We invited a small panel of seven University of Wisconsin Oshkosh faculty members, students and alumni—most of them complete strangers to one another—to muse on and share how they define success. The setting: The UW Oshkosh chancellor’s residence.

The panelists’ backgrounds and their stories were diverse.

A radio-TV-film (RTF) student already directing music videos that promote the institution. A young, entrepreneurial dentist whose biology degree led to a doctorate in dentistry from Marquette University and the opening of her own practice in her hometown. A former campus Head Start program leader and alumna who is living her childhood dream as a Lutheran pastor. A 20-something, local restaurant owner who planted a passion for his family’s native cuisine and culture in the fertile fabric of Oshkosh’s historic downtown. A chancellor, a political science faculty member and a fast-food franchise Titan whose company continues to grow.

We wondered. We asked.

“What does success mean? How do you define it? How do you know when you’ve achieved it in such a success-oriented world?” … And we video-recorded the discussion.

It didn’t take long at all for the ice to break.

No one held back.

What resulted was an unexpected, endearing, poignant and, at times, hilarious two-hour conversation. It ended up being less about locking in definitions and answers and more about trading and sharing personal stories about their many roads to success.

In the stories, there were striking connections. More than one panelist was the first in his or her family to pursue and earn a college degree. Three have histories rooted in restaurants. Not everyone was following his or her field of study. Panelists frequently equated failure with success—more often than they defined “success” by its stereotypes—money, power or status. Each panelist also shared that they are pursuing a degree or a career that still affords him or her the opportunity to enjoy humor, creativity, music and art.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy a few excerpts from their successful, June 20 conversation.…

THE QUESTION: What does success mean? How do you define it? How do you know when you’ve achieved it in such a success-oriented world?

NATHAN STEPANEK, UW Oshkosh RTF student

“For me success is the positive outcome of the goal you have. It’s not necessarily the outcome you were expecting. It’s a positive outcome. For me, when I do videos for the Admissions Office, obviously my goal is to inspire people to come to Oshkosh, but even if I can just get people to think about the college process in the right way, how they should be touring schools and what questions they should be asking, for me, that’s still success because it’s a positive outcome from what I’ve been doing.”

SALLY WILKE ’79, Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church of South Range and First Lutheran Church, Dollar Bay, Mich.

“My two-second bumper sticker for success is ‘getting back up, recovering, learning what you can learn from what didn’t go well and getting back up and going forward again’.… I have a friend for whom that is his definition of success: being certain to have plenty of failures so he would learn things and be successful. There’s a lot to learn. I don’t like how it feels to fail, but I love all of the things that come out of it. Sometimes you walk into a wall and fall down, and so the wall makes you turn a different direction. Again, exciting and good things can happen along the way.”

MARLO AMBAS ’08, Owner, Manila Resto, Oshkosh

“Success for me is being able to provide space for people to enjoy two different things. I’m very passionate about food and music and especially being able to share my culture with the community here. Being a resident and growing up here—my family and myself—we thought that by being able to share our culture, food and tastes in music and way of life, that’s something we wanted to do.”

THE QUESTION: What role has UW Oshkosh, and your experience while a student, played in your personal feelings about and definition of success?

DR. SHAHEDA GOVANI ’06, Govani Dental of Oshkosh

“I feel like Oshkosh was huge for my development. I come from a family where no one on either side went to college—cousins, aunts or uncles. No one really graduated. And my father came here from Uganda as a refugee in the 1970s. So, there was very little educational component growing up. My mom was really supportive. But I decided to go to Oshkosh to work and save money and see how Oshkosh went. I was a little bit nervous. I felt like it was a great place. Doing undergrad there, getting my biology degree, before going on to get my doctorate-level training, I feel like it was a huge blessing. I got research opportunities that, had I gone to a larger school, I would have never gotten. I traveled to Boston one semester with my mentor, Dr. Holton at the time, and I got to present research at a national meeting—things that, as an undergrad who had never even been on an airplane, were really cool experiences… lots of great energy.… Doors opened that wouldn’t have been even allowed to open. I feel like that was a huge blessing.”

CRAIG CULVER ’73, Owner, CEO Culver’s Franchising System Inc.

“I didn’t follow my educational path. Although, it’s an emphasis on botany, and I do love my gardens and things like that that we do have—playing around with native plants. Oshkosh was good to me. I was just proud to get a degree. I was the first one in our family to get a degree as well. I just thought that was a pretty cool thing. I was proud of myself for accomplishing that. It took me five years, however. My family has been in the restaurant business since I was a small child, and I ended up gravitating there even though I didn’t want to go there. Getting away from home, developing people skills I didn’t have before—I did become a better student, I matured—it helped me in all of those ways.…”

TRACY SLAGTER, UW Oshkosh Associate Professor, Political Science

“You envision a role for yourself: ‘I’m going to be a faculty member, and I’ll spend a lot of time in the library and I’ll wear a lot of tweed.…’ This turned out to be completely not that. This turned out to be far better than I ever could have hoped it would be, and I say that very, very honestly. I am very thankful every day that this is where I landed.”

RICHARD WELLS, UW Oshkosh Chancellor

“There are people in our community, whether they are faculty, administrators or students, who, for the most part, respect each other and want to learn from each other. The faculty learn from the students. It’s not just the faculty teaching the students. You learn a lot from students, having never left higher education myself—I’m a first-generation college grad, too —I just never left. That’s a real specialness because it creates a real academic community—because everybody who comes into our community has something unique, knowledge that someone else doesn’t have that you can learn from. It’s not just a professor spilling all the knowledge to students. That dynamic is always here, and I think we really work on that.”

THE QUESTION: Describe a moment where you felt that contentment—“This is it, this is what I was meant to do…”

STEPANEK: “I was going to a movie on campus.… I was heading up to the theater and heading up front and getting all my popcorn and stuff. I was stopped (by a student) and it was like, ‘Hey, one second. I just want to let you know that your video blogs were the reason I came to UW Oshkosh.’ That just struck me. I was like, ‘Wow, to actually know that something that I made affected somebody that much that they would go, ‘This is where I want to be.’ That was just amazing. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that….”

Clockwise from lower left: Chancellor Richard Wells, Nathan Stepanek, Marlo Ambas, Dr. Shaheda Govani, Pastor Sally Wilke, Craig Culver and Tracy Slagter.

AMBAS: “We had our official grand opening on Sept. 8 last year. There are a lot of different things you have to go through in order to get a business operating. Overcoming all those obstacles along the way—being 20-something and going into these banks saying, ‘Hey, I want to open up this restaurant in Oshkosh.’ I kept those letters from those banks that said, ‘No.’”

CULVER: “And you’re not doing business with them either, are you?”

AMBAS: “No….”

CULVER: “I remember.”

AMBAS: “It’s the same persistence—not taking no for an answer. Eventually, we found a bank that believed in our vision. We’re happy that we’re able to make it.… Another thing that’s great about it, or any line of work, is hearing people tell you, ‘Thank you for doing something like this in the community. Thank you for sharing your culture with everybody.’ It gives you that gratification.”

GOVANI: “My favorite thing is when patients bring me things. I had a lady who brought me a cheesecake. I didn’t like my dentist that much. I mean, I liked him, but not that I’d bake him a cheesecake. A woman brought me a handmade, crocheted washcloth. People do really generous things—heartfelt appreciation—that is just so amazing. That means more to me than any amount of money.”

CULVER: “We just did a groundbreaking in Lee’s Summit, Missouri; it’s a St. Louis suburb. I went down. I usually go to these. I get my opportunity to speak. I came back and the mother of the general manager sent us a letter back. She was just touched in such a way—not necessarily about me, but about the whole team—and how proud she was that her son, the general manager, was part of the Culver’s organization. Those are successful moments. But as I said before, it doesn’t stop there. You’ve got to continue to work at it, and work at it, and work at it.”

THE QUESTION: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

SLAGTER: “I’ll say something that my mom continues to say, and it’s with me every day, and it sounds a little ridiculous, but she’d say, ‘You know, Tracy, you’ve got to be a friend to make a friend.’ She says that probably on a weekly basis. It applies to anything.… That’s something that guides how I teach. It guides how I relate with most everybody, how I interact with my own children and what I want to teach them. That is one thing that is core to who I am. ‘You gotta be a friend to make a friend.’”

GOVANI: “…Whenever I was nervous about college or taking out loans, (my mom) would always say, ‘Well, you have nothing to lose, and you’ll always wonder, ‘What if?’ And it’s true. I don’t have a lot of what-ifs because I just do it, and if I fail, whatever. I tried. I don’t have to wonder the what-if.”

STEPANEK: “My dad said this to me when I was real little, so I’m gonna paraphrase this—‘to make sure you listen and observe before you make a decision or a statement.’ With everything in my life, I try to make sure I’m always listening to what other people’s needs are, observing what the situation is, reading the situation before I do anything.… Just in general in life, when you’re talking with somebody, you’ve got to listen and observe to make sure you’re communicating with them the best way you can.”

AMBAS: “I’d say my parents would always tell me that if I start something, I should finish it and do it well. There are always going to be things in life that you don’t always want to do, but you have to do it.”

WILKE: “I did get some advice, early in my seminary career. Pastors cannot afford throwaway lines, and I’ve got a million of them. I will go for the laugh or the witty comeback or the whatever. People need to take time to hear one another and understand one another. Sometimes those quick responses that just roll off my tongue don’t indicate that at all. They indicate that I think I’m being amusing. That’s hurtful often. That’s recent advice that I am really trying to follow.”

WELLS: “The first year (at college) was really, really hard. I almost didn’t make it. I remember going home and talking to my mother and telling her how hard it was. She said, ‘Son, the first year is always the toughest.’ That made me feel better. I was home for the summer, and I got recharged. I went back a second year, and it was still hard. I went home and said the same thing. (My mother) said, ‘Remember, I told you, the first couple years are the toughest.’ So, finally, the third year, I was getting a little better, but it was still pretty tough. I couldn’t wait. It was always this little ritual. ‘How did the year go?’ And she said, ‘Well, you know. The first couple-three years are the toughest.’ I said, ‘Mom, you keep telling me the same thing every year. She said, ‘Then, you’re ready for my final advice.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ She said, ‘It all works out in the end.’ There’s some truth to that. We worry so much about making it and taking on big challenges. You can worry yourself to death. But you sit back—‘It’ll work out. It’ll work out.’”

Watch the conversation in its entirety.

It reads like a movie script…

… A coach leads his team to an undefeated, regular-season record, a first conference title since the 1970s and storybook playoff run… A record-breaking, nationally recognized hometown quarterback with a rocket-engine arm and an aptitude for escaping the pocket, racks up yards… A campus and community fan base awakens to the talent before them and rides an unprecedented surge of Titan Pride.

From its first kickoff to its last tick of the clock, 2012 was a season for the record books for the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Titans football team.

A flawless regular-season record, punctuated by the defeat of the national-champion UW-Whitewater Warhawks (on the team’s Homecoming field, no less), led to a thrilling bid by the Titans for their own national crown.
A week after traveling across the country to defeat No. 3-ranked Linfield College in overtime on that team’s Oregon home field, the Titans football team fell to the University of St. Thomas squad on that team’s home field 28-14 Saturday, Dec. 8. St. Thomas would eventually lose to perennial football powerhouse Mount Union in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Football Championship.

While it ended short of the ultimate goal, the Titans’ journey was incredible.

Cerroni earns national, D3 Coach of the Year candidacy

Pat Cerroni’s focus and determination in leading the Titans to their historic year earned him a place as one of five finalists for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award. Around the country, coaches were rated on a series of criteria, including fan voting, wins, team penalties, sportsmanship, academic performance of their athletes and charitable contributions. Quickly, as the Titans climbed the D3 rankings, so did their coach’s ascent toward the award.

In the end, Cerroni’s bid came up short. However, the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) and D3football.com named him their 2012 NCAA Division III West Region Coach of the Year. He also earned CaptainU’s, the largest youth and college sports network’s, 2012 NCAA Division III Football Coach of the Year title.

Wara posts legendary year

UW Oshkosh quarterback Nate Wara became one of four candidates for the Gagliardi Trophy, the NCAA Division III’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the most outstanding player in the division nationally.

The senior from Oshkosh led UWO to its most successful season in the program’s 118-year history and, despite falling short of the Gagliardi honor, earned Offensive Player of the Year from D3football.com. He additionally received NCAA Division III All-America honors from the AFCA— the first Titan to be recognized since the AFCA All-America program began in 1945, according to UW Oshkosh Athletics.

The Titans averaged 37.5 points per game with Wara behind center. The team effort was enough to earn several Titans All-American D3 honors: Fourteen Titans were selected for four All-America squads, including cornerback Tim Filter (a senior from New Berlin) and running back Cole Myhra (a junior from Menomonee Falls) as second-team honorees. UW Oshkosh Athletics noted tackle Brandon Peter (a senior from Allenton) was picked for the third team and linebacker Taylor Goodman (a senior from South Wayne), center Ben Strehlow (a senior from Brandon) and defensive end Andrew Thompson (a senior from Greendale) earned spots on the fourth team.

Check out more photographs of the UW Oshkosh Titans in action.
To share your Titan Pride, visit UW Oshkosh Athletics.

Jake White doesn’t drink.

And he considers that plenty of reason to throw a party. So far, as he and his business partner projected, hundreds of his University of Wisconsin Oshkosh peers are on the exact same page. That’s proving the entrepreneurial point that drives UW Oshkosh senior White’s and senior marketing major Steven Vanevenhoven‘s mission for Party.0. want to be an alcohol prevention speaker upon graduation and thought it would be easier to show people that you can have fun sober instead of just telling them, White said. Last summer, I approached my business partner, and we started planning right away.

And, as the saying goes, these days, BOOM.

On the first weekend of the 2012 fall semester, White helped stage the first Party.0 sober party off campus. For the record, it’s pronounced “party-point-o” and its slogan is “Bringing it B.A.C.,” as White and Vanevenhoven “wanted to hint that we provide dry parties but in a cool way.” About 80 people came out to enjoy the first evening of free food and drinks, music, dancing and games. By the end of 2012, Party.0 had run its sixth party and averaged about 150 people per event, with 180 representing the apex. New events were scheduled and staged into the New Year.

Party.0 is no student experiment. White and his business partner surveyed more than 100 UWO students and found many had equally strong reservations about drinking. After identifying surefire “customers,” they sought out sponsors.

Presto. Campus-area Papa John’s, Subway and Monster Energy Drink outlets and vendors stepped up and sponsored the events and supplied food and alcohol-free beverages. The Fox Valley DJ Association lent the musical talent. People came. Money was made. The business model–also a demonstration of the kind of harmony students and community neighbors can share while still having a blast–even won $750 as second place in the local Creating a Stronger Community Contest.

We want to provide a place for that 30 percent of students who don’t drink to find each other,” White said. “It’s important to us that people are comfortable in their own skin and that they don’t feel dependent on alcohol to have a great time. We don’t want to tell people what to do or not to do, just provide the opportunity to have fun and see firsthand that you don’t have to drink alcohol to fit in.”

Check out photos from a Party.O party.
Read more alumni and student profiles.

In the video below, alumni, who have worked for nearly a year on the planning committee, share their excitement about the upcoming event and encourage their fellow Greek “brothers” and “sisters” to join in the fun.

Dexter Filkins, a reporter for The New Yorker and The New York Times who has reported on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, will speak on Nov. 10 at the “Iraq War in Retrospect” symposium planned in UW Oshkosh’s Reeve Memorial Union.

The free, public symposium, co-sponsored by Military Veterans Museum, Inc., is the culmination of a week-long lineup of UW Oshkosh programming and events titled “War Through Their Eyes: Eyewitnesses, Combatants & America’s Newest Veterans.” Speakers, film screenings, art exhibits and forums will take place on campus throughout Veterans Week 2012, November 6 through November 10. Veterans Day is Sunday, Nov. 11.

The Saturday symposium welcomes a broad audience of participants to publicly examine and help preserve the diverse experiences of the Iraq War, said UW Oshkosh Department of History Prof. Stephen Kercher.

“Dexter Filkins is recognized, and has been rightly honored, as one of our era’s most skilled, exhaustive and thorough war correspondents and storytellers,” Kercher said. “He and his work embody what the Iraq War in Retrospect is all about.”

“Our special objective with this symposium is to really give a broad range of analysis, in a scholarly yet accessible way,” he said. “We are inviting a diverse audience to join us and consider the experience of journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan, the way filmmakers interpret the experience of these wars, the experience of the medical professionals who served, the experience of people who objected to the wars. And, finally, we need to provide a context for the geopolitical forces that accounted for these wars taking place in the first place. You can never talk about the experience of veterans without examining why they were sent to war in the first place.”

The Oshkosh-based, nonprofit Military Veterans Museum, dedicated to educating the public about the experience of war veterans, worked with UW Oshkosh to secure the grant making Filkins’ keynote visit and the Nov. 10 symposium possible. The partners’ collaboration is funded by a $10,000 major grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council.

Military Veterans Museum is also working to raise funds and complete its new “Fields of Honor” museum honoring and preserving the experiences of U.S. war veterans south of Oshkosh, near U.S. Highway 41 and State Highway 26.

“Dexter Filkins has dedicated himself and his work to sharing the experience of war through the stories, service and sacrifice of its veterans,” said Larry Smerling, vice president of Military Veterans Museum’s board of directors. “Both his presentation and the rest of the Iraq War symposium’s programs are strongly aligned with the mission of our organization and, most importantly, they will deeply involve the public, educators, historians and veterans themselves.”

• Free, online registration for the Nov. 10 symposium will be available starting the week of Oct. 8 at the UW Oshkosh Veterans Week website, www.uwosh.edu/veteransweek.
  

Dexter Filkins, contributed photo by James Hill

Before his tenure with The New York Times, Filkins worked for the Los Angeles Times, where he was chief of the paper’s New Delhi bureau, and for The Miami Herald. In 2009, he was part of a team of Times reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has received a George Polk Award and two Overseas Press Club awards. Most recently, he was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. He lives in New York City.

Filkins’ presentation is just one component of the day-long Nov. 10 symposium. Students, staff, war veterans and archivists from the UW Oshkosh Department of History, UW Oshkosh Veterans Services Center, Military Science Department, American Democracy Project and Forrest R. Polk Library are also involved in the event’s sponsorship, coordination and content.

“A veteran’s war-time experience is a seminal moment in his or her life,” said Shawn Monroe, Veterans Resource Coordinator at UW Oshkosh. “An opportunity to better understand that moment is an opportunity to frame veterans’ personal stories within the larger canvas of the human experience. The Iraq War Symposium provides a rare opportunity to examine the factors, the players, the effects and experiences of our society in near-real time.”

The symposium will include six, 90-minute sessions moderated by UW Oshkosh professors, featuring special panelists, including Iraq War veterans who attend UW Oshkosh and who are members of area communities. The sessions’ subjects range from the role of women in the war, the work of war journalists and correspondents, how media and film have portrayed the war and the preservation of veterans’ memories and records in a digital era.

Kercher said the symposium will also feature a “memory corps” project, encouraging veterans of a digital, and often delete-able era, to preserve their artifacts and experiences for the sake of their historical value. UW Oshkosh Archivist Joshua Ranger is helping coordinate the effort.

“It will ultimately be an interdisciplinary program, looking at the Iraq War through different lenses but prioritizing the lens of the veteran,” Kercher said. “We want to make sure we have eyewitnesses — the reporters are those people with the eyes and ears we’ve relied upon to develop our sense for what these wars were like for everyone involved. The symposium also addresses the experience of veterans, both on the battlefield and in their difficult transition on the home front.”

Registration for the free symposium will be available soon.

The UW Oshkosh Veterans Week lineup leading into the Saturday, Nov. 10 symposium and Veterans Day will be equally engaging. The list of speakers and events follows:

• Tuesday, November 6, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Reeve Union Theater); Vietnam War Veterans panel discussion led by Greg Olson, Department of Communications.
• Wednesday, November 7 (time TBD) (Sage Hall, 1210) Co-sponsored by the Women’s Advocacy Council; Screening of the film “Lioness,” with a talk-back panel led by female Iraq War veterans.
• Thursday, November 8, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Sage 1210) Co-sponsored by the International Film Series; Screening of the film “In the Valley of Elah,” with talk-back led by Kelly Wilz, UW Marshfield film professor who has written about Iraq War films), Troy and Frances Perkins and war veterans.
• Friday, November 9, 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., (Reeve Union Theater and Steinhilber Gallery); “War Through Their Eyes: Warriors & Nurses at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh” event coordinated by UW Oshkosh’s Grace Lim and Shawn McAfee, who, in collaboration with UW Oshkosh students, developed the original “War Through Their Eyes” multimedia project in 2009.

Learn more:

• Military Veterans Museum Inc.
• UW Oshkosh Department of History
• “War Through Their Eyes: From UW Oshkosh to the Middle East and Back”
• Wisconsin Humanities Council

Their career paths are diverse and dynamic, strung around the globe. But there is one point of origin each of these University of Wisconsin Oshkosh alumni enthusiastically cites as a motivational experience, sparking life-long civic engagement: Model United Nations.

An award-winning history

“From my point of view, that’s the name of the game,” said Kenneth Grieb, International Studies director at UW Oshkosh. “Model UN gives me a chance to work with people over several years and see them develop. That is something that makes them reach and develop new skills, and that’s very satisfying.”

Grieb, or “Dr. G.” as he is reverently referred to by many Model UN alumni, has been advising the University student group since 1966. He takes the role, the group’s competitive success, very seriously. And so do the students.

For 28 years in a row, UW Oshkosh’s Model UN teams have won awards in New York. The intense, weeklong, annual National Model United Nations competition—the world’s largest—pits college and university student squads from around the world against one another in contests of international diplomacy, policy, economic and governance acumen.

They write position papers. They face off and debate world issues and events. The 2012 National Model UN included 5,000 student competitors from more than 300 universities in 44 countries on six continents. Their arena is the actual United Nations—the New York City nerve center where diplomats, prime ministers and presidents tackle global affairs.

UWO’s program has a national reputation as one of the best. But there’s more to it than earning recognition and picking up trophies. Dr. G. considers his students’ stunning career experiences and accomplishments as a result of the Model UN immersion and attainment of a UW Oshkosh diploma the real benchmark of the program’s excellence.

“It’s great to see what all these people are doing,” he said.

Model UN alumni reflections

Brian Rettmann ’97

What a mark Brian Rettmann has made in Africa. After graduating from UWO, Rettmann moved to Washington, D.C. for an internship at the Helicopter Association International. Next, he joined his new wife, Marialyce Mutchler ’95 (also a UW Oshkosh Model UN alum), in Botswana, where he worked on a regional trade project under the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Rettmann advanced to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, setting up voluntary counseling and testing centers in the initial battle to combat HIV. That led to a number of roles in the ongoing fight against HIV’s spread in Africa, including co-development of Guyana’s “Me to You: Reach One, Save One” campaign.

In 2011, he accepted his current position as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, where he oversees an annual budget of about $350 million. Rettmann and Mutchler are both UW Oshkosh Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipients.

“Though his style has lightened for the new generation of students, (Dr. Grieb) took a coaching style from Vince Lombardi (and I do not use that name lightly!) in always driving for success. We as a team were always inspired, if nothing else, by his mere energy level. He has a beautiful, strategic mind and truly knows how to drive people to get success out of them. There was a culture within the team that anything less than success was not acceptable. Success was the tradition. That culture led to some very healthy competition, which inspired people to be better than they normally would be.”

Jill (Watry) Kastner ’97

Jill Kastner went on to attend law school at the University of California, Los Angeles and became an attorney with a large international law firm in the Silicon Valley, regularly litigating cases involving corporations, such as Intel, Fujitsu, Arctic Cat and U.S. Bank. A mother of two children, she opted to move back to her home state and began working for Legal Action of Wisconsin. There, she now provides free legal services to the working poor. She also serves as the past president of the Wisconsin State Bar Young Lawyers Division and as a member of the State Bar Board of Governors.

“Model UN taught me that a small-town girl can do anything, if she’s willing to work for it.  When I first joined as a freshman, I was wowed by the knowledge and skill level of the experienced team members. I was also very intimidated by Dr. Grieb, who was not afraid to give me the honest assessment that my performance was worse than ‘undigested barf.’ I stuck with it and gained the knowledge and skills that helped me graduate law school in the top 10 percent of my class and win my cases in the court room … Today, people shy away from honest criticism and seem to strive for only ‘good enough.’ Model UN gave me a great advantage because it taught me to demand honest criticism, so that I can constantly improve and strive to be the best I can be.”

Margaret LaBorde ’07

After graduation and a three-month stint as a park ranger at Olympic National Park, Margaret LaBorde was a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, focusing on environmental education and youth and community development. She worked with schools, municipal governments and non-governmental organizations, developing a tree nursery with middle and high school students, aiding reforestation, teaching social studies and helping English teachers strengthen their command of the language. Bilingual and serving a diverse patient population, she currently works for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, managing the Portage, Johnson Creek and Wisconsin Rapids clinics.

“I think people in general have a tendency to problem solve and approach challenges using our personal lens. Through Model UN, however, we learned to research and approach challenge and conflict based on someone else’s lens—in this case, a specific country’s cultural lens—because it’s the most effective and practical way to create sustainable change. This was instrumental in my work as a Peace Corps volunteer. Work in any developing country is difficult, but I found that the Model UN development approach is really what’s effective: focusing on development from the ground up; forging partnerships at the community level; capacity training; and resource development … Dr. Grieb takes such an interest in his students.

I remember my freshman year when he showed us a picture of students from over a decade before. Not only did he remember all of their names, but also he could tell us where they worked and how they had gotten there. His belief in his students and his desire to see them succeed is unparalleled.”

Tim Suess ’12

Tim Suess begins work with consulting firm Deloitte in its Milwaukee office as an audit assistant this January. He hopes to eventually work in the company’s New York City office and even have the opportunity to work through the firm with the United Nations.

“Dr. Grieb is a dying breed of academics that truly pushes students to their limits and imparts knowledge and understanding instead of curving exams and making a course short-term memorization. The work and skills that I have had to do and learn for Model United Nations are the largest reasons why I am successful. The College of Business (COB) focuses on technical skills needed to gain an entry level position; my MUN writing, speaking, researching and negotiating skills have essentially trained me for upper-echelon positions right out of school. Also, since we typically represent developing countries in Model UN, I have a thorough understanding of how they are evolving and how that impacts business. In short, I wish every COB student pursuing an international business minor/emphasis was required to be in Model UN.”

Marialyce Mutchler ’95

Marialyce Mutchler has worked in international development for the last 14 years. She has worked working in more than 15 different countries in Latin American and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Eurasia and the Middle East. She has lived in Botswana, Guyana, South Africa and, currently, Tanzania. Her career has focused primarily on supporting small and medium size business development including farmers, agri-processors and tourism. She is currently the deputy chief of party (deputy director) for the U.S. Government foreign assistance project promoting food Security and agricultural development.

“The fundamentals I learned in Dr. Grieb’s courses and in Model UN enabled me to understand the operating environments, cultural and political influences of the countries where I work. Early in my career this gave me an advantage over my colleagues who did not have the same education background. However, it is the skills I learned in MUN that I practice every day. They have become part of how I do business, manage staff, work with local partners and approach problem solving in all aspects of my life. The critical thinking, research and writing skills enable me to approach both challenges and opportunities with strategies for success. The soft skills learned through team building, leadership, negotiation and consensus building are so incorporated into my life that when some asked how I learned to do them, I have to pause and remember — it was the hours spent with Dr. G as a professor and a coach.”

Carmen Simon ’04

Carmen Simons‘s career first took her to Chicago and then to New York City where she still lives.  Microfinance, which she learned about in MUN, was her first focus. That segued into economic development. Most recently, she organized a financial cooperative in Queens, and served as the CEO for its first year and a half of operations. That led to her current position managing a global corporate philanthropy data project where she collaborates with the United Nations Global Compact – a program she learned about at UW Oshkosh.  Now, she is in regular contact with the staff there.

“Model UN and Dr. Grieb changed my life and put me on a path of professional discovery.  Model UN taught me skills about how to be the best and most strategic worker I could possibly be… There is so much I learned and developed as Dr. Grieb’s student, it’s hard to sum it up, but I so often use the negotiating tactics in my professional life: Creating a stepped negotiating strategy, always getting the other party to lay their cards on the table first and knowing that the real work is always done outside the meeting, talking to people who arrive early and stay late. Not least of which, (Dr. Grieb) also taught us all about how to be flashy dressers.”

Rebecca Kijak ’09

After MUN, Rebecca Kijak spent a semester studying abroad. Her passion to see the world had grown tenfold after going to the United Nations headquarters in New York City as a student and seeing “the one place where it all comes together.”

I landed my first job out of college in Seattle working for Holland America cruise line in the corporate office as an assistant in Marine Hotel Operations… it was a fantastic experience!  I worked with and made friends with people from Indonesia, India, Holland, Slovenia, Germany, France, U.K., the Philippines, China and many other places. Now, looking back, being able to understand differences and get past them to see people is something that I learned at a young age. However, it was reinforced by participating in Model UN… I am now working for Mimic Technologies, a company that makes simulators for robotic surgery.  We are growing rapidly, and international business and relations is an increasing part of what we do. Again, Model UN — particularly going to New York and interacting with foreign students — helped to prepare me for interacting with surgeons from all over the world.”

Carolyn Kirchhoff ’08

After graduating from UW Oshkosh, Carolyn Kirchhoff moved out to Washington, DC where she secured an internship with a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She learned of the internship opportunity through her experience in Model UN. She was hired, sight unseen, based on an alumnus’ recommendation. After interning for the summer, the company hired her full time. She provided administrative support for a contract focused on best practices in small and medium enterprise development. She also contributed to new business development for the company, on proposals worth up to $125 million. Carolyn eventually moved back to Wisconsin where she is working for the Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) #1 in Pewaukee, WI. The agency provides services for 45 public K-12 school districts in Southeast Wisconsin. She works specifically on an initiative to transforming the educational system to be more responsive to all learners by personalizing learning.

“I came to UW Oshkosh as a valedictorian from high school, and actually chose the University because of the scholarship program they offer for students who are Wisconsin Academic Excellence Award recipients. I also entered university planning to major in secondary education in the social sciences. I did not join Model UN until my junior year, after returning from a study abroad program the spring semester of my sophomore year. I always say that joining Model UN is the single best decision I made in my entire undergraduate career. Model UN brought to me a level of rigor and challenge that was lacking for me previously in my university experience. I actually ended up staying in school for five years – partly because I switched my major so many times, but also because I wasn’t done learning everything I could from Model UN… Besides the connection — finding a job after graduation through the Model UN alumni network — the skills I learned through participating in the Model UN program helped me in my classes and prepared me for the working world. Researching, writing and speaking are three of the main skills that students in the Model UN program develop.”

In this video, hear Povletich talk about his latest book, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society (Photos courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ndBjzU0IbQ

Any university campus is bound to look different to an alumnus 23 years after his graduation. However, when Patrick Stiegman is impressed with UW Oshkosh’s growth since his graduation day, you give him a bit of extra cred.

Stiegman ’88, is the Emmy-award-winning vice president and editor-in-chief of digital media for global sports giant ESPN. So, he knows a thing or two about growing, thriving organizations in the 21st century. He punches the clock at one every day.

“It’s transformative,” Stiegman said of UW Oshkosh’s evolution last October just before receiving a UW Oshkosh Distinguished Alumni Award.

“I’ve been at ESPN for six years, and we’ve never stopped building buildings there,” he said. “It’s a campus. So I’m kind of used to this sense of things growing up all around you all over the place. And the first thing I thought of when I came on campus was, ‘This is very much like ESPN. There’s growth here.’ You see that it’s moving ahead for the future, and that’s a wonderful thing for the University and the students.”

After completing more than $150 million worth of capital projects over the last decade, including the $48-million, 191,000-square-foot academic center Sage Hall, which opened last September, the University isn’t slowing down or losing focus in this persistent economic murk. UW Oshkosh has another $60 million of capital projects either in design or under construction to carry the campus’ continued evolution deep into this decade.

But there also is plenty of evidence of UW Oshkosh’s courageous growth and attitude beyond the new bricks and mortar and silhouettes of construction cranes arching over campus.

Equally important is the entrepreneurial and academic architecture transforming the institution. It is driving creative community partnerships with area business owners in downtown Oshkosh and at the state’s largest dairy farm just 20 miles from campus. It is helping preserve the University’s successful, high-impact Student Titan Employment Program (STEP). And it has fueled the first, forward-thinking redesign of general education requirements in 40 years.

“UW Oshkosh is a catalyst: No question,” UW Oshkosh Chancellor Richard H. Wells said. “In this challenging economic atmosphere, everyone feels some strain and shares in the experience of that proverbial uphill climb. So, it takes courage for an institution like ours to resist the conditions and the currents out there—to, in a way, defy gravity and accelerate our growth and our learning and what we can provide to our community, region and state in the way of catalytic energy and entrepreneurial value.”

Incredibly challenging economic conditions last year resulted in a more than $12-million state biennial budget cut to UW Oshkosh, followed by an additional $2.2 million state “lapse” cut to the institution, necessary by July 1 this summer. That came on the heels of a 2009-2011 biennial budget shortfall of nearly $8 million. Tough decisions were made through each budget planning process.

However, the cuts did not derail strategic plans to upgrade, renovate and innovate facilities and programs amid an ongoing, decade-long stretch of record student enrollments. Nor did they slow the collaborative process to update and reconfigure the University’s general education requirements—a monumental effort that involved numerous listening sessions, academic department meetings and a sweep through hundreds of UW Oshkosh courses. The result is the “University Studies Program” proposal reengineering and better aligning our students’ academic core of credits with UW Oshkosh’s Essential Learning Outcomes.

“These projects and programs have been key these last couple of years—demonstrating that it not only takes a confident, caring, committed and competent campus community to achieve what we achieve but also a courageous one,” Wells said.

“We are doing more with less. Compensation for our faculty and staff has, frankly, not come close to keeping up with comparable university systems in the Midwest. There are plenty of excuses for an institution and its people to slow down. However, UW Oshkosh is resolute, following through on the plans we developed and reshaping those that need modification.”

Bright horizons

You cannot fault Stiegman for noticing the campus’ remarkable makeover. With new infusions of state, student and donor support, the UW Oshkosh skyline continues to morph. A handful of projects remain under construction, and a few more are on the drawing board.

Horizon Village, a five-story, 340-bed, state-of-the-art, suite-style residence hall will open this fall. The $34-million hall, funded through student fees, is another striking, modern structure redefining the shape of campus. It will feature apartment-like spaces with private bathrooms and living areas for sophomore, junior, senior and graduate students.

The Horizon Village complex is long overdue. UW Oshkosh has subsisted without a new residence hall building for 40 years. That’s despite posting new or maintaining record enrollments over the last decade. The total student population continues on a march toward 14,000.

Meanwhile, design work has begun for the estimated $26-million renovation of Clow Social Science Center. Shortly after Sage Hall opened its doors to the College of Business and a number of departments of the College of Letters and Science last fall, University leaders pushed to keep the refit of Clow on the state Building Commission’s to-do list. The project earned the panel’s support as part of a $50-million package of academic building upgrades at four UW System campuses. Clow is currently in line for construction to start in 2013, with a 2014 planned reopening.

Both Horizon and Clow will be built to meet specific Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, feature eco-friendly construction materials and incorporate technology to harvest and use alternative energy sources. As these on-campus projects evolve, yet another prominent project is in the works: The UW Oshkosh Alumni Welcome and Conference Center.

The UW Oshkosh Foundation is leading a new fundraising campaign for the multimillion dollar center, planned at the foot of the Wisconsin Street bridge along the Fox River. Flooding destroyed the University’s River Center conferencing complex in 2008. The new, 22,000-square-foot center is billed as “the University’s new front door,” featuring enhanced conference and gathering spaces for alumni and the campus and extended Oshkosh community.

While disaster insurance payments will defray some of the new center’s cost, the Foundation is leading an $8-to-$10 million fundraising campaign in economically tenuous times.

This is more evidence of the University’s resolve to “fight the recession rather than be defined by it,” as UW Oshkosh Foundation President Arthur H. Rathjen noted at Sage Hall’s September dedication. “We undertake multiyear initiatives during which the economy is sure to ebb and flow.”

A hotel makeover and Biodigester 2.0

You can wander either two blocks or 20 miles off campus and you will run into two intersections where UW Oshkosh’s courage merges with its commitment to serving as a community catalyst.

In February, the UW Oshkosh Foundation and hoteliers Richard Batley and John Pfefferle (involved in Neenah’s BEST WESTERN PREMIER Bridgewood Resort and Conference Center and downtown Appleton’s CopperLeaf Boutique Hotel and Spa) teamed up to buy and revitalize downtown Oshkosh’s waterfront City Center Hotel.

Why? Especially in an economic crunch? The partnership is working with city leaders to help create a revitalized  downtown. The waterfront hotel’s physical connection to the recently renovated Oshkosh Convention Center, and its proximity to UW Oshkosh (just two blocks away from the academic-conference-hosting dynamo), will serve as a crucial, catalytic boost for the campus and local economy.

It promises a direct return on investment, too. The partners are committed to using a portion of the annual revenue generated by the hotel to fund UW Oshkosh scholarships for Oshkosh-based high school graduates and new academic programs. They also have proposed potentially using the hotel to house a future, high-impact, collaborative academic hospitality program, answering the call for more entrepreneurial, career-ready degree programs in Wisconsin.

“In so many ways, the hotel project will be a benefit to the University, our broader community and the regional economy,” UW Oshkosh Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services Tom Sonnleitner said.

… Cut to rural Fond du Lac County. There, another of UW Oshkosh’s most entrepreneurial and, Wells believes, courageous endeavors in its 140-year history pushes ahead.

German-based Viessmann Group and its subsidiary BIOFerm Energy Systems of Madison have collaborated with the UW Oshkosh Foundation, the College of Letters and Science’s environmental studies and microbiology faculty and University sustainability team members to build a state-of-the-art, dry fermentation anaerobic biodigester facility. Dedicated in May 2011, it is
operating off Witzel Avenue in Oshkosh.

Now, the two companies, the Foundation and Milksource, owner of the 8,000-cow Rosendale Dairy, the largest dairy farm in the state of Wisconsin, are partnering to build a second biodigester at the farm south of Pickett. The project is still taking shape.

This “wet” biodigester will be fueled by Rosendale Dairy’s annual, millions of gallons of livestock manure (an unavoidable byproduct and environ-mental challenge for the huge, state-of-the-art milking operation). Ultimately, the dairy’s biodigester will produce a startling 2.8 megawatts of electricity each year. That energy revenue, or equivalent carbon credits, can cut in half the University’s original 2025 carbon-neutrality target.

“The commitment to technology and green energy that the UW Oshkosh Foundation and the University are making, even in what are challenging economic times, is the result of intense research and studies on their parts,” said Jim Ostrom, Milksource cofounder and partner. “We could not have asked for a better partner to work with as we bring a digester to our farm. It is a true testament to the environment, the
education of our future leaders and to the community.”

As with the hotel project, the Foundation and Milksource also want to channel some revenue from the operation into creation of an attached public education center. Students and faculty would educate PK-12 student visitors and community members about how bio-solids and runoff prevention science and research are driving a green energy solution.

Wells also has been bullish on development of a “Center for University Rural Development and Sustainability Studies,” or “CURDSS.”

Get it?

“We’re serving our state by confronting an environmental challenge for Milksource and its Rosendale Dairy neighbors by reaching a clean, cost-cutting, rural-America-preserving solution,” College of Letters and Science Dean John Koker said. “This also enhances our area’s identity as a hub of environmental studies activity and further develops our niche as a global destination for enterprises eager to learn more about renewable energy innovations.”

New academic architecture

UW Oshkosh journalism senior Sheng Lee’s academic home is the new Sage Hall, but it took not a single piece of construction equipment to create the innovative internship program that is helping propel her academic career.

Launched in 2009, STEP channeled $500,000 in University reinvestment funds toward high-impact, hands-on student internships. They have given a few hundred students practical, career-connected, collaborative learning experiences on campus with faculty, staff and peers. Conversely, through STEP, faculty and staff members get student assistance in areas from research to media services to academic computing support and Web page development.

Lee, at one point in 2011, juggled three STEP internships with UW Oshkosh Career Services, Alumni Relations and the journalism department as a writer and social media and marketing strate-gist. She said her STEP jobs helped cut the cost of attending college while honing her career skill set. The income also helped her move from Neenah to Oshkosh to be closer to school and work.

“It’s been a lot better than commuting, and I’m able to be more involved with campus activities,” said Lee, who anticipates graduation in June.

She said working in concert with journalism and communication faculty also helped her see the deeper, analytical, business value of social media. “If you’re just a casual (social media) user, you don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff,” Lee said.

While helping keep STEP thriving, faculty members at UW Oshkosh also have concentrated on reforming the core academic experience. They have designed, and are integrating, a reformed, 41-credit general education program that is as innovative as it is elegant.

The proposed University Studies Program is structured around three themes—Question, Exploration and Connection. The themes, in turn, have been phrased as “Signature Questions” that connect to the University’s four-year-old Essential Learning Outcomes: “How do people understand and create a sustainable world?” “How do people understand and engage in community life?” and “How do people understand and bridge cultural differences?”

The University Studies Program also is the result of the Liberal Education Reform Team’s 2010 examination of more than 1,000 UW Oshkosh courses. Plans are on track for its implementation in fall 2013.

Within their first four semesters at UW Oshkosh, students will have completed four streamlined “quests,” each centered on the “big questions” and containing a mix of general education courses connecting the signature questions to learning outcomes and specific fields of study. The quests even consider the essential skills desired by employers.

Faculty and administrators involved in the initiative believe they have collaboratively developed a new program that authentically reengineers and reenergizes the nucleus of the academic experience at UW Oshkosh for years to come.

“I have been surprised again and again by constructive people during this enormous and collaborative process of reform,” said communication studies professor Lori Carrell, director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a co-leader in the development of the University Studies Program. “This is an amazing place filled with extraordinary people who are doing courageous work to benefit students and the community—in spite of a season in which we could be propelled toward discouragement.”

Five winners of University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Alumni Awards share their reflections on earning the accolade, the growth of the campus and the impact their educations had on their careers.

With educational experiences spanning from the 1970s into the 21st century at UW Oshkosh, the award recipients accepted their honors on Friday, Oct. 21 as part of UW Oshkosh’s Homecoming 2011 events.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAmoXOEDrSs

In Daniel Burrus’ opinion, R2D2 would make a lousy doctor and an even crummier teacher.

Burrus doesn’t hold much hope for the bedside manner or the classroom creativity of robots.

No matter how articulate or human they may appear in the technologically transformative years ahead, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh alumnus, best-selling author, futurist and CEO of Hartland’s Burrus Research Associates, believes people who land in the hospital or require higher-skilled care still want a good, old-fashioned human being to communicate and connect with. R2D2 or C3PO might draw our blood, run a scan or help with physical therapy. But Burrus believes we still crave and benefit from an in-the-flesh doctor’s creativity and healing influence.

In classrooms? Same deal.

“Do you want that Watson-powered computer coming up and saying, ‘I hope you get well soon?’ I don’t think so,” Burrus said. “Healing is an art and a science… Teaching is an art and a science.”

“What we’re going to do is free the human teachers to teach the higher levels of the cognitive domain,” he said. “The lower levels are fantastic for automation. Just like in work, repetitive tasks are for robots. The higher levels are what humans do best – analysis, problem solving, synthesis.”

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the 1971 UW Oshkosh alumnus is an education grad. Burrus’ vision is reassuring news for the state’s third-largest and second-fastest growing university, a now-140-year-old institution that, since its Oshkosh Normal School days, has been teaching teachers.

For decades, Burrus has stressed to corporate, government and educational leaders alike that humans have not, and will not, relegate all they do to technology. Rather, they leave the menial stuff to robotic arms and artificial intelligences. In the classroom, that means the HALs and holograms of tomorrow are best to teach rudimentary math skills or the use of commas, freeing living, breathing teachers to concentrate on higher-level lessons.

The 21st century brings new budgetary and cultural challenges for teaching and those who teach teachers. Every year, there are new mandates to keep education relevant and retooled for increasingly tech-savvy generations. Meanwhile, there’s another demand for innovation: Teachers must keep schools havens of accessibility and inclusivity, maximizing the classroom for learning disabled children, non-English-speaking students and the advantaged alike.

The future has a lot in store for teachers. But, in a sense, UW Oshkosh is honoring its past by focusing on the future, leading an ever-morphing, multifaceted campaign to prepare the teachers of tomorrow by embracing all the change.

“It’s a constant adaptation,” College of Education and Human Services Dean Fred Yeo said.

Inclusion as innovation
It has long been a problem with envisioning the future: Humans tend to focus on the gadgets and gizmos likely to develop, à la Star Trek or Jetsons. But in the mission of teaching the teachers of tomorrow, there is as much emphasis on inclusion as there is on iPads.

UW Oshkosh has become a leader in equipping teachers with the innovative training, sensitivity and understanding necessary to make classrooms as comfortable and effective for gifted students as they are for learning disabled and non-English-speaking pupils. It is an ideal that has been stressed since the 1970s, yet, only in the last 10 to 20 years have teachers and researchers really begun to pull the elusive vision out of the abstract, assembling dynamic classroom environments, documenting their approaches and results and making the experience part of student-teachers’ proving grounds.

Controversial though they have been, forward-looking, results-based national policies like No Child Left Behind and Response to Intervention (RTI) are driving change, stressing the need for K–12
education to be effective for students of all learning abilities, socioeconomic strata and cultural backgrounds.

Stacey Skoning, an assistant professor of special education at UW Oshkosh, was teaching elementary math in Madison in the 1990s when she saw firsthand the revelatory impact of inclusive classrooms. She and another instructor “co-taught” a “multi-age, fully-inclusive” classroom with learning-disabled, cognitively disabled, emotionally and behaviorally challenged, gifted, non-English-speaking and average students.

Skoning said that diverse population was far from chaotic. It proved advantageous for all.

While gifted students demonstrated a strong grasp of the mechanics of math, it was the students with disabilities — students who, in earlier eras, were disqualified from problem solving when they couldn’t get past the nuts and bolts of multiplication tables — who proved to be the creative problem solvers, sometimes offering elegant solutions.

When the math class was fragmented back into pieces, separating the learners into their traditional same-ability environments, neither group thrived like they did together.

“It was a phenomenal year and taught us how important inclusive education really is,” Skoning said.

The inclusive ethic is now ingrained in UW Oshkosh’s COEHS curriculum. And it’s also the driving force in an increasing number of University-community collaborations.

A student in the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Education and Human Services' Human Kinetics and Health Education Program volunteers time teaching children in the college's summer Adapted Physical Education Program in Albee Hall gym.

COEHS hosts an annual “Planting the Seeds of Inclusion” conference, billed as an open invitation to regional K–12 “educators, therapists, parents and other professionals involved in the growth and learning of children, from birth through age 22, in inclusive settings.” Participants receive training and learn about best practices. Parents of children with disabilities tap into expert wisdom.

With such influential, collaborative programs as reinforcement, Yeo said there is an increasing push to require teaching students to spend more time in inclusive, special education classrooms.

The college is pushing for student teachers to spend three to six hours of mandatory special education time upon graduation, a way to keep their talents aligned with the RTI tenets. That policy calls for delivery of “high-quality, culturally and linguistically responsive instruction, assessment and evidence-based intervention,” according to the National Center on Response to Intervention.

Like No Child Left Behind, RTI also emphasizes the advancement of not only special education students but also those of different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds.

“We’re all beginning to go, ‘OK, let’s mandate multicultural education in undergraduate requirements,’” Yeo said.

UW Oshkosh teaching students appear to be embracing all the changes.

Skoning said the popularity of COEHS’s double major in elementary education and special education continues to grow. Not only are the dual degrees attuned to the needs of modern elementary schools embracing inclusivity, but they also are a valuable commodity to UW Oshkosh graduates looking to land a first teaching job in a tough economy.

“If I’m a principal, and I’m looking to hire you, and I found out you have elementary and special education background, I’m much more interested in you than an only-elementary school teacher,” Skoning said.

Technology? Sure, but it’s no substitute
While technology isn’t the only prescription for teaching’s future, it certainly isn’t being ignored at UW Oshkosh.

But the emphasis is not on mastery of the gadgets. It is instead placed on using technology in the classroom to convey those higher-level lessons that Burrus considers the bread-and-butter of human teachers’ futures.

Professor Eric Brunsell teaches a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses in science education, including one in which UW Oshkosh students use the face-to-face online video tool Skype to mentor elementary students in the Middle East on science fair projects.

“In our case, future teachers from UW Oshkosh are mentoring students from Islamabad, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Tunis — they are connecting with students all over the world,” said Brunsell, assistant professor in the curriculum and instruction department within COEHS.

“When this year’s graduating class entered UWO, YouTube was only a year or two old,” he said. “Now, more than 35 hours of video are uploaded every second… It is impossible to ‘train’ teachers to adapt to this rapidly changing technological landscape. Learning how to use specific tools doesn’t cut it.

Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership assistant professor Nari Kim assists a student in a summer UW Oshkosh course on educational technology. The course is one in a series emphasizing the 21st century preparation and adaptability of teaching students in synthesizing the meaningful use of technology in their future classrooms.

Instead, we need to focus on developing a mind-set in our students that asks, ‘What can I do with this technological tool that I couldn’t do without it?’”

Heather Peterson graduated from UW Oshkosh with her early childhood education degree in May. As a student teacher, she employed a SMARTBoard in a fifth-grade Neenah classroom and the “Elmos and overheads and PowerPoints” her kindergarten and second grade environments called for.

Peterson said those varied experiences helped her land her first job at an international school in Gunma, Japan this summer.

“With my student teaching experiences as an example, I think that has really prepared me to feel like I can teach anything, anywhere at any level,” Peterson said.

Brunsell foresees quickening computing power and mobile applications on phones — “apps” — leading “to diagnostic assessments that will pinpoint student difficulties and suggest tutorials to overcome those difficulties.” He also predicts the spread of distance learning but not at the expense of in-the-flesh teachers.

“Why does a teacher need to be located in the same physical space as a child in order to focus on critical thinking or other higher-level skills?” Brunsell asked. “Teachers — human teachers — will continue to be important, but their role will continue to evolve.”

So, will students continue to “go to school” to learn? Yes and no, Burrus said.

“There are times when we are going to school when there are things we could be doing better at home, and there are times when we’re at home and we should have been in a classroom — when it would have been better to have been in a classroom with a teacher,” he said.

Burrus believes teaching’s future, like the broader future, is never an “either-or” proposition; it’s always a “both-and.” UW Oshkosh needs to continue to support the perception that technology brings opportunity, not threat, for teachers, he said.

“The past doesn’t go away. It gets repurposed,” he said. “We aren’t having a teacher doing everything, but we are having a teacher there.”

“Most of us are too busy to design the future, so it just unfolds,” Burrus said. “I want us to intentionally build a new future. This transformation is going to happen whether you like it or not. I think educators need to be tone-shaping that transformation or others will do it for them. We could have a more human  and more connected future or not.”