With enrollment of about 6,700 students and roughly 175 full-time professors, UW-Green Bay is a fair-size university but nowhere near the largest in the state. That would be UW-Madison, enrollment 42,000, followed by Milwaukee, 28,000; Oshkosh, 13,000; and Whitewater, 12,000. There is at least one area, though — excellence in teaching — where the argument can be made UW-Green Bay outshines schools much older and many times its size. Exhibit A would be the prestigious Teaching Excellence Awards presented by the UW System Board of Regents, selected from faculty members at each of the state’s 13 public universities and 13 two-year colleges. The Regents have honored 72 individuals and departments — three per year — since initiating the program in 1992. UW-Green Bay faculty members have won the award a remarkable nine times. (We did the math: A university that employs 2.5 percent of the state’s professoriate has grabbed 12.5 percent of the top-teacher awards.) UWGB historians Clif Ganyard (2014) and Gregory S. Aldrete (2015), are the most recent, earning individual honors in back-to-back years.
