UW-Green Bay commencement ceremonies were regularly held outdoors until only fairly recently. The hillside near the Socio-Ecology Building (later Wood Hall) was the setting in this May 1981 photo from the archives, with participants marching down from the Community Sciences Building (later Rose Hall). The spring/summer festivities were relocated across the boulevard a few years later (to the facing hillside, nearest what is today the Weidner Center) to better accommodate the larger graduating classes. In UWGB’s earliest years, most commencements were held at the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena until December 1976 when the Phoenix Sports Center opened. The summer ceremony moved outdoors in about 1980 and stayed there for a 25-year period in which it never seemed to rain (well, at least not too much) on UW-Green Bay graduation day. For three years beginning in May 2005, rain or worries about rain forced the large spring ceremonies indoors, in split sessions, at the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts. (The Weidner, with its grand opening in 1993, had supplanted the PSC as the preferred location for December ceremonies.) Since 2008-09, all May ceremonies are held at the 5,000-capacity Kress Events Center, and all December ceremonies are held at the Weidner.
