Alumni of the School of Human Ecology are more than 12,000 strong and growing. Coupled with SoHE alumni is an equally strong community of friends who are passionate about supporting the student experience and who believe in the value of the Wisconsin Idea. The SoHE is fortunate to have “Badger/Friends” who stand up for what matters, show up to do the work, and lift up our communities. At the Fall 2014 meeting of the Board of Visitors, the award was presented by Dean Soyeon Shim who offered these comments:
“It is my pleasure to honor one of our own today. This year we re-launched the SoHE Alumni Awards but we recognize there are many who make significant contributions to SoHE and yet are not SoHE alums. Today we would like to recognize Dean Stadel as a Friend of SoHE.
Dean has been a Board member since 2007 and his contributions to what we do, to our students, and to what we aspire to, are truly remarkable.
For years Dean has coached and mentored our students to get them ready to compete for the YMA Fashion Scholarship Awards in New York City. The YMA event exists to raise money for students. To help you understand the significance of this event, earlier this year the event raised $1.8M dollars for students. A student who wins a scholarship gets a free trip to NYC, attendance to the YMA event which is $1,000/ticket, and the opportunity to network with the creme de la creme of leaders in fashion industry.
Dean has been instrumental in coaching and preparing students from SoHE to compete successfully for these scholarships. He meets with them, gets them interested in YMA, and coaches their networking skills. Over the years Dean has coached 31 SoHE students for a total of $205,000 in scholarship monies. Three of these scholarship winners have won the very prestigious and monetarily significant Geoffrey Beane scholarship.
So Dean, in our very modest way we would like to say ‘thank you’ and to more publicly acknowledge the significant contributions that you have made to SoHE over the years.”