Outlook Magazine - Fall 2025

Year in Review WINTER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS December December - Closing out the calendar year, mar riage and family therapy Professor Heather Hessel earned the Wisconsin Association for Marriage and Family Therapy’s Carl Whitaker Award for her innovative research into how technology and AI can benefit therapists, and Dana Fritz, assistant director of Housing, received an Outstanding Mid Level Professional Award from the Upper Midwest Region of the Association of College and University Housing Officers.

Basketball (Women) - The Blue Devils’ Cin derella run to the NCAA DIII National Tourna ment Final Four was their best result in program history. All five starting seniors earned WIAC postseason awards. Raegan Sorensen, Anna Mutch and Amanda Giesen were named to the All-WIAC Team. Sorensen capped off her career by becoming UW-Stout’s all-time leading scorer with 1,754 points and was named D3hoops.com Second-Team All-American. Sam Schaeffer was named to the WIAC All-Defensive Team, as well as the All-Sportsmanship Team. Lexi Wagner received WIAC Honorable Mention. Gymnastics - Six gymnasts qualified for the NCGA championships: NCGA Senior Athlete of the Year Gillian Cummins, Taylar Schae fer, Isabela Krulich, Sarah Lutz, Effie Ferguson, and WIAC Newcomer of the Year, Jamie Beatty, who earned national titles in both the all-around and the uneven bars. Beatty was named to the WCGA’s All-Around First Team. Hockey - Nicolas Pigeon, Gunner Moore, Noe Perez and Caleb Serre were named All-WIAC. Senior and team captain Jacob Halverson won the WIAC Max Sparger Scholar Athlete award. Indoor Track & Field - Hannah Zastrow (60 hurdles) was WIAC champion. At the NCAA championships, Leah Zastrow (pole vault) was national runner-up, and Hannah Zastrow (60 hur dles and high jump) and Karter Rashke (shot put) earned First-Team All-American honors. Brekkyn Lammert (mile) set a program record with a time of 4:56.73.

January February March January - Faculty scholars published two articles through a new relationship with The Conversation, a global research-based news publisher. [ See page 23 ] And packaging Professor Min DeGruson’s collabo rative work to enhance medical safety by developing better, sustainable packaging of sterilized medical devices made the news thanks to a $175K UW Inno vation Grant . February - U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 Best Online Programs ranked a number of programs among the best in the Midwest: B.S. management & Leadership: Top 15, M.S. manufacturing engineer ing: Top 20, and M.S. education: Top 45. March - UW-Stout’s finest welcomed its furri est: The Stout Police Department swore in Officer Harvey , a “double doodle” mix, who will act as therapy dog and department ambassador. Before graduating in May, interior design senior Khendra Thompson (’15, ’25) bested a field of 1,600 submis sions to win Steelcase’s national NEXT Student Design Competition . April - M.F.A. design student Ashley Jandro’s “MicroWhat?” microplastics awareness campaign earned her an Integrated Consumer Campaign Silver Pin Award from the Advertising Federation of Minnesota. Industrial and product design students brought home prizes for winning designs in the annual Room & Board Competition . And a dozen Stout undergraduates presented applied research on robotics, dementia, 3D digital rendering, and more at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh. Princeton Review ranked our undergraduate game design programs and Master of Fine Arts among the Top 25 in the world , and VIQTORY recognized Stout as a Military Friendly School for the 16th year in a row. And thanks to stu dents and faculty, the middle/high school Science Olympiad and SkillsUSA Competitions held on campus were a huge success. April

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University of Wisconsin-Stout