9-2-65 the culmination of long community campaign

Wisconsin Gov. Warren Knowles authorized a four-year university for Northeastern Wisconsin when, on Sept. 2, 1965, he signed Senate Bill 48, with Green Bay area elected officials Robert Warren, Jerome Quinn, Cletus Vanderperren and civic leaders John Borgenson and Rudy Small looking on in approval.

The 1965 creation of UW-Green Bay culminated a community campaign bubbling since at least 1958, when then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson entertained the possibility of a new regional university. At that time, Green Bay already had its own two-year UW center, “Cardboard Tech,” located in a World War II ordnance building near East High School since the late 1940s. By 1961, when the new $1.3 million Extension building opened on Deckner, the two-year Green Bay Center (enrollment 500) was the second-largest of UW-Extension’s eight freshman-sophomore feeder centers, and the fastest growing, on pace to reach nearly 1,000 by the mid-1960s.

The Brown County Board of Supervisors, in 1963, petitioned the Regents to locate a campus at Green Bay. By the following spring, a Green By Area Chamber of Commerce committee headed by Small was collecting data on the region’s unmet demand for higher education. John “Jake” Rose, president of Kellogg Bank, led efforts behind the scenes to acquire land and raise private funds.

Cofrin, Kress names stand tall on campus

Famous names from Green Bay’s rich history identify several of the University’s signature programs and facilities. The David A. Cofrin Library. The Kress Events Center. Mary Ann Cofrin Hall. The Weidner Center for the Performing Arts.

David A. Cofrin
David A. Cofrin

The Cofrin name is particularly prominent across campus. Family patriarch Austin E. Cofrin founded the Fort Howard Paper Co. in Green Bay in 1919. He died in 1980 at the age of 96 after making Fort Howard the world’s largest papermaker. Austin’s son, Dr. David A. Cofrin, and his wife, Mary Ann, struck up a friendship with UWGB Founding Chancellor Edward Weidner and went on to make dozens of contributions including a half-dozen gifts of seven figures or more, across a range of academic fields, nature-conservation projects and fine arts initiatives. It began with the campus arboretum and continued through student scholarships, named professorships, the opening in 2001 of the University’s primary classroom facility, and completion in 2007 of the campus recreation and events center. Most prominently, in 1987 the couple announced a challenge gift (eventually to total more than $5 million) for a public campaign for a state-of-the-art performing arts center they insisted would be named for their friend. The Cofrins later funded construction of a $4.6 million addition to the Weidner Center, completed in 1998. It was a desire to more fully honor the legacy of Austin Cofrin that led Dr. David, shortly before his death in August 2009, to announce a $5.5 million gift to the University. That contribution, the largest single private gift for academics in the history of UW-Green Bay, created a fully endowed chair (an additional faculty position) in business, and funded a permanent, universitywide endowment for faculty development and academic enhancements.

Also inspiring by example is another Green Bay papermaking family whose generosity has boosted generations of students at UW-Green Bay. Ground was broken in late 2005 with ribbon cutting in fall 2007 for the University’s state-of-the-art recreation and events center, the Kress Events Center.

A generous naming-rights gift from the George F. Kress Foundation pushed fundraising past the threshold to start construction on renovation and expansion of UW-Green Bay’s Phoenix Sports Center at a total cost of $32.5 million. George F. Kress was the founder of Green Bay Packaging Inc. and a longtime supporter of education and other community causes.

The Cal Game

UWGB has had plenty of heroic triumphs in five decades of intercollegiate athletics but — considering the stakes, the context, the national TV audience and the high-flying, NBA-prospect-laden opposition — no greater day than March 17, 1994. The Phoenix shocked the nation and NCAA Tournament predictors everywhere by slaying the California Golden Bears, 61-57, in a first-round game in Provo, Utah. With future lottery picks Jason Kidd and Lamond Murray, streaking fifth-seeded Cal had been a darkhorse pick to make the Final Four. Defensive specialists Gary Grzesk and Eric LeDuc forced the two stars into awful, turnover-filled shooting games, Jeff Nordgaard supplied the points, and point guard John Martinez calmly handled the pressure all day. Dick Bennett, already respected by his peers, became a national name; the Pep Band charmed with its enthusiasm; Phoenix Phever caught on statewide; and UW-Green Bay became the darling of the tournament’s opening weekend, eventually pushing a stacked Syracuse team to the limit before falling in the final minute in the next round. Making it all more enjoyable for Green Bay fans: the anguish of the vanquished. “Something called Wisconsin Green Bay stunned the West’s fifth-seeded team in the opening round,” the LA Times offered in its game recap, and then summed up the Phoenix like this: “The boys from the land that vowels forgot, or distributed unevenly, had UWGB on their uniforms and names such as Grzesk and Nordgaard. Their pep band wore cheese heads… The only way a Phoenix player–Wisconsin Green Bay’s nickname is the Phoenix–is ever going to get into a lottery is to go to a store and buy a ticket.”

From ‘no dorms’ to nicest, campus grew

aerial 2008-09 housing

In its earliest days in the 1970s, UWGB was generating national buzz as an innovative university. There was one critical area, though, where being different would be difficult: Dorms. Other colleges and universities had them. UWGB didn’t. In 1970, a private developer opened the Bay Apartments on Circle Drive land not yet owned by the University. The nine buildings were often less than their 540-bed capacity and not fully accepted by parents of high schoolers who anticipated supervised halls and meal plans. The state refused to fund dorms, killing off several UWGB proposals because some dorms at other campuses were sitting empty. In 1984, UW-Green Bay announced its first capital campaign, headed by co-chairmen Donald J. Long and James A. Temp. The $2.2 million drive yielded the upfront money for a loan that could be used for construction of the University’s first four residence halls, housing 240 students. The key piece was University Village Housing, Inc., a limited-purpose foundation formed by Donald Harden, Jack Robishaw and others specifically to build campus housing. Freed from state restrictions, builders could offer reasonable rents yet nicer amenities — a private bathroom for every two-person room — that gave UWGB’s Residence Life complex a competitive advantage. Overall campus enrollment grew significantly. Today’s on-campus population is nearly 2,100.

Macaroni Hall: one big psych job

Macaroni Hall paintingHey, it was the ’70s. Few architectural features or interior design elements of the mod new UWGB campus turned more heads than the corridor dubbed “Macaroni Hall.”

Completed in 1973 to connect the Library-Learning Center with the new Student Services Building, the gray concrete tunnel’s first paint job consisted of colorful geometric shapes that looked a lot like… well, macaroni. Psychology Profs. William Smith, Per Johnson and Design Profs. Ronald Baba and David Damkoehler worked with students on the repeating pattern meant to make the corridor more appealing by visually separating it in two. Legend has it there was only one full “O” in the entire 30-yard array. Any results of the experiment were lost to history, as was the paint job, covered over by the mid-1980s.

UWGB Transformed Paula by…

…influencing national medical policies through interdisciplinarity.

Before Paula J. Fleurant arrived on the UWGB campus, she had already lived an entire life.

“I graduated from Worcester City Hospital School of Nursing in Massachusetts in 1966 and was a Registered Nurse practicing in both Massachusetts and New Jersey before moving to Green Bay in 1970,” Paula begins. “My courses in nursing school were taught by university professors although the school offered a diploma and not a degree. It was similar to the way Bellin School of Nursing originally operated.”

Paula transferred credits to UW-Green Bay and entered as a second semester with junior standing. She was a non-traditional returning adult student, married with two small children and initially only taking one or two classes per semester. Previously, Paula’s nursing curriculum had been laid out for her, and she had no choice of classes or when to take them. However, the catalog at UW-Green Bay opened many new opportunities, and Paula insists that, “the interdisciplinary aspects of the programs were exciting and challenging.”

Like many non-traditional students, Paula felt immediately embraced by UWGB and its outstanding faculty.

“The university was welcoming to non-traditional students and those of us who were employed while attending school,” Paula says. “Faculty were accommodating and willing to work with you to ensure that your experience would be positive, that you would excel, and that you would graduate with abilities to succeed personally and professionally.”

As an undergraduate, Paula was a student of Dr. Ruth Hartley, known for her work and publications in Early Childhood Education. Hartley’s teaching provided a framework for a special project with Dr. Fergus Hughes on the development of a “Pediatric Play Program” for hospitalized children at St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay where Paula worked as a Registered Nurse.

Of Dr. Hughes, Paula says, “He was a mentor, counselor and advocate for this program and helped me formalize a proposal to present to hospital administration to initiate such a service. My proposal was accepted with a grant for needed supplies, educational materials, and furnishings.”

Paula was a volunteer director of this program for several years and the program was recognized by physicians, nurses, and administrators as a valuable component of diversion and learning for the hospitalized child. The hospital continued with the program by hiring a Child Life Specialist, and still supports it to this day.

Later, while a UWGB graduate student, Paula worked at St. Vincent Hospital in the field of infectious diseases and developed the first formal program in infection control at the hospital, instituting policies and procedures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, where Paula had the opportunity to study.

“My mentors during this phase of my education were Dr. Alice Goldsby, Dr. Jim Wiersma, and Dr. Lee Schwartz,” Paula explains. “The opportunity to work with these faculty members was invaluable for my work in the Infection Control Program that I continued to direct for thirteen years.”

And thanks to the flexibility in program design that the UWGB graduate school offered, Paula’s master’s program was modeled after a Masters in Public Health, including outbreak investigations and public health education.

“I began receiving requests to lecture in the community on such topics as Lyme disease, AIDS, and hepatitis B,” Paula asserts, “and one of those topics became my graduate thesis: ‘Hepatitis B in Healthcare…A Risk Analysis Approach to Determining Feasibility of a Vaccination Program.’’

Little did she know, but that thesis would lead Paula to influence national medical policy, namely at the Centers for Disease Control.

“I was able to combine school and work by conducting research in the hospital setting and although my thesis results — testing 202 employees at St.Vincent Hospital for possible inadvertent exposure to Hepatitis B through a needlestick — were not statistically significant, the administration decided, based on that sampling, to offer a vaccination program. One year later the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated it nationally.”

Since her retirement, Paula has been a lecturer in the Learning in Retirement Program at UW-Green Bay, a community lecturer and a participant in health programs with the University Health Services, as well as completing a three-year term on the Alumni Association board as Vice-President, and member of the Executive Committee, Scholarships and Awards Committee, and Golf Outing Committee.

Ultimately, Paula admits that her UWGB experience — and its vital interdisciplinarity — was nothing short of transformative, both personally and in her community.

“My education at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay transformed me from a general staff nurse to a researcher, epidemiologist, educator, patient advocate and contributing member of numerous healthcare and community committees and boards,” Paula insists. “Classes such as public speaking, geography, and a myriad of developmental psychology courses molded me into a confident healthcare professional who has expanded her boundaries beyond the walls of the university and into the Greater Green Bay community. I have had the opportunity to work with a variety of individuals at the university and in the community, and I am proud to be an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.”

Name: Paula J. Fleurant
Grad Year: 1975, 1986
Major: Growth & Development, Environmental Science & Policy

Photo submitted by: Paula Fleurant

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We’ve asked alumni to either share stories of how their lives were transformed by the UWGB  experience or how they are making the world a better place with transformational work in their careers, homes, or volunteer experiences. As UWGB celebrates its 50th Anniversary, meet an alum each week who has experienced a “UW-Green Bay Transformation.” Stories were self-submitted and then edited by Zachary Taylor, a 2010 English Education graduate currently serving as Interim Associate Director of the Phuture Phoenix program.

Shorewood Club

It fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1987, but ask any 1970s Era alumnus of UWGB for his or her favorite memories and it’s almost certain to include the word “Shorewood.”  On an under-construction campus that had few buildings at all until the mid-1970s, the former Shorewood Country Club clubhouse was a mecca for students, serving as the student union and semi-official hangout.

All-time UWGB favorite

Like a swallow to Capistrano, hypnotist Jim Wand has been returning to campus each fall with his crowd-pleasing, persuade-student-volunteers-to-follow-amusing-suggestions routine since time immemorial.  We couldn’t locate a date for Wand’s first visit — fittingly, nobody seems to remember — beyond a 2009 article that said his annual show had been a student union staple for “25 or 30 years.”

Bookstore, 1980s style

Today’s UW-Green Bay students probably believe the Phoenix Bookstore has always been located in its spacious, modern digs on the plaza level of the University Union. Not even close.  Prior to 2008, it was located on the library’s second floor and, going even further back, pre-1989, it occupied below-ground space in the Instructional Services Building.