Adults overcome challenges of returning to school

For most adult students who return to college after a lengthy interruption in their education, the path to graduation can justly be described as a long and winding one.

For both of this year’s winners of UW–Madison’s Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Awards, that path has included an extra twist: commuting from a long distance to campus.

The Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Awards were established in 1981 as a way of recognizing the increasing numbers of “non-traditional” undergraduates who return to UW–Madison for degrees.

Several times each week, Deborah Jo Frosch drives to Madison from Baraboo, where she lives with her three children. Frosch will graduate in December with a bachelor of science in rural sociology.

Theresa Wood-Burgess, drives to Madison every Tuesday morning, stays two nights in a short-course dorm, then rejoins her husband and their four children at home in Wausau. Wood-Burgess graduates this May with a bachelor of science in psychology.

For the past five years, Frosch has been a single parent to her children-Mike, 14, Justin, 12, and Tessa, 9-and has done volunteer work at their schools in Baraboo. “The four of us spend a lot of time studying together,” Frosch says. “Among other benefits, they can sense my pride when I’ve written a good paper or when I do well on an exam. So they’re reminded of how important schoolwork is and that it’s okay to do well in school.”

Frosch grew up in Roxbury and Sauk City. She began college at UW-La Crosse but says she “failed miserably.” Later, she completed an Associate of Science degree at Western Wisconsin Technical College in La Crosse. Then, after four years as a part-time student at UW-Baraboo, Frosch enrolled at UW–Madison in 1995.

“I chose to major in rural sociology so I could learn the science along with the sociology,” says Frosch, who aspires to become a writer on environmental topics. “The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has been very supportive of my efforts.” In addition to her family, she singled out professors Jack Kloppenburg and Leann Tigges of Rural Sociology, and professor Don Field of Forest Ecology and Management, for their special help.

After completing her degree, Frosch will start a master’s program in Forest Ecology and Management at UW–Madison. She’s begun researching and authoring portions of a social history of the Pine Barrens of northwestern Wisconsin.

Theresa Wood-Burgess has also gained recognition for her written work while still an undergraduate: Recently, she presented her senior honors thesis — analyzing the effectiveness of the Servant-Leadership model of leading and helping others — to a faculty colloquium.

“The goal of the Servant-Leader is to take care of people’s highest priority needs first and to help followers become wiser, more autonomous, and more likely to become servants themselves,” says Wood-Burgess.

Next fall, she will begin commuting to Chicago to study in the Masters of Divinity program at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. She hopes to become a Presbyterian minister as well as to pursue a Ph.D. in some aspect of industrial relations or organizational development.

Born and raised in Walnut Creek, Calif., Wood-Burgess went directly from high school to work at Apple Computer. In seven years, she moved up from receptionist to training manager-“as high as I could go without a formal education,” she notes.

In 1990, she moved to Wausau with her husband, Paul, and their children. She took classes part-time at UW-Marathon County, then continued her undergraduate studies in the Department of Psychology at UW–Madison.

Despite her hectic academic and commuting schedule, Wood-Burgess remains so active in social services in Wausau that she recently she received the J.C. Penny Golden Rule Award for community service. She provides emergency foster care for newborn babies, answers a hotline for non-delinquent runaway teenagers, and serves as an elder in her church.