Awards presented to alumni

Chadron State College President Dr. Janie Park presented the awards during a luncheon that preceded CSC's football game against the Colorado School of Mines.

Following is information about each of the recipients:

 

Distinguished Alumni Awards

 

Loren Jacobsen, M.D. - BS 1962

Dr. Loren Jacobsen, a semi-retired physician from Broken Bow, has become widely recognized for his work in improving health care services in rural Nebraska.

Jacobsen enrolled at Chadron State, then known as Nebraska State Teachers College, after graduating from Broken Bow High School in 1952 and spending four years in the U.S. Navy. He graduated summa cum laude from CSC in 1962 and taught science in the Bellevue Schools one year before enrolling at the University of Nebraska Medical Center at Omaha.

After graduating from UNMC in 1967, he completed his internship and surgical training in the Panama Canal Zone. He began practicing medicine in Broken Bow in 1971. He's delivered well over 1,000 babies and tended to hundreds of families during his time as a practitioner.

Among his most recent honors is the J.G. Elliott Award from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2006. Jacobsen was one of the first physicians in Nebraska to accept UNMC medical students on rotations and mentored more than 90 students. The institution commended him for staying abreast of medical advancements, sharing his knowledge, getting to know his patients, being active in his community, and communicating diagnoses with patients and their families.

He also obtained the distinguished service award for more than 30 years at the Jennie M. Melham Memorial Medical Center at Broken Bow. He was the city's Citizen of the Year in 2003, and was placed on the Broken Bow Public Schools' Wall of Fame earlier this year.

He and his wife, Cleo, have five children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. One of the doctor's daughters, Lorene, was the first recipient of the Platinum Eagle Award when she graduated from CSC in 1990.

 

Jerry D. Messman, Ph.D. - BA 1974

Jerry D. Messman is founder and director of Stranaska, a Fort Collins, Colo., company that specializes in analytical metrology, defined as the science of weights and measures.

As director of the company, he is responsible for its strategic research, new business development and educational outreach activities. For the past 15 years he has devoted his time to helping analytical laboratories and metrology groups around the world strengthen or reinforce their spectrophotometric calibration practices to ensure value-added compliance with analytical measurement objectives.

Prior to founding his first company in 1993, Messman held various applied research positions in government and industry involving analytical chemistry, spectrometry and certified reference materials. They include the U.S. Geological Survey, National Bureau of Standards, Battelle and Perkin-Elmer. During his tenure at the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 1988 to 1992, he was responsible for rejuvenation of the high-accuracy spectrophotometry program in the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory.

He also is a member for more than 25 scientific organizations and professional societies.

Messman is a native of Strang, Neb., who played baseball for the Eagles and earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1974. He later earned a doctorate from the University of Maryland in College Park, and conducted chemistry graduate studies and pre-doctoral research in analytical atomic spectrometry at the University of Florida and post-doctoral research in analytical laser ionization spectrometry at the University of Arkansas.

Messman's wife, Marla, serves as the company's operations assistant.

 

M. Ann Smith - BS 1970, MS 1977

Ann Smith is being recognized for both her work as a Chadron State College professor and her extensive volunteer work with the American Red Cross.

Smith was 29 years old with three children when she enrolled at Nebraska Western College in Scottsbluff. After two years there, she transferred to CSC and completed a bachelor of science degree in education in just one year and a summer.

For 10 years prior to joining the CSC faculty, Smith was a teacher at Bridgeport, where she coached the school's first volleyball and girls' track teams. In her first four years of coaching, her track teams won a Class B state championship and a runner-up trophy. The duties gave her first-hand experience in gender equity. She later served on national committees pertaining to Title IX, the legislation designed to give equal athletic opportunities to females.

She earned a master's degree from CSC in 1977 and earned a position on the faculty 1980. In her new position, she coached the cross-country team until the school discontinued the sport five years later. She also coached the women's track team for nine years. She was named chairwoman of CSC's Health, Physical Education and Recreation Department in 1987.

In 1985, she was CSC's first recipient of the Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award. She also was active in the Nebraska Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance and earned its Honor Award in 1987.

Her involvement with the Dawes County chapter of the Red Cross has been extensive, ranging from training lifeguards to responding to some of the nation's most prominent disasters. As a member of the National Disaster Human Resource Team, Smith has been deployed to 16 national disasters in 13 states. She spent Christmas vacation of 2001 in New York City to provide relief of the Sept. 11 attacks. She also spent five weeks on the Gulf Coast assisting victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Ann has three children and numerous grandchildren. Her husband, Bud, died in December 2007.

 

Distinguished Young Alumni Awards

 

Monica D. Colbath, J.D. - BA 1991

Monica (Schmidt) Colbath of Rapid City, S.D., has become known as an experienced and skilled criminal defense trial attorney, and has represented many indigent clients during her career.

Colbath, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who graduated high school in Rushville, earned a bachelor of arts degree from Chadron State College in 1991. She also earned a juris doctor from the University of Nebraska College of Law. While studying toward that degree, she served as a law clerk in the Lancaster County Public Defender's Office.

Most recently, she began work as senior staff attorney and manages the Lakota People's Law Project, a pro bono law firm in Rapid City that strives to protect American Indian families and children under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

Prior to the project's beginning in May, she worked two years as a trial attorney in Rapid City and specialized in representing people charged with serious felony offenses in state and federal courts.

From 1999 to 2006, she was an assistant federal public defender in Rapid City's Federal Public Defender's Office. Prior to becoming the first staff attorney hired in that federal office, she had completed five years as a trial attorney in the Pennington County Public Defender's Office.

Colbath has earned bar admissions to the South Dakota State Bar, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, United States Supreme Court and the Federal Court of the District of South Dakota. She also is active in numerous boards and associations. Her husband, Gary, also is an attorney.

 

Sharla Dowding - BS 1991, MA 1995.

Sharla (Tollman) Dowding of Newcastle, Wyo., has become one of the most highly honored alumni of Chadron State College's teacher education program.

Dowding, a native of Crawford, graduated from with a bachelor of science degree in education from CSC in 1991 and a master of arts in science education from the institution in 1995. She is working toward a doctorate at Montana State University.

Dowding has received praise from peers for holding her students to a high standard and incorporating technology to the classroom. Since 1996, she has earned 16 awards for her successful classroom methods. In May, she was one of 10 teachers in Wyoming to receive a Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Award. In 2004, she was named Wyoming's Biology Teacher of the Year.

Dowding teaches science at Newcastle High School, where she also serves as the district's science department chairwoman. She volunteers as coach of the school's quiz bowl and science Olympiad teams, in addition to sponsoring the regional science fair.

She is involved in more than two dozen professional activities, including the Wyoming Professional Teacher Standards Board and Wyoming PAWS data and item review committee. She has attended scores of teaching workshops, including one at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

Dowding began her teaching career at Rushville Public Schools from 1992-1997. While teaching junior high and high school science, she coached volleyball, quiz bowl and track and field.

Her husband, Rod, also is a native of Crawford.