By: Nadia Scharf
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is well-known among the state’s public universities for its experimental approach to enrollment and strategy. Targeting students who aren’t traditional college-goers led to record-high enrollment in 2024.
So when UW-Green Bay Chancellor Mike Alexander proposed the university “redefine” and “reinvent” its base model by changing professors’ workloads and responsibilities, it didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
Right now, the proposed changes are just that: proposed, and nowhere near set to go into effect. UWGB is planning to hold listening sessions for professors this semester. Officials hope to produce a new version based on the feedback by the end of January.
In a “perfect world,” Alexander said, some of the proposed changes would go into effect by next May.
What might change at UW-Green Bay?
Alexander’s plan proposes major changes to how the college interacts with the community, as well as student life and faculty workloads. He wanted the university to consider adapting for a “modern student.”
He shared the draft with university leaders over the summer, which was then leaked. He has since shared the document with all faculty. He said administrators will listen until they’ve “exhausted all feedback,” and he’s continuing to workshop the ideas in the paper.
“I asked them in this meeting to tell me why, in their opinion, anything in that document would be opposed by a student or community member,” Alexander said in an interview. “And they couldn’t.”
Still, he stands by his push for change.
“My job is not to win a popularity contest,” Alexander said. “My job is to make sure that UW-Green Bay is relevant for a long time after I’m gone.”
Focus on community
Under Alexander’s proposed changes, every UWGB program would offer at least two credentialed courses. Anyone who took those courses, whether they were a full-time student or not, would automatically receive a certificate that could boost their career. The aim is to allow people to access higher education in a way that meets their needs, without having to complete a full degree.
UWGB would also hold more community events to bridge the gap between the campus community and the region. As part of that effort, faculty would also have share their research with the northeast Wisconsin region, and tenure-track faculty members would have to connect “in meaningful ways” with regional businesses or nonprofits.
“All of our faculty do amazing things, but how often, when they write something in a journal, do they take the time to actually go to the community and tell them what they’ve done?” Alexander said. “They’re doing unbelievable work, so let’s get it out there.”
The document originally said faculty would be required to link their research to northeastern Wisconsin, but Alexander said he regrets that phrasing and is open to revisions.
College advisory boards, which are groups of community members that broadly advise each subject-based college, would disband. They’d be replaced by smaller advisory boards that would meet at least twice per year.
Changing student life
Alexander also wants to make it easier to transfer into UWGB from another two- or four-year college. In the plan, up to 90 credits would transfer from four-year colleges and up to 60 would transfer from two-year colleges. Faculty would have to find equivalencies up to those credit limits.
The 2025-27 state budget included a provision requiring the Universities of Wisconsin, also known as the UW system, to simplify the transfer process.
There’s not enough information in the plan at this point to judge how much of an impact it would have, said Ross Toellner, De Pere High School counselor. Still, he said making college transfers “frictionless” would be a benefit for UWGB. Two-year colleges like Northeast Wisconsin Technical College already work well with students transferring to UWGB, Toellner said, but transferring from a four-year to another four-year institution is more difficult, even within the UW system. Transfer students generally have to plan ahead to avoid repeating classes.
Student engagement is key, Alexander emphasizes in the document. The university’s Student Affairs office would prioritize getting students to events at UWGB and in the community, creating programming for on-campus students and building a more traditional campus culture.
Divided professor workloads, leadership
The state budget passed over the summer also included mandatory changes to teacher workload. UW instructors outside Madison and Milwaukee are now required to teach 24 credits. Faculty can “buy” research time through grants, although department chairs would also be exempt.
The proposed changes at UWGB try to balance the need for research with the new legal requirement. As a result, professors would see major changes to what their workload and day-to-day looks like. Alexander proposes some faculty focus on research, teaching fewer classes as a result, while others take on higher class loads, as a replacement, with less time for research.
Professors’ office spaces could disappear. Alexander’s proposal calls for moving any work that doesn’t need to be done in private into public spaces.
Professors raise concerns: ‘Attempt to grab power’
UWGB would also switch from elected department chairs to directors appointed by administrators under the proposal. Currently, faculty elect department chairs.
Jon Shelton, chair of UWGB’s Democracy and Justice Studies department and president of union AFT-Wisconsin, saw accountability concerns with a hired director. He started an online petition opposing the changes to chair positions and professor workload. As of Oct. 8, the petition has 250 signatures from professors and community members.
Right now, unit chairs are elected by their peers to serve three-year terms. If a director was hired, Shelton said, even internally, they’d still report to the administration, rather than their dean. Professors said they worried about less say in decisions like tenure, promotion and research, which are currently made by peers.
“What that effectively means is that the faculty would no longer control curricular decisions,” Shelton said. “It is, in my view and the view of a lot of other people on campus, a massive effort to grab power from traditional faculty governance.”
Brian Welsch, associate professor of physics, agreed with Shelton. Faculty are on the ground meeting and teaching students, he said. They know when there’s a need for more resources in a certain area or a tweak to a major’s curriculum, and he’s worried they’d lose that discernment.
In an email, Alexander said decisions haven’t been made on who would hire the new directors, but that faculty would have a say. He also said faculty members would still determine the importance of their colleagues’ research, and that peer-reviewed research from other universities could also play a role.
Even if faculty got a say in who was hired, it’s not the same as an election, said Michael Draney, entomology professor and Richter Museum curator. And he believes splitting faculty into two groups could pit them against each other.
“Who’s going to make these decisions? Who’s going to decide who’s a productive professor versus a less productive professor?” Draney said. “That’s creating a lot of uncertainty.”
Alexander said the decision to look at faculty chairs came down to questions about how the university is using its resources.
“That’s a lot of administration. Is it the right administration? Is it helping our students? Is it helping us connect to our community?” Alexander said. “It could be, but I wanted to start that conversation.”
Are faculty too resistant to change or protecting what’s working?
Some faculty members who participated in listening sessions saw administrators taking notes. Others felt like the sides were talking at each other, not to each other.
Professors aren’t opposed to change overall, said William Dirienzo, associate professor and chair of the physics department. Changes to the student experience are generally supported, but they want to make their voices heard, particularly amid the legally required changes included in the state budget.
“We would love to change and be more innovative,” Dirienzo said. “Trying to push this kind of innovation from the top down without finding a way for us to really get the time to implement it as the people who work on the ground…that’s where the tension comes in.”
Overall, faculty said they want to know why such major changes are being proposed now, when enrollment and tuition revenue have gone above and beyond the university’s goals.
For Alexander, it’s about getting ahead of necessary changes, being proactive rather than reactive. The university’s direct admission program, for example, got negative feedback, but is now being implemented across other UW campuses. The university is “in the messy part” of change, he said.
“Just because we have changed and because we’re having success, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should just stop evolving to meet the needs of our students in our community,” Alexander said.
Professors, though, may see it differently.
“I’ve never seen anything like this on campus that has rallied so much unanimity in opposition to something,” Shelton said.
Source: Potential change could ‘reinvent’ UW-Green Bay amid professor concerns