Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes: Spring 2007

Reception builds network of La Follette School alumni, friends
Business cards and tips on who was hiring flew at the La Follette School of Public Affairs reception on February 8 at Inn on the Park in Madison. More than 110 people attended the reception, including 50 alumni and friends of the school. They enjoyed an evening of conversation and catching up with classmates.

Faculty chatted with former students and shared their current research ideas, while alumni and students talked about employment and internship opportunities.

At least one student is having lunch with an alum to talk further, says Kate Clark, alumni committee chair for the La Follette School Student Association, which hosted the event.

The evening is made possible thanks to gifts to the La Follette School via the University of Wisconsin Foundation.

We appreciate that alumni and friends of the school think so well of their time at La Follette that they turn out in such large numbers, says school director Barbara (Bobbi) Wolfe, or maybe it is primarily to tease their former faculty members and classmates.

Alumni from as far back as 1964 attended, and every decade since then was represented. The classes of 2005 and 2006 had good turnouts. Im so pleased that this reception has taken off like it has, says 2005 alum Alison Bergum, who helped to organize the 2005 gathering, the first in many years. It was great to see so many people from so many years.

I enjoyed hearing from alumni about where they are working, especially from those I wrote letters of recommendation for, says professor Dennis Dresang. Among those in attendance were former La Follette School staff members Bonnie Cleary and Molly Rose Teuke; Gordon Hintz, class of 2001, who was just elected to the Wisconsin Assembly; and Kevin Hayden, class of 1984, the new secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services. Several graduates of the La Follette Schools Wisconsin Women in Government seminar also attended.

The formal program featured welcomes by Wolfe and LSSA president Julius Svoboda. Tom Eggert, class of 1995, reflected on the relationships between his time at La Follette and his work as an environmental innovation coordinator with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Associate Director Karen Holden touched on how alumni can help with career development and introduced student panelists who talked about their internships. They were:

• Kevin Murphy, who interned at the Council for Excellence in Government in Washington, D.C.;
• Whitney Gantt, who interned with The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia; and
• Vanessa Allen, who works as a project assistant with the State Budget Office in the Wisconsin Department of Administration.