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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 9/26/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
August 31, 2005 Editorial: Strong UWGB key to regional economy Issue:
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay When Chancellor Bruce
Shepard addressed the faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay recently, he had plenty of reason to complain about Madison lawmakers
and their politically motivated UWGB budget cuts.
Just weeks earlier, the Legislature had gone on a cutting spree until it had reduced the UWGB biennial budget by more than $2 million. Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed some of the cuts but the school still wound up with $1 million less than anticipated.
Shepard acknowledged the frustration and emotion connected with that process but, to his credit, focused in his speech, instead, on the role that UWGB must play in Northeastern Wisconsin's transition from an old manufacturing-based economy to a new economy for the future.
"Ours is a region with a rich tradition of manufacturing strength, an entrepreneurial culture and a strong work ethic that combined to build an economic dynamo important to the whole state and that provided for us here secure, family-wage jobs supporting a high quality of life and the elements critical to that high quality of life in the fine arts, recreation and vital civic and community organizations," he said.
But Northeastern Wisconsin is changing. Not only is the growing population more racially and ethnically diverse, but the secure, good-paying jobs available to people with a high school education are disappearing. Replacing traditional manufacturing operations are firms with fewer employees and more computers. They're firms, Shepard explained, where "the real corporate assets (are) to be found in the educated brain power of those whose contributions involve designing, leading, visioning, capitalizing, marketing, foreseeing, motivating, educating and relentlessly innovating."
"No wonder, then, that regions successful in making such a transition have, at their core, strong public universities," Shepard said.
That's something the shortsighted, politically driven Legislature has yet to figure out. But, for UWGB to use politicians' ignorance and budget setbacks as reasons to cling to the status quo would be to condemn the school to mediocrity when a strong regional university is increasingly vital to community well-being and growth.
Shepard said that UWGB would not stand still, that it would proceed with an aggressive agenda to increase enrollment and make the campus more diverse.
As tough as the challenge will be, Shepard has it right. But he'll need strong support from the Northeastern Wisconsin community to convince state legislators that the state's future demands that they stop using the UW System as a pawn in their politically driven budget fights.
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