What a great opportunity for UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Memorial Arboretum to receive some upgrades. Serving as an outdoor classroom and a recreational trail, the arboretum also greatly enhances the beauty of UW-Green Bay. Donations through the Give BIG Green Bay campaign, Feb. 20-21 (noon to noon), will be matched, in part, by the Green Bay Packers and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation. Check out the profile. During that 24-hour period, you will also be able to text-to-give: Simply text GIVE to 31011.
The UW-Green Bay Arboretum will be part of the 24-hour Give BIG Green Bay event. The community-wide giving day, hosted by the Green Bay Packers Foundation and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, supports 40 organizations that serve the community representing different sectors. From noon on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019 through noon on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019, you can give online to support the community’s nonprofits. Read the Green Bay Press-Gazette article.
The UW-Green Bay Arboretum will be part of the 24-hour Give BIG Green Bay event. The community-wide giving day, hosted by the Green Bay Packers Foundation and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, is Wednesday, Feb. 20 at noon to noon on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. During Give BIG Green Bay, people everywhere can have their gift matched as they support any of the 40 local organizations which have been selected. The Arboretum is a campus and community treasure. UntitledTown, an event with campus ties, is another of the local organizations supported by Give BIG. Learn more. The Green Bay Press Gazette, NBC 26, WBAY and WFRV have more.
You will hear plenty more about this. But it’s good news for the campus and the Cofrin Arboretum. The Give BIG Green Bay event to help nonprofits is including the arboretum in its fund drives this year. The Green Bay Packers Foundation and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation will host a community-wide giving day from noon Feb. 20 until noon Feb. 21, 2019. The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation says Give BIG Green Bay 2019 will offer $312,500 in matching funds and incentives — a $97,500 increase over last year. The organization says this is thanks to the generosity of the Green Bay Packers Foundation and other donors. NBC26 has the story and the list of recipients which also included UntitledTown, the literary festival with high involvement from UW-Green Bay faculty, staff, students and alumni. See more from wearegreenbay.com www.packers.com greenbaypressgazette.com
The UWGB Retiree Association is sponsoring the eighth annual arboretum/bird walk on Tuesday, May 15 at 10:45 a.m. A Cofrin Center for Biodiversity employee will lead the walk. Interested participants should meet at the Lambeau Cottage parking lot at 10:30 a.m. The walk will be slow and easy as the group looks to identify spring plants and wildlife. Bring your binoculars, bird/plant book or camera. Meet at the Shorewood Club for lunch if you so wish.
The April 13 strategic planning session for UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Memorial Arboretum provided valuable new information and ideas, leading to a second meeting scheduled for Friday, May 11 from 8 to 10 a.m. in the MAC 212 (Cofrin Center for Biodiversity) conference room. The objective of this meeting will be to discuss priorities for action based on the many potential projects and needs that have been identified.
The planning session will focus on five geographic areas — all with significant challenges and opportunities: 1) Mahon Creek and the SW Arboretum trail linkages; 2) Bayshore Woods, including the Lambeau Cottage and parking area; 3) Oak Savanna and Shorewood Golf Course area; 4) Upahki Pond, including bike trail linkage at Bay Settlement Road/Leon Bond Drive intersection; and 5) Arboretum Gateway, between the Kress Event Center and Lab Science Building. Along with general issues like signage and trails.
Your input is both welcome and vital in setting short and long-term priorities. If you plan to attend, please contact Kim McKeefry at mckeefrk@uwgb.edu.
The Cat Island Chain of barrier islands once provided one of the largest and most diverse wetland ecosystems in the Great Lakes. But years of high water levels in the 1970s, coupled with spring storm surges and ice damage, nearly destroyed the fragile islands. Now, after years of planning, an ambitious vision to restore the barrier island chain is taking shape in Green Bay. UW-Green Bay is at the heart of the restoration and the research. The return of piping plovers to the area, is a species “poster child” for the restoration. Last summer, piping plovers nested on Cat Island — a first in the lower Green Bay in 75 years. Wildlife biologists and students from UW-Green Bay documented four breeding pairs this summer. They also identified four nests and six plover chicks. WPR has the story.
Recipients of UW-Green Bay Professorships, 2017 to 2022. From left: Amy Wolf (Biology), Gaurav Bansal (Management Information Systems, Statistics) and David Coury (Humanities).
Three members of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay faculty were selected to hold named professorships today (August 23, 2017) at the University’s 2017 Fall Convocation. Named professorships are created through private gifts that support the study and research of a faculty member who has an outstanding record of scholarly accomplishment. The annual stipend associated with these professorships is for five years, but the recipient retains the title for life. Stipends are typically applied to research expenses or special projects benefiting students or service to the community.
Prof. David Coury (Humanities) has been selected to hold the Frankenthal Professorship
Prof. Amy Wolf’89 and ’93 (Biology) has been selected to hold the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professorship
Associate Prof. Gaurav Bansal, Business Administration (Management Information Systems, Statistics), has been named the Frederick E. Baer Professor in Business
Frankenthal Professorship — Prof. David Coury
The Frankenthal Professorship was established in October of 1980 in honor of the late Siegfried W. Frankenthal by members of the Frankenthal family of Green Bay. The Frankenthals owned and operated Packerland Packing Company until the business was sold in the 1970s. Mr. Frankenthal and his wife, Karola, were active in their synagogue and community charitable work. Their memorial professorship is open to full professors in any field of study whose work exemplifies the spirit and mission of UW-Green Bay. Coury’s record shows sustained scholarly work while serving two terms as chair of Humanistic Studies (now Humanities), one of the University’s largest academic units. He has also chaired Modern Languages. Coury is extensively published and participates in multiple scholarship networks that focus on topics ranging from German film and literature to immigration and national identity. Originally a scholar of German literature, he has effectively retrained himself to also specialize in politics, religion and culture — specifically at the intersection of Middle Eastern studies and globalization.
His strong public presence is well documented by his leadership of the Green Bay Film Society and, most recently, his passion to bring the topic of immigration and refugees to hundreds of middle school students in partnership with the Neville Public Museum. His work spans countries and continents — as co-founder and co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Partnerships, as an advocate of study abroad and as a visiting instructor in Spain. His passion is connecting UW-Green Bay students and the Green Bay community to global issues.
As an undergraduate, Coury studied in Salzburg, Austria and later at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He has published widely on contemporary German cinema as well as the contemporary novel. More recently he has been studying the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures as expressed in European literature and film. Of particularly interest is the role globalization has played in shaping conceptions of identity as well as the so-called clash of cultures and civilizations in Europe. An avid cinephile, he is also the director of the Green Bay Film Society and serves on the board of Film Green Bay. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wittenberg University (Springfield, Ohio) and a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati.
Herbert Fisk Johnson Professorship in Environmental Studies — Prof. Amy Wolf The Herbert Fisk Johnson Professorship in Environmental Studies was established in 1985 by Samuel C. Johnson and his wife, Imogene Johnson of Racine. It is named in honor of his father. Herbert Fisk Johnson was the grandson of Samuel Curtis Johnson, founder of Johnson Wax Company. He led the company to its present position as a world leader in the manufacture and marketing of wax, wax products and other products produced by the company. Samuel and Imogene Johnson were among the early supporters of UW-Green Bay and remained friends of the University over the years. Samuel passed away in 2004. The award recognizes and gives support for a full professor who has demonstrated a productive commitment to scholarship and outreach and whose work exemplifies the spirit and mission of the University. The Johnson Professorship is designated for the areas of biological or physical environmental studies or policy studies of environmental issues.
Prof. Wolf is known as someone who exemplifies the University mission in her teaching, scholarship, service and outreach. Her interdisciplinary problem-focused scholarship address the University’s commitment to environmental sustainability and to serving communities in Wisconsin. Her scholarship focuses on forest ecology, species preservation and ecological restoration. In 2014, she was recognized with the Founders Award for Excellence in Scholarship. She is widely published and most recently, in collaboration with Prof. Bob Howe and other UW-Green Bay researchers, contributed to work published in Science — considered the premiere scientific journal in the world. She serves as a mentor to UW-Green Bay undergraduates and graduates. As both the principal- and co-investigator, she has acquired more than $1 million in grants administered through UW-Green Bay for research. Her work typically focuses on the ecology of plant-animal interactions, including studies of host specific insects (Northern Blue Butterfly), rare plants (Serpentine Morning Glory), and Wisconsin bees. She is co-leader of the Wabikon Forest Dynamics Plot, part of a global network of intensive, long-term forest research sites initiated by the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Tropical Forest Science. Hundreds of undergraduates and graduates under her supervision have studied invasive plant species, aquatic macrophytes, forest understory plants, bat biology and pollination ecology.
Wolf received both her master’s degree (Environmental Science and Policy, 1993) and bachelor’s degree (Biology, 1989) from UW-Green Bay. She earned a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis in December 1998.
Frederick E. Baer Professorship — Associate Prof. Gaurav Bansal The Frederick E. Baer professorship recognizes and gives support for a tenured faculty member who has demonstrated a productive commitment to scholarship and/or outreach, and whose work exemplifies the spirit and mission of UW-Green Bay. It is specified for faculty members who work directly with business leaders, in business development or with students who later enter the business world. Scholarship namesake, Frederick E. Baer, had a distinguished 44-year career with Paper Converting Machine Corporation, culminating in his tenure as the company’s president and CEO from 1969 until his retirement in 1993.
Bansal is well known for leadership in curricular development and for engaging the business community in the region. He serves as the chair and academic director for the Master of Science in Data Science program, a high-enrollment program with a national reputation. He currently teaches courses in business statistics and MIS for the Cofrin School of Business. His research interests are in the areas of trust, privacy and security concerns and data analytics. He is extensively published and received best paper awards at the Midwest Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) conferences in 2010, 2011 and 2014. In 2016, he organized a two-day workshop at UW-Green Bay which focused on SAS business analytics software, drawing workshop leaders from across the country and business leaders from across the region.
Bansal was recognized as a UW-Green Bay Teaching Scholar in 2010-2011 and a Wisconsin Teaching Fellow in 2013-2014 and an Advanced Online Teaching Fellow in 2013. His research has won several nominations and best paper awards at prestigious national and international MIS conferences. He encourages and enjoys working with his students on research projects. His research wok with UW-Green Bay undergraduate students has won best paper awards at regional MIS conferences.
Bansal is an engaged community member and a proud alumnus of the Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Green Bay program. He serves on the Brown County Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Celebration Event Committee and as a steering committee member of Community Information Systems (CIS) — an initiative of United Way of Brown County.
Bansal received his Ph.D. in MIS from UW-Milwaukee in 2008 and his M.B.A. from Kent State University, Ohio in 2002. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Gorakhpur, India in 1996. Before starting his academic career, he worked as a quality assurance engineer for General Motors India (1998-2000) and Daewoo Motors India (1996-1998).
About the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is a comprehensive public institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs to 7,300 students. The University transforms lives and communities through exceptional and award-winning teaching and research, innovative learning opportunities and a problem-solving approach to education. For more information, visit www.uwgb.edu.
Green Bay and its local tributaries offer some of the best outdoor lab facilities imaginable for future biologists. And the research students perform can inform decisions in restoration and bay health for years to come.
This summer members of UW-Green Bay’s Aquatic Ecology and Fisheries Lab have been active in local streams, using an electrofishing method to study different aspects of fish communities in small tributaries of Green Bay. Graduate student Cindy Nau (Environmental Science and Policy) is mapping fish species’ distributions and habitat use at a fine scale over large areas of several streams to see what types of habitat are used by stream fish. By sampling fish along a large habitat gradient, she will show how stream habitat changes with distance from the bay, what species commonly co-occur, and aquatic areas preferred by a range of native and invasive fish species.
Graduate student Mia McReynolds (Environmental Science and Policy) is using her research to describe aquatic macroinvertebrate and fish communities across a set of tributaries. Her goal is to relate biological community structure and function to abiotic factors like water quality, stream habitat and broad-scale land use in the watershed. Both projects are funded by the Lower Fox River/Green Bay Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA), under the direction of UW-Green Bay Associate Professor Patrick Forsythe. Their work will inform potential future stream restoration efforts. The projects are unique because they investigate a set of small tributaries around Green Bay that are relatively understudied (few studies around the Great Lakes have investigated small tributaries as a functional set, according to McReynolds). Through their research, McReynolds and Nau will detail biological communities, abiotic factors (agricultural run-off), and in-stream habitat (fallen logs providing cover) of the tributaries.
Shocking Mahon Creek
Backpack electrofishing in Mahon Creek. Fish are temporarily stunned by a low-voltage current, then collected, measured and released.
Recording fish measurements
After electrofishing a 100-meter reach of Mahon Creek on the UW-Green Bay campus as part of Mia’s project, fish were measured and weighed before being released back into the creek.
Juvenile Northern Pike
Several juvenile northern pike have been found in the study streams, an encouraging sign that native sport fish may use these tributaries as nurseries and spawning areas.
Shocking at the mouth of Sugar Creek
The UW-Green Bay team at Sugar Creek County Park (Door County), begins to sample just inside the stream’s mouth. Green Bay is just behind them beyond the sandbar. About 650 individual fish were measured in a kilometer of stream!
Water quality testing at Baird Creek
Students had their work cut out for them at Baird Creek near campus. They measured stream flow, analyzed samples in the lab (dissolved nutrients and sediment load) and used handheld probes to measure water quality in the field (dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, pH).
Monitoring larval fish communities
In addition to the stream surveys, Nau is also looking at the larval fish communities of seven small tributaries of Green Bay.
She uses larval light traps to assess what fish species are using these areas as nursery habitat and how the species composition changes over the course of the summer. To the right is a photo is of a larval light trap ready to be deployed. The glow stick acts as a lure that some fish species are attracted too and they become trapped as they swim toward the light.
Wequiock Creek wetlands larval fish sample
The above photo is of a sample taken from a light trap in Wequiock Creek’s wetland at Point au Sable. Everything you see with eyeballs is a larval fish (probably white suckers).
Setting a light trap at Mahon Creek at sunset
One of the larval fish survey technicians setting a light trap at Mahon Creek at sunset.
— photos submitted by Mia McReynolds and Cindy Nau
