Stories from the May 2007 Issue

Named scholarships push Campaign for UW-Green Bay
past $15 million

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s capital campaign has passed a notable milestone.

Private donations to the Campaign for UW-Green Bay have surpassed $15 million, reports Steve Swan, assistant chancellor for university advancement. Swan says it is fitting that a flurry of new named scholarships, rather than a single exceptionally large gift, provided the momentum.

“This is a community and campus-wide effort, and it’s gratifying to see the donor response,” he says. “We’ve had more than a dozen new scholarship endowments created in the last year alone. Every time that happens, UW-Green Bay students benefit for generations to come.”

The Campaign’s overall goal is $25 million. Phase II priorities also include various academic enhancements such as programming, professorships and faculty/staff development.

A larger scholarship array makes college more affordable for those with financial need, and increases the number of merit scholarships for top students from Northeastern Wisconsin and beyond. Recipients return the favor by making their classmates’ experience more competitive and by contributing to the region’s economy and quality of life following graduation.



Throns' gift a tribute to gifted colleague

Julie Brickley was a talented and popular instructor whose passion for good writing had the capacity to inspire even previously indifferent students.

Colleagues Joan and Michael Thron enjoyed observing Brickley in action as early as 1967, when the brand-new University was assembling its English faculty.

“Julie believed passionately that language lived at the heart of learning in every discipline,” Joan says today. “She brought its joy and beauty to her daily teaching.”

In tribute, Joan and Michael have made a five-figure commitment to create the Julie Brickley Memorial Scholarship. The permanent endowment will make available annual scholarship assistance to a continuing student or students. In keeping with their friend’s legacy, the Throns have designated that recipients be chosen by the composition program from among the entire student body, not just English majors.

Brickley passed away at her home in Sturgeon Bay in 1998, at age 72. She was the first woman to receive the UW-Green Bay Founders Award for teaching excellence, and she founded and chaired the Women’s Studies program.

Concerned HeartsNursing

Drivers for the Red Cross, creators of the “Heart Hugger Pillow,” volunteers who staff Bellin Health’s waiting areas and counsel family and recovering patients — members of the local Concerned Hearts Club are known for good works.

Now the Club is doing something special for nursing students at UW-Green Bay. They will award $1,000 annually to a student with a career goal of heart-related medical care.

“We agreed it’s a good cause,” says club president Jim Tuschl. “Nurses helped us, so we’ll help them.”

Club members have all had cardiac conditions. Their fundraisers include golf outings and dinner dances. Additionally, this year the Club was a beneficiary of the Packers Heart Cap promotion sponsored by the team and American Family Insurance.

New to UW-Green Bay’s list of named endowed scholarships:

  • Bollom Family Scholarship
  • Julie Brickley Scholarship
  • Green Bay Photojournalism Scholarship
  • Jeremy Green Family Scholarship (Human Biology)
  • Hagemeister Family Art Scholarship
  • Philip J. Hendrickson Business Scholarship
  • Sally and Bernard Killoran Scholarship (Education)
  • Robert Maier Scholarship
  • Craig Mueller Phuture Phoenix Scholarship
  • Prast/Gustman Scholarship
  • Loretta Wells Nursing Scholarship

New “annual scholarships,” in which donors agree to make an annual or one-time gift, include the Concerned Hearts Club Nursing Scholarship, Ken Fleurant Scholarship, Tony Galt International Travel Scholarship and the NEWONS (NEW chapter of Oncology Nurses Society) Nursing Scholarship.
Named scholarships can be created for as little as $10,000, creating an annual payout of about $500, in perpetuity.

Give it a try! Online giving is here
UW-Green Bay has joined the ranks of institutions with a secure site for online philanthropy. Members of the Founders Association, contributors to the annual Alumni phone-a-thon, and capital campaign donors will learn more when contacted for their respective campaigns. Interested in giving it a try? Visit www.uwgb.edu/advancement/.

Honors for Tony, Ben and Carol

Last names optional. That’s the sort of induction class it was for the 2007 Phoenix Hall of Fame.
UW-Green Bay fans across the country are plenty familiar with Phoenix basketball legends Tony Bennett, Ben Johnson and Carol Hammerle.

Hammerle founded the women’s program and won nearly 500 games in 25 years, with 21 consecutive winning seasons and a dozen 20-win campaigns. She left UW-Green Bay for Northern Illinois in 1998 and retired from coaching in 2005.

Johnson was a cornerstone of the first NCAA Division I tournament team in 1991, capable of dominating games as a defensive stopper. A communications graduate, he played and coached professionally in Australia and at UW-Green Bay before accepting an assistant’s job at Washington State University.

The highly visible Bennett, often referred to as the most decorated athlete in UW-Green Bay history, is now, arguably, the school’s most-decorated alumnus, period. As first-year head coach of Washington State, he swept national coach of the year honors at age 37 and earned a long-term contract extension for leading the Cougars (26-8) to their best season in 60 years. A humanistic studies major, Bennett graduated from UW-Green Bay in 1992, as did Johnson.

More than 62,000 residents of Northeastern Wisconsin hold technical college associate degrees, and 2,000 new graduates join them each year.

That’s a big market of potential transfers for UW-Green Bay — but it’s a market state universities haven’t always been particularly adept at serving.

“Many of these working adults have looked to us in the past,” concedes Chancellor Bruce Shepard, “but would get discouraged by our inability to give them credit for previous coursework.”

“For a long time,” echoes Jeff Rafn, president of Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, “technical college and the university were worlds apart. Now we are working together.”

Beginning this fall, individuals with associate degrees from area technical colleges will be able to seamlessly transfer those degrees to UW-Green Bay as a block of 60 credits, leading to the newly created Bachelor of Applied Studies (BAS) Degree.

It is expected many will enroll through UW-Green Bay’s Adult Degree Program, which coordinates weekend classes and online learning primarily for working adults. (More detail is available at www.uwgb.edu/adult/index.asp.)

The UW-Green Bay degree and a similar offering at UW-Oshkosh are the first of their kinds in the state. Officials were able to hammer out a better fit between the two systems so there are immediate answers for local tech-college students wondering if their prior credits will “count” if they enroll at the university.

Messages such as “Prep 4 UWGB” are being seen at the main NWTC campus on West Mason Street. The program is also open to grads of Fox Valley, Moraine Park and Lakeshore techs, and potentially others.

Run by volunteers since its inception in 2003, the award-winning Phuture Phoenix program is getting a permanent home at UW-Green Bay.

It was announced earlier this spring that the Institute for Learning Partnership, based on campus, is taking over administrative responsibility. The move is intended to strengthen the University’s ties to Phuture Phoenix, an award-winning program that encourages at-risk youngsters to graduate high school and attend college.

John Crubaugh of the Institute sees a perfect fit: “In the long run, we’ll be able to help Phuture Phoenix because of our contacts with K-12 schools.”

Co-founders Cyndie Shepard and Ginny Riopelle will remain with the program, which last year brought nearly 1,500 local fifth-graders to campus for a pair of tour days, paired UW-Green Bay student mentors with the children, and placed college students including in Phuture Phoenix Clubs in local schools.

Faculty and staff news

UW-Green Bay faculty members shared lessons of history and communication in separate speaking engagements to U.S. military audiences. Prof. Craig Lockard delivered a lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy on the topic of “The Rise of World History Studies.” Prof. Phillip Clampitt conducted a continuing-education seminar at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Penn., based on his book Embracing Uncertainty: The Essence of Leadership.

Prof. Kim Nielsen, Social Change and Development, had a piece, “Was Helen Keller Deaf? Blindness, Deafness, and Multiple Identities,” included in the volume Double Divisions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Women and Deafness published by Gallaudet University Press.

Prof. Russell Arent of Humanistic Studies is the recipient of the institution’s Research Scholar Award, with support for developing material on the topic “Listening and Speaking Across Cultures.”

Among books released this winter were Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome by Prof. Greg Aldrete, Humanistic Studies; the second edition of Urban and Regional Studies Prof. Ismail Shariff’s International Trade: Theory and Policy; the civil rights and labor biography A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard by Prof. Andrew Kersten, Social Change and Development; and physics Prof. Anjani K. Mehra’s newly published astronomy text for non-majors, Discovering the Cosmos. In addition, Public and Environmental Affairs colleagues Profs. Michael Kraft (co-editor) and Scott Furlong (chapter author) contributed to Business and Environmental Policy: Corporate Interests in the American Political System.

Phillip Clampitt, Hendrickson Professor of Business and faculty member in Information and Computing Science, drew attention with his “Decision Downloading” research involving dozens of executives nationwide and some of his corporate communication students at UW-Green Bay. He published an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal carried a lengthy article in its March 19 edition.

A pilot program for first-year UW-Green Bay students aimed at increasing student involvement and improving retention has shown significant promise. In fall semester 2006, six faculty members — Denise Bartell, Scott Furlong, Regan Gurung, Stefan Hall, Andrew Kersten, and Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges — each taught small sections approximately 25 students, of what normally are 90- to 120-student general education courses. Special emphasis was placed on writing and interaction with faculty, and an interdisciplinary group project tapped problem-solving and communication skills. A followup survey revealed high student satisfaction. The UW-Green Bay professors published their results in a UW System teaching journal.

Receiving Teaching Enhancement Grants this semester to promote the development of innovative teaching strategies were Hosung Song and Bruce La Plante, Information and Computing Science; Denise Bartell, Human Development; Regan Gurung, Human Development; Donna Ritch, Human Biology; Aeron Haynie, Humanistic Studies; and Terri Johnson, Public and Environmental Affairs.

Prof. Christine Style of the art faculty received the Women’s Leadership Award at the annual student leadership luncheon in March. Style (prints) and colleague Prof. Curt Heuer (sculpture) also gained accolades for their art, with separate spring exhibits at the Wisconsin Arts Board Gallery in Madison.

A flavorful and fun-filled campus tradition since 1994, the annual Chili Cookoff had a high-flying winner this year with Kay Endries and Pat Sorelle representing the Phoenix Bookstore. Their “Just Ducky Chili” took home the traveling trophy after a taste-test vote by noontime diners in the Cloud Commons. Their entry barely edged out Jane Swan’s “Mississipi Special Chili” and Fran Carman’s “Global Warming Chili.”



. . . More campus news

Conservative talker draws a crowd

What a year! Playing through the dust and disruption of their new 4,000-seat home going up right next door… losing a few games early and then not losing again for three months… and ultimately dealing with a highly publicized coaching change…

The UW-Green Bay Phoenix women’s basketball team had a season for the ages in 2006-07.

The 29-4 finish and a 26-game winning streak set program records. The team was No. 22 in the final AP poll (the program’s third national ranking in five years). Capping it all was yet another NCAA tournament trip, a 59-52 win vs. New Mexico in the opening round (post-game victory jig, at left), and a hard-fought, leading-at-halftime loss to perennial power Connecticut in a game played in Hartford.

In the fall issue of this magazine, look for more on the hiring of a new women’s basketball coach to succeed Kevin Borseth. The Upper Peninsula native stepped down as Phoenix coach to accept the top position with the University of Michigan.

For nearly a dozen years, no one on campus had seen Prof. Bill Niedzwiedz with his hair down. It was in 1996 that he found the power of the ponytail: “I tied it back for noonball to keep the hair out of my eyes and just stuck with it.” He got a trim last year but his students had a better idea: Grow it out and donate it to Locks for Love, a charitable organization that makes wigs from human hair for those who have lost theirs. In December, with his mane at mid-back, Bill made the call to Theresa Neta, his stylist at Hats Off (called upon in recent years only for split-end duty) and said, “Let’s do this!” Fourteen inches lighter, Bill now has two purposes for future “ponies” — jump shots and charity.

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Kress Project (with special roofing) rolls on

The name Silverdome may be trademarked, but it is nonetheless a decent descriptor for the new look atop the Kress Events Center at UW-Green Bay. In early May crews from the Fabral company began unspooling thin panels of durable, 24-gauge steel to span the roof’s 325-foot length. Fabral says the roughly one-acre expanse is the largest arched metal roof they have installed. Inside, finishing touches are being applied as the $33 million Kress Center readies to open by mid-semester, fall 2007.