INSIDE THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - GREEN BAY Celebrating ALL BUSINESS and engineering, healthcare, music, theatre and more Gary L. Miller is driving for an innovating, transforming and regionally focused UW-Green Bay • MAY 2015 • 50 years, and the Powers of the Phoenix Greetings! In fall 2015, UW-Green Bay will celebrate its 50th anniversary. We’re planning reunions, an open house and programs on campus and in the community that will recall our history and fix coat thank our supporters. We’ll offer fun ways for 32,000 alumni to reconnect and for 6,500 current students to embrace tradition. We’ll welcome back founding faculty and our earliest graduates, and we’ll marvel together at how Edward Weidner’s dream has become a modern, highly respected university. Our 50th isn’t merely about nostalgia, however. It’s about the future. At its founding in 1965, UW-Green Bay was one of America’s most innovative institutions, organized around the idea that students should tackle great problems. In the global knowl- edge economy of today, we must reinvest in our innovative roots to power education and economic prosperity for our region and the nation. We’ll do this by focusing our energies on the three Powers of the Phoenix: the Power of Innovation, the Power of Transformation and the Power of Place. You’ll be hearing more about this vision and our progress in the coming year. With inspiration from our past and from the Phoenix itself — a mythical bird that is periodically reborn or regenerated — we at UW-Green Bay will use our anniversary as an opportunity to reshape our University for the future. Go Phoenix! Gary L. Miller Chancellor Innovation • Transformation • Place INSIDE THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - GREEN BAY INSIDE UW-GREEN BAY May 2015 Volume 41, No. 2 Features EDITOR Christopher Sampson FINALLY, ENGINEERING! CONTRIBUTING 5 Three new bachelor’s degrees have WRITERS local industries revved up with excitement Sue Bodilly ’87 & ’03 Daniele Frechette ’11 Katelyn Staaben ’15 Kate Akerboom ’17 CAT ISLAND TALE 6 How UW-Green Bay and a new DESIGNER breakwater spanning half the bay Yvonne Splan relate to environmental progress PHOTOGRAPHER Eric Miller THE BEST IN STUDENT RESEARCH 20 Profiling the stars of Posters in the Rotunda 2015 CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Kimberly Vlies Daniele Frechette ’11 Samantha Zingsheim ’15 32 ALUMNI MEMORIES Association has big plans to • celebrate 50 years of UWGB Inside UW-Green Bay is published by the Office of University Advancement and departments its Marketing and Communication unit. We welcome your comments. 13 23 31 Email them to log@uwgb. on the cover edu; or address them to: The newly remodeled headquarters of InitiativeOne were Inside UW-Green Bay Editor, the setting in late April for a gathering of business and C A A Cofrin Library Suite 820, at political leaders who heard UW-Green Bay Chancellor the street address below. A L L For change of address, mail Gary L. Miller announce details of a partnership that M U U notification to: Inside, Cofrin gives the University a presence in downtown Green Bay. P Library Suite 805, University M M of Wisconsin-Green Bay, U N N 2420 Nicolet Drive, S I I Green Bay, WI 54311-7001. N N N E W O E S T W VISIT INSIDE E S ON THE WEB AT S http://blog.uwgb.edu/inside/ 2 UWGB INSIDE l May 2015 Innovation, Transformation, Place He’s an experienced administrator, outspoken advocate for higher ed and polished presenter. One other thing: Gary L. Miller He has asked for more and better data-driven stays on message. analysis of the way his new school, UW-Green Bay, deploys its resources. From his initial weeks as chancellor and first major From business practices to student recruitment to speech last fall through to his congratulatory remarks the way Academic Affairs delivers programs, he to this May’s graduating seniors, Miller has adhered directed a critical review of current practices. He to a message and vision now familiar to those on floated a new plan for academic dean reporting campus, local news media and many in the Green lines. Bay community. He stirred the pot with a campus essay suggest- The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, he says, for ing the time was right to think about moving on reasons both external and internal, is soon to be a from UW-Green Bay’s traditionally untraditional different institution than it is today. academic structure. (He was questioning admin- It will be bolder, more nimble and, ultimately, larger. istrative configuration, not the foundational idea It will arrive there by harnessing what he calls the that student and faculty inquiry be unrestricted by “Powers of the Phoenix” — innovation, transforma- disciplinary boundaries. Nevertheless, the essay tion and place. prompted plenty of discussion.) Not even the specter of a record budget cut obscures “To teach our students to be innovative, we must the long-term vision. be innovative ourselves,” Miller says. “Doing things differently isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” When the fiscal year begins July 1 UW-Green Bay is likely to have a $4 million hole to patch, its share of In a mid-May memo to employees, he said he is the hotly debated plan introduced by the governor to likely to announce executive-level reorganiza- slash up to $300 million from the annual UW System tion by the end of June affecting external opera- budget. tions, marketing, communication, development and, down the line, student affairs. With an eye Miller has been blunt in advising the campus commu- on enrollment and growth, Miller suggested the nity that layoffs, program consolidations and service Enrollment Services and Adult Access units could reductions are all but unavoidable. At the same time, see changes. The way faculty time is apportioned he invariably adds a note of reassurance. for student advising and unit leadership is being “We’re going to get through this,” he’ll say, “and reviewed. emerge stronger.” Transformation Innovation Today, more than 60 percent of the students who We are living in an interdependent world and a join us at UW-Green Bay come from families growing innovation economy. To prosper, our stu- with no tradition in higher education. We serve dents must be entrepreneurs in their careers. They over 600 returning adults… more than 300 must exhibit extraordinary creativity, collaborative veterans… the Phuture Phoenix program is an abilities and flexibility. They must not fear the world opportunity for us to transform the lives of hun- and its complexity. dreds more underserved students in our region… the need for access to the opportunity at UWGB — Miller inauguration remarks, November 2014 is immense... Miller joined UW-Green Bay last August after serv- Miller speaks often of the great transformative ing previously as the chancellor of the University of power of higher education, and the role of UW- North Carolina Wilmington. One of his first actions in Green Bay in helping its region navigate change. Green Bay was to appoint a University Planning and The University helps students reach their poten- Innovation Council, similar to the internal faculty/staff tial and transform themselves and their world. advisory panel he had at Wilmington. May 2015 l INSIDE UWGB 3 Miller, continued… Northeastern Wisconsin needs more of this, InitiativeOne, downtown, and engage local industry departures will yield temporary salary savings that not less. in three newly added, long-sought majors in engi- buy time to restructure programs and positions for neering technology (see stories facing page). the long term. “The University is going to get bigger,” Miller says. “There will be a great, energizing diversity “You’re going to see a wave of community engage- Miller has been visiting academic units and meet- from people who don’t normally go to college, ment for this University,” Miller told an audience of ing with various employee groups this spring to or haven’t in the past, or not in the numbers we civic and business leaders recently. continue soliciting creative cost-saving and reve- expect in the future.” nue-enhancing ideas. He thanked faculty and staff Longtime local executive Tim Weyenberg agrees, for their “courage and optimistic spirit” and concern The growth is likely to be fueled by returning saying “Initiative One is just the start… there are for the impact on students and co-workers. adults, transfers seeking to finish degrees or a number of other things in the pipeline, downtown add a new credential, people of color who will and elsewhere.” “I understand the anxiety,” the chancellor told a make up a greater share of the region’s demo- campuswide forum in February. “It’s hard to talk Weyenberg should know. Appointed last year as graphic mix, and those attracted by an updated openly with a challenge this big. But we have to do the first Executive-in-Residence for the Austin E. program array. that if we want to come through this with most of us Cofrin School of Business, he’s a resource for fac- here, with a University that can grow, and a Univer- University leaders have identified programs ulty, students and administrators and a key liaison sity that can continue to be a great university." related to health care and data science as to the community. demonstrated growth areas. The Cofrin School Student government president Hannah Stepp, a “It’s obvious this chancellor understands that UW- of Business, already with the most majors on member of the campus planning team, is encour- Green Bay’s role in regional economic develop- campus, is another. “Our business school is aged. "He's always asking, 'How will this affect stu- ment is crucial and core,” Weyenberg says.