Friday, July 31, 2020

Local campus makes good

https://www.uwsp.edu/ucm/Pages/FastFacts.aspx


It is exciting that a former normal school for training teachers has advanced into a university that offers doctoral degrees, the highest academic level of degree.  It is also exciting that the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point has made that journey from 1894 until now, about one century and a quarter.  Wisconsin is not an especially wealthy or populous state, but it has a very good educational system and history.  


The School of Education at UWSP has been cited as the 2nd best school of education in the US for two years running.  


After living in Stevens Point for 20 years, we moved to LaCrosse, Wisconsin to accommodate Lynn's new job at that university.  It is a beautiful place but we missed our friends and connections at Stevens Point and we moved back in 1993.  Between 1988 and 2005, I participated in several distance education activities, including using the statewide UW television system to teach basic statistics.

https://www.accreditedschoolsonline.org/wisconsin/


The main state campus in Madison is well known in educational history for its "Wisconsin Idea" that the borders of the campus are the borders of the state, meaning the university has a mission and obligation to assist citizens in advancing their education and in conducting research that will solve both practical and theoretical problems.


A former chancellor of UW-SP said that college students are transients and they are, but the local faculty are local citizens.  As a transplant from a city of nearly 3 million, I was interested and intrigued by Stevens Point and its atmosphere.  Our first year here we rented a house owned by a professor on leave.  We were fully aware that the local city was much smaller than what we were used to.  It turned out that our nextdoor neighbor had moved to Point from a nearby town of about 400, about 2% of the size of Point.

 

My limited experience with Stevens Point gives me the impression that it is an excellent town to attend college in.

Popular Posts

Follow @olderkirby