Dwayne and Wilma Rohweder

Dwayne and Wilma Rohweder

This scholarship was established by the friends and colleagues of the late Dwayne Rohweder, a faculty member of the Department of Agronomy, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW-Madison. Dwayne grew up on a farm outside Green Mountain, Iowa. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Iowa State University in Agronomy (1948), Soil Fertility (1956), and Crop Production/Soil Management (1963). He was married in Des Moines, Iowa to Wilma Janet Slot. In 1963, he joined the University of Wisconsin Extension Service as Extension Agronomist – Forages, a position he held until his retirement in 1988 except for 2 years (1967-1969) when he served as Agronomist and Chief of Party for the UW – USAID University Development Contract Team at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He obtained a full professorship in 1970, trained many graduate students, was vice-chairman of the UW Extension University Committee and had over 134 publications in the forage sciences. Dwayne was the consummate extrovert that was loved by so many. He made lifelong relationships from his childhood and formative years in Iowa, from his professional life in Madison, WI, and Porto Alegre, Brazil, from his retired life in Sun Lakes, AZ and Middleton, WI. To his friends he was known as Boomer and to his family Opa. Throughout those years he was an avid golfer and a beloved member of Midvale Lutheran Church where he sang in the choir and attended Bible study. He is perhaps most notable for being the first to arrive for the early service every Sunday morning occupying his spot next to Wilma in a pew unofficially reserved for them. Throughout the years, he was fortunate to extensively travel the world. He traveled to every state in the U.S. except Maine, traveled to almost every country in South America, spent parts of four summers working and traveling in Italy, and traveled though much of Europe including Armenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Russia. He was an active member of the Madison West Kiwanis and has been involved with Kiwanis for close to 60 years even earning an attendance record for over 50 years straight. He was an active member of the Cuba Kids, which is an organization of the Wisconsin Extension Retirees, the Odana Bunch, which was formed in the spring of 1969 as a golfing group in the Midvale Heights neighborhood and still meets regularly, and where he arranged the singing of Christmas Carols every year. He, along with Wilma, took part in the mini-med school lectures at the University and was a Badger hockey season ticket holder for over 40 years attending with his grandson, Marcus for the most recent seasons. Marcus and Dwayne greatly enjoyed singing Varsity together in between the second and third periods.

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