Returning adult student awards announced
Both of this year’s Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Students have chosen their career paths based on difficult life experiences they encountered along the way to achieving their degrees.
Dawn HaagSenior, Social Work
“So many people have helped me through my troubles that I want to be there for other people,” says Haag of her decision to work toward her Bachelor of Social Work degree, which she is receiving this month.
Haag graduated from high school in Middleton in 1980. Thirteen years later, after attending a program called “Taking Hold” at Madison-Area Technical College, she enrolled at MATC.
“At that time I didn’t have the self-confidence to think I would succeed as a student,” she says. But she persevered to achieve an A.A. certificate at MATC and entered UW–Madison in January 1996.
“By then I knew I wanted to go into social work, and it turned out to be the right choice,” says Haag. “Now I’m able to claim my life experiences as strengths. I have the academic background to go along with those experiences, and together they enable me to help people get through whatever difficulties they may face.”
Haag has persevered and will graduate this semester despite missing four weeks of the fall semester and taking Incompletes in three classes. Because of a situation that she describes as “beyond my control,” she contemplated dropping out of school. But with the encouragement of advisors, stuck on. “Some people think being a student here means you’re just a nameless person in a huge university, but that’s not true. People here want you to do well and will help you do well,” she says.
Haag intends to enroll in a graduate-degree program, but only after working for a while, which she hopes will help define her interests. In the meanwhile, she will devote more time to her sons Dustin, 12, and Jonathan, 8, both of whom are students in the Waunakee Public Schools.
Steve RankinSenior, Occupational Therapy
When Rankin receives his bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy in December, more than a quarter century will have elapsed since he graduated from Monona Grove High School. Along the way he has lived and worked in Northern California, Nicaragua and Cuernavaca, Mexico, has sustained career-ending injuries and has chosen a new path for his career.
A founding member of two Madison institutions — the Williamson Street Co-op and WORT-FM — Rankin also served on the boards of Sherman Terrace Community Association, the Madison Tai Chi Academy and Broom Street Theater and was a patient advocate at the Near East Side Community Health Center (now Madison Community Health Center).
After moving to California in the 1980s, he earned a building contractor’s license and later became regional director of Architects and Planners in Support of Nicaragua, for whom he organized groups to build housing, schools and potable water systems on co-op farms in Nicaragua. He later spent a season working full time in that country, stopping on the way to resume Spanish-language studies in Cuernavaca.
In 1992 Rankin was injured while working as a plumber in California. The injury required occupational therapy and sparked his interest in a new career. He started night school at San Francisco City College while continuing to work days, until two more job-related injuries forced him to retire from plumbing.
After returning to Madison, Rankin started at MATC in January 1995 and enrolled at UW–Madison in fall 1995.
Rankin always makes time for his favorite extracurricular activity: “Being papa to my kids.” He also acts as student liaison and volunteer coordinator to the Wheelchair Recycling Project, serves actively on his state and national professional associations, has helped the Willy Street Co-op make their store more accessible to people with disabilities, and was recently elected to the board of directors of his children’s daycare center. He anticipates getting another full night’s sleep “someday.”