As early as 1966, UWGB hosted a wide variety of summer camps, starting with a music camp for high school students organized by music professor Jerry Abraham of what was then the two-year Green Bay center of the University of Wisconsin. With the founding of a four-year UWGB followed by the mid-1970s construction of Studio Arts and the Creative Communication Building (later renamed Theatre Hall), the summer program expanded. By 1977, UWGB annually attracted more than 1,000 youth musicians to campus. (With nice weather, closing concerts could be held outdoors behind Theatre Hall using the old City of Green Bay “showmobile” as a stage.) The Summer Art Studio workshops followed a similar pattern, growing rapidly once the local UW Extension program became a full-fledged UWGB camp. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, UWGB began offering Jazz Ensemble, Dance, and Theatre-Music-Dance Camps. Ever since, UWGB’s summer camps have hosted thousands of middle and high school students each summer, offering a wide variety of educational opportunities, including Band, Orchestra, Choral, and Piano camps, a Rock Academy, Summer Studio Art Workshops, Reality Science Camps, and Grandparents University, designed for grandparents—alongside their 7 to 14-year-olds—to take courses together on campus.
