth summer
camps and the occasional adult education workshops generated some traffic,
but most years our undergraduate offerings were slim, limited to a relative
few tried-and-true sections sure to draw enrollment.
To tinker with this admittedly unsatisfying model would
have risked much for precious little gain. In a zero-sum game, we weren’t
about to redirect precious resources and courses away from our traditional
peak demand to the summer, when many of our continuing students have competing
obligations. The real barrier to expanding summer opportunities, though,
was a UW System formula that had us surrendering back nearly all of our
marginal tuition gains even if we did increase enrollment. |
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