Regent recalls early visits to UW-Green Bay

Ed Manydeeds said he remembers visits to the developing UW-Green Bay campus as a boy in the late 1960s.

His father often did business in Oneida and Green Bay in those days. The senior Edmund Manydeeds was a respected educator and consultant on American Indian affairs, and he sometimes brought along young Ed as a way to instill the expectation that he, too, should attend college and, if he did, the new UW-Green Bay would be a fine choice.

In brief welcoming remarks to a Dec. 17 commencement audience of about 2,000 at UW-Green Bay’s Weidner Center, the younger Manydeeds said he initially rejected his late father’s pitch, but eventually relented. He went on to attend UW-Superior and to earn a law degree from UW-Madison.

Now, more than 40 years after those first teen-age visits to the Green Bay campus, Manydeeds said he is delighted to see the University’s growth and success, this time as a member of the UW System Board of Regents.

He referenced the fact that only two months ago the full board held its October monthly meeting at UW-Green Bay, with impressive tours of campus facilities and presentations by University leadership including Chancellor Tom Harden. Manydeeds said he appreciates that UW-Green Bay’s founding commitments to interdisciplinary studies and sustainability remain points of emphasis today.

Manydeeds is an attorney with Richie, Guettinger & Manydeeds in Eau Claire. He was appointed to the Board of Regents in May 2010. Among his assignments on the board is to serve as one of several Regents charged with being special liaisons to the Green Bay campus.