First award-winner, prolific author

Climate and meteorology expert Joseph Moran, the Barbara Hauxhurst Cofrin Professor in Natural Sciences, was the first UW-Green Bay faculty member to earn the prestigious UW System Board of Regents award for teaching excellence. (He was also one of the first in the state — he received the honor in 1993, the program’s second year.) By that time, Moran was the author or co-author of nearly a dozen textbooks, a claim to fame since his earliest days with UW-Green Bay.  In 1973, Moran and faculty colleagues Michael Morgan and James Wiersma had collaborated in writing the widely used and, for advocating an ecosystems approach, groundbreaking text Introduction to Environmental Sciences, published by Little, Brown. It was the first textbook produced by a UW-Green Bay faculty team. Moran retired from the faculty in 2001.