Chapter Nineteen: 1986—1987

In Green Bay, on the day Outcalt was appointed, the curtains of the University Theatre parted on Rossini's Barber of Seville. It was the second production of the Pamiro Opera Company, founded a year earlier by Miroslav Pansky, conductor of the Green Bay Symphony. The soloists were professionals from out of town; chorus, orchestra, and crew intertwined the talents of campus and community. A week later, community boosters of UW-Green Bay athletics and families looking for summer fun jammed the campus boulevard, 30,000 strong, during the three days of Bayfest. The ethnic-food-and-music event raised $25,000 for athletic scholarships. It also fueled enthusiasm for the varsity basketball season to come; season ticket sales would soon escalate along with expectations for the team and its new head coach, Dick Bennett. In June the outreach office was gearing up for what would become a record-breaking summer of non-credit offerings. By the time the books closed on summer enrollments, more than 1,500 students of all ages and interests would have joined matriculating collegians to interact with the people and places of the campus.

June 1986 also brought an announcement long awaited by scores of “placebound” employees in the business community: initiation of a master of business administration degree they could begin and complete at the local campus. It was not part of the UW-Green Bay graduate program—the UW System administration had refused such an entitlement—although UW-Green Bay faculty members would teach a number of the courses. The diploma would come from UW-Oshkosh, but all classes would meet at UW-Green Bay. The MBA was now within reach for local men and women. Course work could be completed without leaving a job, without traveling elsewhere for classes. By the time Outcalt arrived in Green Bay, 199 students had enrolled in the first 10 courses.

Others intent on career development were selecting noncredit courses and workshops offered by the Business Development Center. Six new certificate programs for managers and supervisors would be launched during the academic year, each dealing with a specific area from marketing to labor relations.

Faculty and staff had turned other efforts toward providing new opportunities for undergraduates: winning accreditation for the UW-Green Bay bachelor of science in nursing; designing courses for a new minor in American Indian studies; wrapping up an exchange agreement with Beijing Normal University, the first pact with an institution in Asia; and expanding the intensive German language program to include three months of study at the University of Kassel in West Germany.

Outcalt acknowledged such recent achievements in a report to the regents and an October address to the Faculty Senate. He praised the academic program as one of “good to high quality, of unusual but sound design.” He took note of the University's established tradition of cooperation with community groups, its success in raising private funds, and the potential for even greater external support. The physical plant, he said, was “well-conceived” and, except for student housing, adequate to campus needs. But many weaknesses remained to be dealt with, he said. There were shortcomings in academic planning and articulation, in administrative structure, in communication with the public, and in reaching enrollment potential, especially of older returning adults and graduate students. Affirmative action procedures were defective and the results inadequate, he said. And even after 20 years, he observed, UW-Green Bay was not yet perceived as an institution vital to the continued economic and cultural development of the region.

Some of his goals for the year to follow would be primarily his own responsibility, Outcalt said: getting involved in the community outside the University, cementing relationships with colleagues in the UW System, strengthening affirmative action. But he would seek the help of others to rewrite program descriptions “to emphasize outcomes rather than processes”; to design and implement a systematic marketing effort; to sharpen and decentralize administrative authority; and to initiate strategic planning, short term and long range, in the academic program.

Outcalt took the occasion of his inauguration, five months later, to pay tribute again to the strengths of the University: a dedicated faculty and staff, excellent students, effective community support, a fine physical plant, and especially the unique academic characteristics that had attracted him to the chancellor's post.

“But no institution is perfect, and neither is UW-Green Bay,” he told his audience.“ It has been for a while at somewhat of a plateau ... a very normal situation that occurs in the case of highly creative individuals and highly individual institutions, a period of very vigorous development followed by a period of being a bit on a plateau.” To move to the next stage of development, he said, “we have to establish a sense of direction, have to better understand what we are.”

The first steps had been taken, Outcalt said, in a planning process that would set the course of the institution for the next 10 or 20 years:

• At the direction of the regents, the mission statement of the University, as of each degree-granting unit in the UW System, would be re-examined and revised with help from all members of the campus constituency.
• An “environmental scan” of the region, already under way, would provide information on the growth, characteristics and educational needs of the future population.
• A “devolution of authority” from the chancellor's office had begun.“ We're delegating authority much closer to the operational level,” Outcalt explained, “but at the same time we're also providing accountability.”
• A marketing task force, after four months of work, was preparing final recommendations to enhance the University's image and communicate information about its resources and programs.

As “an urban university with regional responsibilities,” Outcalt told his audience, the institution's first obligation was to serve the region. And those services would be geared to the changing profile of its clientele. While the majority of students continued to come directly from high schools of the region, he pointed out, fully a third were now 25 years old or older, and a third were part-time learners. Access must be open to degree programs, to non-degree programs designed to meet regional needs, and to student services for all. Students with full-time jobs, homes and families should receive special concern, Outcalt said: “They cannot simply uproot themselves and travel off to another institution. If they are going to have access to higher education, we must be able to supply it.”

Outcalt's inauguration in March 1987 was a first for the University. Rather than a public celebration, it was planned as a “family” gathering for faculty, staff and students joined by invited community supporters and representatives of 45 other institutions of higher education. The Green Bay media turned out in force. And the Press-Gazette took advantage of the event to assess the performance of the chancellor during his first six months. Reporter Alice Paulsen found positive responses on and off the campus.

“During his first six months as chancellor, David Outcalt has moved on his pledge to improve the kinship between the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the area,” reporter Paulsen concluded. But nothing would provide more impetus toward that goal than the blossoming into reality of two aspirations long shared by the University and the Northeastern Wisconsin community.

In mid-April Outcalt announced a $4 million pledge to support construction of a performing arts center. The donors were Dr. David and Mary Ann Cofrin, who had previously contributed major gifts for development of the Cofrin Arboretum and for a named professorship. The center was to be built on the campus, the Cofrins stipulated, but it must also serve the community. To complete the project, private fund-raising would be required as well as state funds. And a community-campus committee would set priorities for use of the facility. The Cofrin gift, Outcalt said, provided “a significant step toward the realization of a dream that has long been shared by many in our community.”

Sports fans on and off the campus, meanwhile, were savoring the fulfillment of quite another dream: of a winning men's basketball season in NCAA Division I. After a 1-6 start, the Phoenix had put together a 15-14 record for 1986-87. Average attendance at home games had more than doubled over the previous year to just over 3,000; season ticket sales had climbed by 35 percent. “Why the turnaround?” a Press-Gazette columnist asked rhetorically. “The simplest explanation is three words long: Coach Dick Bennett.”

But as of September 1987, Outcalt had only nibbled at his own agenda. Ahead lay more stubborn challenges: internal reorganization and academic planning in harmony with a new style of leadership. And just around the corner loomed an evaluation visit by a team from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, the final step toward a renewal of accreditation.