Meet a few of the many successful UWMC alumni:
Little did Greg Ewan know as a child that his play habits would lead to the start of a rewarding career in mechanical engineering. “When I was a kid, I always played with Legos®. I enjoyed taking things apart and seeing how they worked,” said Ewan, who grew up on a dairy farm and now works as an engineer in the Tempered Air Products department at Greenheck Fan Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial, institutional and industrial air movement and control equipment based in Schofield, Wis.
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Greg Ewan is a mechanical engineer at Greenheck Fan Corp. He attended UWMC in 2003 and 2004. |
Working with his dad and two brothers on the family farm also helped develop Ewan’s aptitude and interest in all things mechanical. “You were always challenged to make things work with limited resources, and that’s what engineering is all about,” explained the Athens, Wis. native.
A 2003 graduate of Athens High School, Ewan completed his first two years of college at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County before earning his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2007 at UW-Platteville. He graduated tops in his class of 167 engineering majors and attributes much of his success to the start he received at UWMC.
“I loved being at the MC,” Ewan said. “If I could have replicated that experience for my whole college career, I would have. It was very family oriented and prepared me well for UW-Platteville. The professors were top notch. They had high expectations for you, especially the math professors. They taught us (math) principles rather than just having us memorize the rules.”
Emeritus faculty member M. “Mahes” Maheswaran is one of Ewan’s former calculus instructors. “He was a hard-working student, a real pleasant guy.” recalled Maheswaran, who taught math at UWMC for 21 years before retiring in 2007. “Whenever he comes back to campus, he stops by to see me. I’m sure he does a great job at Greenheck because he was a very motivated student.”
While at UWMC, Ewan served as a student ambassador and as a UW System ambassador. However, he said his most fulfilling extra-curricular activity was working as a math tutor in the TRIO lab. “I got to meet all kinds of students, and serving as a tutor reinforced my own understanding of mathematics.”
As a product development engineer, Ewan writes the logic or brains for the operating systems for hundreds of commercial and industrial air handling units that Greenheck makes each year in Schofield and ships to customers around the world.
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| Greg Ewan enjoys working with Greenheck customers |
“I enjoy it because it’s technically challenging,” noted Ewan. “I’m not only working with state-of-the-art equipment, but I get to work directly with customers by making sales presentations and making sure our equipment meets their needs, which I find rewarding.
“I love working for Greenheck. My colleagues are one of the best things about working for this company,” said Ewan, who knows of at least five employees in Greenheck’s 50-person Tempered Air Products department who also attended UWMC.
Ewan encouraged current and incoming UWMC students to make the most of their time while they are on the Wausau campus. If they do, he said it will result in educational dividends later. “Work your hardest at the MC to develop good habits. That will make the last two to three years of college that much easier.”
When he played basketball during the 1979 and 1980 seasons for the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, Brad Berndt was a talented, high-scoring point guard who led his team by example. "He was a quiet kid, who didn't need a lot of direction. He had all of the skills when it came to running the offense," recalled Duane Stremlau, his former coach and current emeritus professor at UWMC. "Brad was a team leader, which was expressed more in his performance because he wasn't a 'rah, rah' cheerleader-type". In addition to being a skilled passer, Berndt led the Huskies in scoring during his sophomore season, averaging 21-points per game.
Now, more than 30 years later, the Wausau West High School graduate is mentoring student-athletes and coaches at one of the most respected universities in the country.
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Brad Berndt attended UW-Marathon County in 1979 and 1980. |
Berndt serves as an associate director of athletics at Duke University, in Durham, N.C. He oversees the academic affairs department for Duke's athletic program, working on issues related to admissions, residential life, drug testing, and NCAA eligibility matters for the school's student-athletes and coaches. He also is the sport administrator for the Blue Devil's baseball team, responsible for budgeting, managing facilities, scheduling and evaluating the coaching staff.
"My job is fun and rewarding," said Berndt, now in his sixteenth year at Duke. "I enjoy the quality of people that a school like Duke attracts. I get to work with outstanding coaches like Coach 'K' (men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski) and coach (David) Cutcliffe (football). I also get to work with superior athletes who also happen to be very good students." Before arriving at Duke in 1997, Berndt worked in a similar position in the athletic department at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.
He attributed much of his college and career success to the people he met and the experiences he garnered at UWMC. "Coming out of high school, academically and socially, I probably wasn't ready for a larger four-year campus. UWMC was the perfect fit for me and the perfect academic preparation for my future," noted Berndt, whose parents, Norm and Joan Berndt, still live in Wausau. "Athletically, I wasn't talented enough to play at a bigger school so I relished the opportunity to continue playing basketball, a sport I love, for two more years at UWMC. Coach Stremlau was a fine man and an excellent role model for all of his players."
Berndt described the education he received at UWMC as "outstanding" and said his professors and his courses prepared him well for moving onto the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned bachelors (1983) and masters (1985) degrees in education and counseling. "Every single credit I earned in my first two years transferred to UW-Madison and, more importantly, the academic rigor at UWMC was equal to or greater than the last two years of my undergraduate career," he said. "When I was at UWMC, I gained an appreciation for the importance of a strong liberal arts background. I learned to write well and speak well, the two most important skills I use every day in my job. I was in small classes, mentored by great professors who instilled in me a desire to learn."
He also discovered that by attending UWMC for the first two years of college would pay educational dividends later. "It was a phenomenal financial value," Berndt explained. "I saved a lot of money because I was able to live at home with my parents. The money that I saved on room and board my first two years I was able to use to pay for graduate school later on."
In his current job, Berndt said he shares a simple formula for success with the student-athletes, colleagues, and coaches at Duke, a formula taught to him by his mother and father and reinforced by many of his college instructors at UWMC and UW-Madison: "Be kind, be honest, and work hard," he said. "If you have integrity and a strong work ethic, good things are going to happen."
In addition to his parents, Berndt has other family ties to Wausau that brings him back to the Badger State once or twice a year to see relatives and to vacation. His wife, Susan (Lemmer), also is a 1979 graduate of Wausau West. She works as a development officer at Duke. They have two children. Sarah is a sophomore at Duke, and Luke is a high school junior. "Whenever we're in town, and I'm driving past the university on Stewart Avenue, it brings back a lot of good memories," said Berndt. "Through basketball and other experiences, I developed some life-long friendships there."
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| "The
University of Wisconsin-Marathon County gave me the opportunity
of a lifetime. It was a great launching pad of not only my
work career, but of my entire life's development." |
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| "The
personal attention I received from the outstanding UWMC faculty,
in addition to the opportunity for involvement in a variety of
activities, provided me with the cornerstone necessary for
a successful future." |
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| "I
shudder to think of what I might be doing today if it were not
for UW-Marathon County. I decided to attend UWMC because
of it's academic reputation and reasonable cost. It was
one of the best decisions I have ever made." |
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| "Without
the UW-Marathon campus I would not be a member of Congress
today. The Wausau campus opened a very large door for
me. My two years there gave me the confidence that I
needed to do well at the UW-Madison campus. UWMC is one of
the links on the chain of possibilities that can make quality
education available to everyone." |
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| "Although
I did not know it at the time, I was fortunate to have studied
the fundamental building blocks for design management while I
was at UWMC. Those two years before design college were
the best investment in my future I could have made." |
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| "UWMC
was the wake-up call and the stepping stone to the Madison
Campus, where the scholastic challenges for me became
opportunities. The big arena and social interactions gave
me the confidence and determination to be effective in the
business world." |
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