My Special UWM Night

As most of you who read this blog know, I went to college in Milwaukee between 1989 and 1993. That was after a stint in the US Army. In fact, there is a blog post about paying for college and how I did it through the GI Bill that the military offers. Go check it out.

In the end, I felt that I got a very solid foundation and good training from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Lots of people scoff at the idea of a place like that. It’s what they call a “directional” or “regional” school.  It’s definitely not a Harvard or Yale. They’ll let you fall through the cracks if you don’t push yourself and even if you don’t fall through the cracks, you might come out with very little in the way of new and useable skills. No professor is going to care if you come to class and opportunities for internships and mentoring are pretty rare. That’s not to say that those opportunities aren’t there. At a school like UWM, I had to seek out the professors. I had to be persistent in asking for advice. They weren’t very well versed on stuff the profession had to offer so I had to nudge them to go ask their colleagues about this or that. At other schools, things like that are automatic and everyone is “in the know”.

In the end, it gave me an education which allowed me to go on to graduate school. As many people who know me have heard me say, just about any undergraduate institution will give you what you need, given what you put into it, and you'll be okay in life. I’m not a big fan of paying out of the nose for the “name” of the school.

In October of 2025, I was contacted by UWM because I had been nominated to be one of the two 2026 Distinguished Alumni. To say the least, I was shocked. They must have had better people to choose from. Even still, they said it was me and wondered if I could commit to coming back to the ceremony in February of 2026 to receive the award.

I said that I would gladly come back and I was very thankful for the honor. It caused me to be a bit reflective. Sometimes when I’m running and things are hurting the most, I train myself to put my head down and keep pushing forward. That’s what I’ve mostly done with my career and stuff. I don’t look too far ahead and I definitely don’t look back. I just keep one foot moving in front of the other. But when they started to list all of the reasons that they thought I should receive this thing, I sort of agreed. You can go to this page to see a lot about the work I actually did and the places that I did it over my 3+ decades career.

The more interesting part of the story was how they came to be aware of me in the first place. Apparently, an announcement went out from UWM that they were soliciting names of grads for the 2026 award. A friend of mine from my high school days named Pamela still lived in the Milwaukee area and had an adjunct teaching job at Marquette University which is in the city. She knew that I had gone to UWM and given that she was an educator herself, was aware of my accomplishments. She reached out to one of my old professors, who I had also collaborated with on research later in life, to write a supporting letter for me. He directed her to a few other of my research collaborators to write letters. They must have been good because I was selected. I never saw the letters but I did know who wrote what.

In January of 2026, I was in final preparations to come to the awards ceremony. A few cool things came together during the prep. I had a book which was due to launch on February 17, 2026. In fact, I will be posting one more blog entry especially about that book. See the book here. Since the award ceremony was scheduled for Friday February 20, 2026, I asked if I could do a book presentation/signing the day before on the 19th. The alumni office and the college loved the idea and arranged things. It would be my first “official” book event.

The economics department, of which I was the first graduate to ever get this award, asked me if I’d be willing to meet a bunch of their current graduate students. I was never a graduate student at UWM, but I had taken some classes with some while at the school. Plus, I had mentored hundreds of graduate students during my career, so I agreed. The economics department then asked if I had time to also do a research seminar that same day. It would be after meeting the graduate students but before I needed to go get changed for the awards event happening that Friday night the 20th. I agreed with that too.

It all turned out well. The book talk was fun. The next day, meeting with the graduate students was interesting too. The research seminar was more fun for me than for the people in the economics department. I presented some work that I had been doing with a math colleague and it simply blew them up. They weren’t ready for that level of rigor. Well, they are the ones who trained me, so it was sort of their fault.

The awards dinner was really humbling. One thing that surprised me was that the Economics Department bought a table. There was an entire table of economics professors and their spouses who had come to cheer me on. Some I had known from when I was a student, but most didn’t know me but had heard of me. Very nice, especially since I had just blown them up with a bunch of math a few hours earlier. Another cool thing was that I got a few comp tickets for the event. Of course, I used one to invite Pamela, who did the nomination stuff. That was simple. The rest went to other people who I had known from high school. Most of them I had not seen in 40 years. In fact, my best friend from high school, Bruce, was there with his wife. It was so special to see him again.

When I went to the stage to get my award, they asked me to say a few words. Everyone else had prepared remarks. I didn’t. I just said that I was a proud Panther and credited everyone in the room for making me the success that I had become while reserving the failures for myself. Corny? Yes. Short? Definitely. The UWM people made a video of me accepting the award and some of my remarks. You can watch the 50 second clip here.

Finally, if you click here, it will take you to a photo album on this site where you can see all sorts of pictures of the night. Not often does something so special come along so I’m glad that I stopped running to look back over the many miles, mountains, and trails I covered.