UWGB Transformed Janet by…

…teaching her how to survive Pre-Med.

Janet Freedman began her academic career by attending a very competitive high school in New York City. She arrived in Green Bay when she was just 16. Her experience at UWGB calmed her, she said.

“Green Bay was nurturing, and UWGB was half the size of my high school: classes were small and professors’ offices were always open. Independent study was encouraged, design your own classes, major, et cetera. It was the days of Eco U,” Janet says.

After thoroughly enjoying the teaching and guidance of UWGB’s Thea Sager, Ron Starkey, and Charles Ihrke, Janet wanted to attend medical school and transferred to a University of California campus.

“Organic Chemistry was three hundred students in a lecture, the labs were locked except during your assigned lab time to prevent sabotage of the lab, and assigned readings were stolen out of the library: this was a common culture of premedical students,” Janet jokes. But halfway into her very first semester there, she realized it wasn’t for her and she dropped out.

“I moved back to Green Bay and enrolled again at UWGB,” Janet explains. “There were about four pre-med students and we studied together. Labs were open and available all day for us to do our work. Professors taught the labs. I would never have survived pre-med anywhere else.”

After her UWGB graduation, Janet found another niche at UW-Madison and is now a successful professional in the medical field, but UWGB seems to follow her wherever she goes.

“When I was in school in Madison, I would get together with friends from UWGB, and very quickly, our conversation would gravitate to UWGB memories. I still remember all of my Madison friends asking, ‘What is it with you UWGB people? It’s all you talk about!’”

Name: Janet Freedman
Grad Year: 1975
Major: Human Biology
Minor: Social Change and Development

Photo submitted by: Janet Freedman

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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.

Presidential visits

An all-ages crowd of better than 2,200 packed the old gymnasium at the Kress Center Oct. 19, 2012 for a campaign appearance by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who visited UW-Green Bay to urge re-election of the Obama-Biden ticket. The Clinton visit was the first major public appearance by a sitting or former U.S. president on the UW-Green Bay campus. Gerald Ford had a brief, private meeting with local supporters and GOP candidates, and local media, on the first floor of the Cofrin Library during the fall 1988 campaign. Barack Obama, while a candidate in the February 2008 Wisconsin presidential primary, made a campaign stop at the Kress Center.

From Green Bay to London

A large contingent of UW-Green Bay students — more than 100 juniors and seniors — spent January 1970 in London with the new university’s first overseas study tour, the only trip that first year as a full-fledged four-year institution. Today, the Office of International Education informs us, approximately 15 travel courses depart throughout the year for destinations worldwide… still including London. (Incidentally, the photo above of a UWGB group near the iconic Tower Bridge over the Thames is believed to be from the 1974 trip.)

Corny fun

In 2005, a core group of UW-Green Bay alumni had to sort through sweet corn memories and bittersweet emotions following announcement that Bayfest 2005 would be the last. “The festival, and especially the corn tent, hold a lot of wonderful memories,” said Pam Stoll ’74 (at far left), former alumni president and longtime volunteer. “Working in the tent was the first thing I did as a returning alumnus.” Bayfest, held on the grounds of the University and featuring music, food and games, had a 25-year run under the direction of the late Tim Quigley as a primary fundraiser (an estimated $2.5 million total) for UWGB’s Division I athletics program. The UW-Green Bay Alumni Association staffed the corn tent for 13 years, selling close to 5,000 ears of corn annually to benefit student scholarships and alumni special events.

Early recycling

No, it wasn’t particularly sophisticated, convenient or photogenic, but this used-glass dropoff center near the Environmental Sciences Building was ahead-of-the-curve stuff circa 1970, the spring of the first Earth Day. UW-Green Bay was among the first local institutions to urge recycling.  Within a year, indoor collection points on campus would supplant the bins, barrels and boxes shown here.  The sign, labeled “This is the Glass Kitty,” encouraged users to donate only clean glass containers, with no rings or tops, and to separate by color. Point No. 4 said, “Thank you for your cooperation in helping save our environment.”

Riviera on the bay

The venerable Riviera Supper Club was a popular bayshore destination for Green Bay residents seeking fine dining in the mid-1900s. This vintage postcard touted the prime view and elegant dining rooms. (On the back of the postcard, it read: “The discriminating choose Riviera Supper Club, house of GOOD FOOD, PERSONALIZED SERVICE.” The menu advertised fresh lobster, broiled steaks, and chicken.) In the mid-1960s, when Brown County put together its offer of land to the University of Wisconsin as a building site for the new UW-Green Bay, the privately-held Riviera was one of the properties designated for purchase and transfer. The aging building was one of the first to be razed as the site was developed.

Sweet: Top 10 Women’s Basketball

The amazing UW-Green Bay women’s basketball program had its two greatest seasons earlier this decade. In March 2011, the Phoenix drove all the way to the Sweet 16.  (That’s star forward Julie Wojta, above, driving against 6-8 Brittney Griner, the national player of the year. The Phoenix stayed close for a half before falling to No. 3 Baylor on the Bears’ home floor.) The following season, the Green Bay women finished 31-2 and ranked No. 10 in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll.  As a senior, Wojta earned second-team All-America honors, placing her among the nation’s 10 best college players.

The Marching Band

In 1968, a year before the Shorewood Site opened, the Green Bay Packers organization made a major contribution to the fledgling university: a pledge of $24,000 to provide instruments and uniforms for a marching band. Conducted by Robert Bauer, the 130-piece band and color guard would later strut its stuff at Packers games at Lambeau Field and Milwaukee County Stadium. Interest eventually waned, and the band was no more within a decade, but the fact the college without its own football team once fielded a marching band remains a topic of interest among early alumni.

UWGB Transformed Ami by…

…helping her become more than she thought she could.

Creative Writing is Ami Irmen’s passion, yet her Creative Writing teachers at UWGB — Ryan Van Cleave, Bruce Stone, and Rebecca Meacham — taught her a set of critical lessons that have deeply affected her professional career.

When Ami first set foot on the grounds of the UWGB campus, she was a wide-eyed high school senior who was merely counting down the days to graduation. At first, Ami chose UWGB simply because it was “close enough” to home, and it was a place she could afford. However, UWGB proved to be much more than “tunnels, toilets, and trees,” and Ami asserts that UWGB “turned out to be the luckiest choice I have ever made. The four years that I spent at UWGB — a place that became more than just a great location and price tag, a place that became home — shaped who I am today.”

With her sights set on a career as a Creative Writing teacher, Ami vividly remembers her freshman year and Ryan Van Cleave’s “Introduction to Creative Writing” course, where Ami says Van Cleave “…loved his work and students so much that he took personal time out of his day for no other reason than to simply share that love of writing.” Flash forward to Bruce Stone’s Creative Writing workshop, a course that Ami says gave her a “safe space to take risks,” and she discovered that learning must be a two-way street. For example, Ami recalls a thank you letter penned by Stone, thanking his students for everything he’d learned throughout their time together. Undoubtedly, Ami learned that one must find the time and space to reflect upon one’s writing, a message later echoed by Rebecca Meacham, Ami’s English major advisor.

When it was time to declare her major, Ami says she still remembers the first time she met Prof. Meacham: “She had a real honest talk with me on that day about my prospects of finding a job as a Creative Writing instructor at the college level. The thing is, it was (and still is) an extremely competitive market, and this conversation was necessary. It is rare that advisors are so open and frank from the start, but Rebecca was.”

Prof. Meacham’s honesty never deterred Ami from her chosen path. The moment she committed to the degree, Ami says that Rebecca made the same commitment and did everything she could to ensure her success. Ami credits her professors for doing more than simply helping her dissect literature and learn to revise her work: they “fostered her love of learning and gave her the tools to ask questions, to explore, to ponder, to create, and much more.” Not surprisingly, Ami is now teaching writing at the college level, just as she always planned, asserting that her UWGB education informed what she does in her own classroom.

“It’s about more than just teaching a student how to write an essay,” Ami says, “it’s about giving people like me a chance to be more than what I thought I could be.”

Name: Ami Irmen
Grad Year: 2005
Major: Creative Writing and Human Development

Photo submitted by: Ami Irmen

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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.

UW-Green Bay on the West Side?

In 1964, the early frontrunner for the new UWGB was a 400-acre site near the intersection of Highways 41 on 54 on Green Bay’s West Side. Known as “the Larsen orchard site,” it was eventually passed over for the scenic 700-acre bayshore location, known as the Shorewood Site because of the private golf course that occupied part of the area. Founding Chancellor Edward Weidner (at right, above) is shown here giving a tour of the Shorewood location to some of the members of his administrative team in fall 1967, a few weeks before groundbreaking for the first new buildings. With Weidner are, from left, Robert Maier, Ray Vlasin and Russ White.