Award winners are shown above from left to right; Ginamaria Javurek who received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant award, Ken Price who was named the Outstanding CNR Student and Sarah Hamilton who received the Outstanding Graduate Student award.
College of Natural Resources: Generosity supplies more opportunities
The Pointer
kbose675@uwsp.edu
Early in the spring semester, the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point received a very generous donation. A $1.5 million endowment was given to the CNR, with half going toward scholarships for students and the other half going toward other projects and needs the CNR could not cover in other ways.
At the time the gift was received, little was known about the generous donors, Jack and Marian Wilson, but more information has come to light in recent weeks. Jack was a World War II veteran who served as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corps. After the war, he eventually owned and operated a small oil distributorship in Fredonia, Wis, for more than 20 years. Jack and Marian were both avid outdoors-people and nothing about their lives was ostentatious. Jack passed away in 1994 and Marian died in May of 2008.
The reason for the gift to the CNR is still a bit of a mystery, but there are some theories that have arisen. According to Steve Menzel, the development and public relations coordinator for the CNR, Jack enjoyed duck hunting in the Lake Puckaway area near Montello.
“He evidently knew a lot of people in the area, and we think it’s possible that he eventually met the late Dan Trainer, dean of the CNR for nearly 20 years,” said Menzel. “Trainer grew up in nearby Princeton and also hunted near Lake Puckaway.”
It is also possible that the Wilsons learned about the CNR from one of the many conservation organizations that Jack was involved with, including Ducks Unlimited, the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy.
The gift received from the Wilsons is endowment funds, which specify that only interest earnings may be spent. The UW-SP Foundation is in charge of investing these funds. This will mean that the CNR won’t likely have spendable money from these funds until at least the 2009-2010 academic year, which will depend on the market performance of the Foundation’s investment.
Half of the endowment’s funds are going to be used to support the CNR in ways that can’t be taken care of using other funds, explained CNR Dean Christine Thomas.
“I will go to the Foundation board with a proposal for expenditure of funds,” said Thomas. “We don’t always spend our Foundation dollars. If we can fund things through our state appropriations, we do that first. That allows money to accumulate in our Foundation accounts and if we can, we put money back into endowment so that it grows, creating more interest for future uses.”
The other half of the endowment’s funds will go toward scholarships. Currently, there is a proposal that will be addressed at some point by the CNR scholarship committee. The proposal will include freshmen scholarships, scholarships for Treehaven teacher assistants in addition to their stipends and scholarships for those participating in the European summer seminar.
The CNR has a large number of scholarships and awards given out yearly to deserving students. There is a grand total of 231 scholarships totaling $206,700 with five new donors supporting nine new scholarships just this year. The Outstanding Major Award is given to one student within each CNR major. This year’s winners includes: Paul Cigan (forestry), Hilary Meyer (water resources), Joe Kottwitz (resource management), Eric Michel (wildlife) and Sam Redeker (soil science).
With the prospect of future scholarships and additional funds coming from the Wilsons’ endowment, the CNR will be looking forward to assisting students in their academic goals and awarding them for their diligent efforts while studying at UW-SP.
