Duane & Edwina Wolfe Math Education Scholarship

The Duane and Edwina Wolfe Math Education Scholarship is created for students majoring in WSU’s Mathematics Education program.

Criteria

1. Each recipient must be an undergraduate enrolled full-time and in good standing at Winona State University (minimum of 12 credits per semester, Fall and Spring).
2. Each recipient must be accepted into WSU’s Teacher Education Program in Math Education.
3. Each recipient must maintain a g.p.a. of 3.0.

Biography/Motivation

Duane spent the first eighteen years of his life on the family farm near Fountain City, WI. He graduated from Fountain City High School in 1956, married Edwina between his junior and senior years in college and received a degree in Mathematics from Winona State, graduating in 1960. He taught mathematics and science at Kasson-Mantorville Jr.-Sr. High School for four years. In 1964 completed a Master’s Degree in Mathematics which was the result of a fully funded National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to do graduate work in mathematics at Central Michigan University for three summers. That fall he began teaching at Winona State College. He was awarded a NSF grant to attend Indiana University to study graduate mathematics and statistics for the 1968-69 academic year. He also did graduate work in mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He was awarded two summer NSF grants to continue his studies of graduate level mathematics at Rutgers University and Auburn University. After 30 years of teaching courses at all levels in the Mathematics and Statistics Department he retired as Professor Emeritus in 1994.
Edwina was born in South Dakota and moved with her family to the Fountain City area while she was in high school. She graduated from Fountain City High School in 1957 and attended Winona State College for one year. She and Duane met in high school and at this time she opted for her MRS degree! She returned to Winona State College in 1964 (with a 4-year-old at home) and graduated with Special Honors in 1968 with a degree in Elementary Education (and had 2 babies). She completed her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education in 1971 at Winona State. Most of her teaching career was spent teaching first grade in the Winona Catholic School system. She also taught kindergarten, junior and senior high school mathematics and computers and ran a Learning Center at Cotter High School before she retired in 1995. She was an adjunct teacher at Winona State where she often taught Mathematics for Elementary Teachers.

Our family includes a son, Mark, and his wife, Nancy, and their children: Michael (Alison), Katie (Daren Sullivan), David and Kevin. Also, a son Jeffry and his wife, Lisa, and his children: Tyler (Nicole), Ethan (Madalyn) and Griffin; and a daughter, Brenda, and her husband, Bill Diesslin, and their children: Megan and Audrey. They also have 5 great grandchildren: Eva, Kristian and Isla Sullivan, and Max and Leah Wolfe.

The WSU tradition was carried on by their daughter, Brenda Wolfe Diesslin, ’89, their son-in-law, William Diesslin, ’88 and their granddaughters, Megan Diesslin, ’18 and Audrey Diesslin, ’20.

They now enjoy spending time with their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren