The Milwaukee Area retired Stout alumni held their second annual luncheon Sept. 20 at Alioto's Restaurant. It was a fun-filled afternoon with 78 in attendance, and many renewed old friendships. An array of pictures taken at Stout from the '40s and '50s were on display.

The master of ceremonies was Walt Dusold '48, and Helen Tews '50 conducted the program after lunch. Ann Reuther '61, a Stout University Foundation board member, explained the many changes that have taken place at Stout. Attendees introduced themselves and told when they graduated. Francis Stephens '51 showed the video from Stout that's used as a recruitment tool aimed at students. Many also enjoyed viewing the scenes of the campus.

Door prizes, contributed by the Stout Alumni Association, were distributed by Ardelle Stephens '50 and Marilyn Dusold. Rowena Jorgensen '52 received a deck of playing cards for "the most recent retiree"; Joe Serflek '47 received a windsock with the Tower Emblem for a "birthday closest to the day"; and "Happy Birthday" was sung by the entire group. Phyllis Jelich '50 received note cards for "most recent degree from Stout" (master's degree); Mike Huley '52, a Stout tote bag for "person who travelled the farthest" (Florida); Paul Axelson '50, note cards for "anniversary closest to the day"; Gus Janssen '49, note cards for a "50th anniversary"; Ken Pederson '39, note cards for "earliest Stout grad"; Carolyn Mowbray '51, windsock for "being the first arrival." Jerry Solie received a windsock for "wearing the Stout colors."

Connie Olson '52 received a windsock for "having a child most recently graduated from Stout"; Ken Pederson, a windsock for "working the most years with the same employer"; Carolyn Dennis, a windsock for "having a great-grandchild most recently"; and Bob Berg '52, a dinner bell for "volunteering the most hours of work per week." The dinner bell was donated by Ardell '50 and Francis Stephens. Centerpieces were also given as door prizes to the people sitting at a "lucky spot" at each table.

A new addition this year was the distribution of a "newsletter for retired Stout alumni" that attended the luncheon. Elaine Papez compiled the newsletter on her computer, and plans are being made to include a directory for next year. The committee that organized the luncheon and program was Marilyn and Walt Dusold, Elaine and Jim Papez '51, Muriel and Henry Roesler '51, Ardell and Francis Stephens; and Helen and Russ Tews '50.

The next luncheon will be held the third Wednesday in September (Sept. 18, 1996) at Alioto's on Hwy 100 and Burleigh. Any Milwaukee area retired alumni not on the mailing list and interested in attending the 1996 luncheon, please contact Helen Tews, 8815 Westlake Drive, Greendale, WI 53129 or call 414/425-3814.

Kimberly K. Polzin '78, home economics in business, has been named vice president of Ceres Communications, a diversified marketing communications agency specializing in the agricultural, environmental and chemical industries created in early 1994 by Mona Meyer McGrath and Gavin (MMMG). Both companies are units of London-based Shandwick, the world's second-largest public relations consultancy. Polzin was an account supervisor with MMMG.

Polzin, who specializes in environmental, food production and food processing accounts, including Ciba Crop Protection and the Klenzade division of Ecolab Inc., sees this promotion as an exciting opportunity to expand her work with worldwide clients.

"This is an opportunity to build Ceres by serving existing clients exceptionally well and seeking new clients in our specialty areas," said Polzin. "I've already had an opportunity to work in our London office on client projects affecting Europe."

Polzin has been in public relations for more than 15 years, including positions as communications director for National Farmers Union and Minnesota Farmers Union. She started her career as a reporter and editor for the Chippewa Falls, Wis., Herald-Telegram.

"Although I have pursued a career outside my major, the education I got at UW-Stout has been invaluable," said Polzin. "It was at Stout that I tried my hand at news and feature writing and editing - skills that are very important in public relations. And, it's amazing how the seemingly unrelated classes such as food science have been put to use for clients involved in the food and beverage pro-cessing industries."

Polzin advises students and recent graduates planning a similar career to take advantage of all career-related learning opportunities.

"Finding innovative ways to get early experience in your chosen career is very important," said Polzin. "I'm impressed when job candidates can explain how their experience can work for my agency. And I always look for someone who understands general business principles as well as the "how to" part of the job."

Polzin has been fortunate enough to have a professional career that incorporates her personal interests of traveling, learning new things and meeting new people.

"Luckily, my job involves all three," said Polzin. "In the last couple of years, I've expanded my horizons by taking downhill ski lessons, learning about football and other active pursuits."

Deb Bell's third grade class at Tiffany Creek Elementary School in Boyceville, Wis., became hotel employees for a day at the Red Roof Inn hotel in Woodbury, Minn., last May.

When they arrived at the Red Roof Inn, five stations had been set up by Lisa Lybert, general manager of the hotel. These were housekeeping, laundry, front desk and management. Every aspect of the motel was explored by the students in a general tour of the facilities. Then the students went to work.

"We had them teamed up with our regular employees," Lybert said. "They learned how to use fax machines, set a payroll by using a computer, how to clean a hotel room, do laundry, etc. We also showed them videos on our marketing strategies and a history of Red Roof Inns."

Lybert said the students seemed very impressed with inner workings of a nationwide hotel chain and she hoped that it will spark interest in some of them to think about careers in the hotel business.

"They enjoyed themselves very much," Lybert said. "When they came here, we handed out pairs of rubber gloves for them to use while they were at the house-cleaning station and they wanted to take them home with them. I heard from Mrs. Bell that many of the students expressed interest in getting into the hotel business when they got older."

The trip was a part of Red Roof Inn of Woodbury's "adoption" of the third grade class of Tiffany Creek. The idea for the hotel to "adopt" the class came from both Bell and Lybert together.

"I grew up in the Menomonie area and I went to UW-Stout with Mrs. Bell," Lybert said. "I've been in the hotel business for the past five years and I've always wanted to give something back to the community. I knew Mrs. Bell was a grade school teacher and we both felt that a program like this would have its benefits. It would get our employees working with kids and it would show the students all the many opportunities there are in the hotel field when they grow up."

Bell's goal is that every classroom at Tiffany Creek can be adopted by a business.

"The kids will get many valuable experiences from being employees for a day at a particular business," Bell said. "It teaches them how a business is run and opens doors to all sorts of possibilities for careers they can shoot for as they grow older. I'm hoping to convince many other employers in the area to do the same with other classrooms so they can have the kind of day we had at the Red Roof Inn."

Lybert graduated with a B.S. degree in general business administration in 1991. Bell received degrees in early childhood/elementary education in 1983 and professional development in 1991. As alumni, they felt it was a perfect partnership in education that they are hoping to continue annually.

Taking golf lessons from Stu North is like eating a seven-course meal -- both require a little extra time and a healthy appetite.

Unlike some golf instructors, North isn't interested in giving a 20-minute lesson to someone he'll probably never see again.

"I'm not teaching golf for the money it puts in my pocket," said the 72-year-old North. "I'm teaching golf for fun. And it only becomes fun when you can see the results of it.

"Every once in awhile, you get a pretty good golfer that gets where he or she wants to go and you feel pretty happy about that."

North's best and undoubtedly most famous pupil is his son, Andy. A winner of two U.S. Open titles, Andy North, 45, now works as a golf commentator for ESPN. He is also in the golf course design business.

Meanwhile, Stu, who spends his summers living north of New Auburn at Sand Lake, is still in the teaching business. He gives lessons every Wednesday at Hallie Golf Club during the summer. Every fall North and his wife, Mary, migrate to Gainesville, Fla., where Stu spends the winter teaching golf at the University of Florida.

"Stu is a person who stresses long-term commitment in the game," said Ed Severson, who along with his brother, John, are the head professionals at Hallie. "He loves to teach people who have aspirations to make golf a career. He doesn't want to commit to working with somebody else unless they're going to make a commitment to the game."

Ed and John Severson hadn't reached their teens when they got their first lessons from North. Although both are now accomplished players who give lessons themselves, they still work with North in an attempt to sharpen their games.

"Whenever we get a chance, we're out there with him," John said.

As you would expect, there are no tricks or gimmicks to North's teaching style.

"In a way, it's kind of simplistic," John said. "He pretty much focuses on a full swing and getting all your body parts working together at the same time. He's not the type of guy who has 14 different tips."

A New Auburn native and former high school teacher and coach at Thorp and Tomah, North worked as a professor and administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Houston. Some of North's fondest memories are from his days as a basketball coach at Thorp.

"I was a basketball nut," he said. "Of course, I taught or coached them all, but basketball was the fun game because you can steal a basketball game.

"In football, about halfway through the season you know just about what you're going to do. In basketball, about halfway through the season you start dreaming about how to steal two or three (games) to make it to the state tournament."

North, who coached John and Ed's father, Duke, while at Tomah, is working with his third generation of Seversons. Two of his regular students this summer are Ed's children, Holly and D.J.

"I work with people of every age, but it's fun if you get some kids with a little ability," North said.

A regular on the Chippewa Valley Golf Association's senior tournament circuit, North says he also likes working with older players.

"I believe just because you're 60, you don't have to shoot a funny number," he said. "The good thing about golf is you shouldn't deteriorate as rapidly as most people do. In golf, as long as you can walk normally... you can play pretty respectable ball."

Stewart received a master's degree in industrial education, and Mary received a bachelor's degree in home economics education in 1946 from UW-Stout.

The Illinois Council for Exceptional Children (ICEC), the state affiliate of CEC (Council for Exceptional Children), the international organization of teachers, administrators and parents working for and with children who have special educational needs, has honored Murray K. Fisher, a 1974 graduate of industrial technology, with its "Clarissa Hug Teacher of the Year" award.

Fisher, of Morton Grove, Ill., currently teaches students who are severely and profoundly cognitively delayed, in a Chicago Public Elementary School. During his 20 years in education, Fisher has worked in the areas of vocational training, physical education, language development, staff development and educational materials design. He has served as inclusion facilitator, university instructor, educational consultant, educational facilities consultant, guest lecturer and school principal.

This varied background brings to his students educational experiences that are directly applicable to the world outside the classroom. Reading and math are taken from the newspaper and the accompanying ads. Science involves the students in their environment in and out of the school building, while social studies and history are experienced through TV news reports, videos, role playing and discussions.

His students are bursting with desire to express what they are thinking, what they have seen and what they have done.

Fisher has the energy and ability to turn walking past a sunny window ledge into a lesson on heat absorption as well as shadows.

In addition to his teaching and direct services, he is also a never-tiring advocate for the education of children with special needs. He makes every effort to attend every meeting, conference, convention or speakers' forum to support, explain, defend or challenge ideas and efforts related to special education programs and children.

The "Clarissa Hug Teacher of the Year" award was presented at the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children's annual convention in November. The convention includes three days of lectures, presentations, and seminars attended by special educators and parents of children with special needs from throughout Illinois.

Imagine a career counseling system that's available instantly, at the touchof a few buttons. Everything you need to know about a career -- education,training, job prospects, lecture listings -- is all in one place.

This is CareerNet.

CareerNet is an on-line information program that uses local information about career planning and, with an Internet connection, can make national and international information available to anyone in the West Bend area.

The service was developed by the Wisconsin Job Service, the West Bend High School and the Moraine Park Technical Institute, for use by middle- and high-school students, and adults.

Joe Fuehrer '71, industrial education, CareerNet director and a school teacher for 24 years, "never imagined we'd ever have anything like this."

"The information we're making available to people could come from West Bend, or from the other side of the world."

He added, "This is unique, because CareerNet doesn't have a physical location that people go to. We have terminals in various places, and they access CareerNet through those. It's considerably less expensive, and the ongoing costs are minimal. And, we can operate on any server that has an Internet connection."

The system is accessible by computer modem, so anyone can access the information from school, work or home. "Anyone with access to the Internet's World Wide Web can utilize the CareerNet program." Fuehrer said. "We're located at http://job.careernet.org."

Before CareerNet, a student would go to an education aide, who would steer the student to various printed materials about careers. Gathering the information could take hours or days.

CareerNet makes the research process much faster, because it takes only a matter of minutes to research a specific career area.

Savings are realized because there is only one CareerNet office, where Fuehrer updates the information on a computer.

In the future, he said, CareerNet may become part of a video distance learning system. "We're looking at educating students from several schools at once," he explained. For example, instead of having teachers at three sites for three students, the program could offer comparable training, complete with teacher/student interaction, with one teacher videoconferencing with the other sites.

"The advent of the Information Superhighway makes projects like CareerNet available to everyone," Fuehrer said. "It's really amazing... and we're very proud of it."

Kristi Lekies, a Ph.D. candidate at Iowa State University, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study at the Institute for Applied Research on Childhood, Youth and the Family, at the University of Potsdam in Germany from August '95-July '96, the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board and the United States Information Agency (USIA) announced recently.

Lekies earned her bachelor of science degree at UW-Madison, and her M.S. degree in home economics in 1993 at UW-Stout. While at UW-Stout, she received the UW-Stout Alumni Association Graduate Scholarship. She came to Iowa State University in 1993 to study family resource management, rural families and rural adolescents.

With an interest in rural youth in small communities, Lekies will be researching community resources and influences on the transition from adolescence to young adulthood while she is in Germany.

"I'm also interested in talking with experts in human development and life span studies, and accessing inter-national research," Lekies said.

Upon her return to Iowa State, Lekies plans to complete her degree program and then will pursue a career in teaching and research with an international component.

Lekies is one of approximately 2,000 U.S. grantees who will travel abroad for the 1995-96 academic year under the Fulbright Program. Established in 1946 under Congressional legislation introduced by former Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program is designed "to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries."

Brad Harnisch, co-owner of Floral Expressions, Janesville, Wis., recently won the finale program at this year's American Institute of Floral Designers (AIFD) National Symposium in Chicago.

The AIFD, first established in 1965 to recognize and promote the art of floral design as a professional career, is considered the leading non-profit organization committed to establishing and maintaining standards in professional floral design.

Interest and involvement in the institute spans the globe, evident by the nearly one thousand worldwide designer members. Its annual national symposium is considered the world's foremost floral event.

The inspiring four-day educational symposium is a means for other florists to share ideas and design trends.

Harnisch's program, titled "Earth, Wind, Water, Fire: A Kaleidoscope of Natural Elements," offered floral interpretations of the four elements which make up the world in which we live.

"Its purpose was to enlighten other designers as to the awesome powers of nature - to inspire their creative energies and open their eyes to new design possibilities," Harnisch said.

A year of planning pre-empted the one-hour stage presentation. The program consisted of 28 floral interpretations, the largest being a seven-foot sphere of dried flowers.

Several companies donated products for the production including Avatar's World, an Edgerton company dealing in wholesale dried flowers. "The program received rave reviews," Harnisch said.

He dedicates the success of the event to his many industry friends for their help, and to his "dedicated group of co-workers at Floral Expressions and partner Magda Nelson for her support, enthusiasm and creative output."