Photos: Major gift expands environmental initiative

UW-Green Bay Chancellor Thomas K. Harden announced today (July 29) a $740,000 gift from Arjo Wiggins Appleton Ltd. that will extend and expand a highly successful program in which local high school students monitor water quality in area streams. The gift will fund an additional three years of the Lower Fox River Watershed Monitoring Program and help create an endowment to secure its future.

Here are some photos of the announcement and some of the students monitoring Baird Creek.

Click thumbnails to enter slideshow view.

Photos by Kimberly Vlies,
Office of Marketing and University Communication

Christopher Gower, CE. of Arjo Wiggins Appleton Ltd. spoke to the crowd of about 50 people gathered at Lambeau Cottage on the UW-Green Bay campus and presented a check to the University. This is not the first time the company has donated money to the program. Back in 2003, the company, which is the former owner of Appleton Papers Inc. and Appleton Coated LLC, donated $1.5 million to create the watershed program.

Prof. Kevin Fermanich (Natural and Applied Sciences), who serves as the faculty coordinator for the program, says the gift from Arjo Wiggins Appleton Ltd. will help expand the program and to new groups, particularly minority and low-income students. Fermanich also hopes the watershed monitoring program expands farther upriver in the future. Internally at UW-Green Bay, the program will move to the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity and the Environmental Management and Business Institute.

A key component of the monitoring program is the involvement of teachers and students from six area high schools. Several students and teachers were on hand for the announcement and demonstrated some of their monitoring techniques. Other teams spent the morning monitoring Baird Creek in Green Bay.

Related headline

Arjo Wiggins Appleton’s $740,000 gift to UW-Green Bay extends watershed research