West grad takes seat on Common Council through desire for positive change

While the spring season has seniors thinking of graduation and perhaps running far, far away from Oshkosh and Wisconsin, not everyone sees their hometown in exactly that same light. West alum Brad Spanbauer sat in the same desks, thinking the same thoughts some 18 years ago. However, he chose a different path, having recently been elected to the Oshkosh Common Council following a campaign grounded in positivity and a desire for change.  

A member of the Index, Forensics, the One-Act and Spring plays, and the O’Neil National Honor Society during his time as a student, Spanbauer’s wide range of experiences equipped him with a number of important skills that he continues to use throughout various aspects of his professional and personal life. One skill he now applies daily as a professor of biology at UW-Oshkosh is public speaking, something he worked extensively on as a student. 

“Being in plays and forensics makes you get over your fear of public speaking very quickly,” he said. “I’ve had students ask me, ‘How do you just get up there and talk about stuff?’ and some of that was forensics and the school plays, because it didn't matter whether you were talking to 10 people or 150 people, you had to be able to deliver.” 

Spanbauer stresses the importance of that experiential learning and paying conscious attention to what and how improvements can be made. An example he gave touched on the lack of training most professors receive at the beginning of their careers. 

“No one taught me how to teach,” he said. “I took what I learned from people that I felt were the best, and I tried to mimic that in the classroom.”

Spanbauer built a strong foundation out of the opportunities and experiences around him, like overcoming the fear of public speaking and finding good mentors. By being able to effectively put those lessons to work, he sets a powerful example for students now who may be grappling with the future.

The former Wildcat, now the Director of Sustainability at UWO, was once in these same shoes. It’s almost impossible to be certain about the future, especially when it comes to things like careers and college majors. He definitely ended up in a different zip code than his original studies. 

“I wanted to work on stem cell research,” he said. 

Once a promising career, the efficacy of such research had begun to seem uncertain in the face of ethical scrutiny and political debates, returning Spanbauer back to square one.

“Then, in the fall of my junior year, I took an ecology class, and I realized, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do!’,” he said. “I don’t want to be staring through a microscope all day, I want to be outside, I want to be doing something that impacts the world in this way.” 

That same year, Spanbauer began an internship with the sustainability office that would eventually lead to his position as the director. 

“If someone had told me as a freshman that I’d end up going to Africa and doing my master’s thesis on elephants as seed dispersers, I would have probably laughed in their face,” he said. 

Reflecting on the twists and turns of his education and career, he offers a word of advice to students.

“The point of university is to branch out,” he said.

Some find that they don’t enjoy their major as much as they thought, or uncover a new passion they never knew they had. 

“If you end up wanting to change majors, do it,” he said. “Maybe you’ll end up with an extra semester or year, but if you’re unhappy, the change will be worth it.” 

Over the course of his life, Spanbauer has continued to live by this advice, pivoting into a new venture when an opportunity presented itself through the world of local politics and his election to the Oshkosh Common Council on April 1. 

“I’m not the kind of person who waits around for things to happen,” he said. “Right now, there’s a lot of people in our local government who I know very well and share a lot of values with.”

This group holds a lot of potential for change in the community, according to Spanbauer. 

“Oshkosh is unique in that we have both a lake and a river, so we have to be careful about our energy consumption, runoff from roads and things that involve a lot of collaboration between departments,” he said.

He hopes to be able to create that kind of change in the community over the next few years, employing his expertise in sustainability and experience in a number of fields that will benefit Oshkosh as a whole.  

by Grey Zahner

Published April 28th, 2025

Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue VII