Professor’s family establishes scholarships

Chris Dupré

It’s somehow poetic that Picnic Point was the last place that Frank Worzala saw.

Worzala, a popular engineering professor at UW–Madison, was running with his dog in August 1996 when he collapsed and died at 62 of an apparent heart attack along Lake Mendota.

His name and spirit live on through two engineering scholarships his family and friends have established. The first, the Frank Worzala Memorial Scholarship, is awarded to a top student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, which Worzala chaired when he retired in 1996. The second scholarship, set up after a successful fund-raiser with family and friends in December, “will be targeted to perhaps one of the more passionate students who maybe doesn’t have the most sparkling GPA,” says daughter Elaine Worzala, a business professor at the University of San Diego.

The nine children in the Worzala family grew up in the shadow of the university, “about a block away from Camp Randall Stadium,” says David Worzala, the youngest son of Frank and Diane. “We got to take advantage of all the university facilities, the campus environment and activities.

The Worzala kids did indeed catch Badger fever. Seven of the nine children have bachelor’s degrees from the UW; all told the family has 16 university degrees in disciplines ranging from business to liberal arts, special education to political science to, of course, engineering.

Frank was known on campus not just for his role in engineering. “He was very active,” David says. “He had been around the university a long time.” As an undergraduate, Frank was a fraternity member, on the gymnastics team and head cheerleader.

“My mother taught in the history department, so there was that connection, too,” David adds. “He had season tickets to football, hockey and basketball, and he’d always be talking to the people around him, making connections and making friends.”

Frank also had an instantly identifiable red convertible, and he often could be seen cross-country skiing, running and biking. “He was very curious; he always wanted to know how things worked, and he did a lot of research related to things he loved,” David says. “His research on finishing materials and things like that was very valuable to Trek Bicycles.”

Frank’s students who worked for Trek presented him with a custom-made bicycle on his retirement. “He was involved in a lot of the early business startups that grew out of his campus research,” David says, “and he taught engineering for non-engineering students, which exposed him to a lot of people as well.”

The December fund-raiser in Madison celebrated the printing of “Fantastic! A Memoir of Frank Worzala.” Filled with reminiscences from immediate and extended family members and friends, it sketches a colorful life in anecdotes, photos and testimonials. The brainchild of daughter Robin Worzala Cantor, “Fantastic!” makes those who never met Frank wish they had gotten the opportunity.

“My dad was devoted to three things mainly: his family, the engineering department and his church community,” Elaine says. “He had such a positive attitude, and he always put his students first, which, as someone in academia, I can say is not always easy to do. He very much promoted the idea of getting more women into engineering.”

In addition to the two scholarships, Frank is memorialized with a bench near the swimming dock at the Memorial Union Terrace, where he loved to visit with a cappuccino or a beer.

David says it’s fitting that much of the money for the scholarships comes from “a lot of small gifts from a lot of people.” As for those helped through the Worzala scholarships, “my father really believed in undergraduate studies,” he says. “For us as a family, the focus has been on helping undergraduate students.”