UW-Green Bay mourns passing of Mrs. Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Hendrickson
Betsy Hendrickson
Elizabeth “Betsy” Hendrickson, of Allouez, died Wednesday (March 6, 2013) at the age of 89. She was a 1979 master’s degree graduate of UW-Green Bay and one of the University’s most enthusiastic advocates and generous supporters of academics and student life. She and her husband, Philip, directed a significant share of their philanthropic and volunteer service toward the institution. Their names are prominent across campus, with the Philip J. and Elizabeth Hendrickson Professorship in Business; the Philip J. Hendrickson Business Scholarship; the Hendrickson Community Center at student housing; and more. Betsy Hendrickson was a charter member of the Chancellor’s Council of Trustees and honorary chair of UW-Green Bay’s successful, $30 million Capital Campaign. She received the school’s highest community honor, the Chancellor’s Award, in 1983, and the Distinguished Alumni Award presented by the UW-Green Bay Alumni Association in 2006.
She is survived by her husband of 65 years, Phil; son, Scott; daughter Sara; and their families. Visitation is from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday (March 10) at Newcomer Funeral Home, 340 S. Monroe Ave. A funeral service will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Monday (March 11) at First United Methodist Church, 501 Howe St., Green Bay.
— A full obituary is online at the Green Bay Press-Gazette site, click here.
Chancellor’s statement on passing of Mrs. Hendrickson
“Betsy Hendrickson was a thoughtful, gracious and community-minded individual, and a wonderful friend. I will miss her dearly, as will many here at UW-Green Bay. She was always proud of the master’s degree she earned here in the 1970s — she was something of a groundbreaker at that time, as a returning adult student — but I believe the real pride is ours. Whether she was a staff member at the old two-year center, a student, alumna, a contributor to the development of our adult degree program, an advocate for our graduate programs or, more recently, a partner with her husband, Phil, in some of the largest and most forward-looking philanthropic gifts ever made to this University, Betsy Hendrickson brightened the world with her affection for education and UW-Green Bay. On behalf of our University — her University — I extend condolences to Phil and her family. We cherish her memory.”
Highlights: Educational, professional ties to UW-Green Bay
• Betsy Hendrickson received her master’s degree from UW-Green Bay in 1979 in Environmental Arts and Sciences
• Worked for “Cardboard Tech,” the postwar two-year UW center in Green Bay
• For UWGB, worked in the Office of Educational Research and Development from 1976-80 and 1982-83
• Was a founding member of the Chancellor’s Council of Trustees and, years earlier, a member of Chancellor Edward Weidner’s Board of Visitors, a community advisory board
• Betsy and Phil received the Chancellor’s Award in 1983; Betsy the Distinguished Alumni Award, 2006
• Betsy was an honorary chair of UW-Green Bay’s $30 million Capital Campaign, early 2000s
• Honored with naming of Hendrickson Community Center, Residence Life, in 2007
• Major contributions to establish the Philip J. and Elizabeth Hendrickson Professorship in Business, and the Philip J. Hendrickson Business Scholarship for students; also made a leadership-level gift to help create the Kress Events Center
• Loyal support of the UW-Green Bay Annual Fund, Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship, Phoenix Fund, Phuture Phoenix and Weidner Center
Interest, involvement in growth of adult-student offerings
Betsy Hendrickson, a Wisconsin native, earned a bachelor’s in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She later attended graduate school at Cornell College in Ithaca, N.Y., and worked on the East Coast. After she and her husband, Phil, relocated to Green Bay in 1950, she began work for what some remember as Green Bay’s first UW campus, a two-year center operating out of a converted ordnance building adjacent to East High School. Years later, in the mid-1970s, her children grown, she began master’s studies and worked in staff positions at what had become the four-year UW-sGreen Bay. For the Office of Educational Research, she began an important study exploring why adults do or do not return to college. Her work was instrumental to the creation of the Extended Degree and Adult Degree Programs; it also became her thesis. Both she and her husband (who at one time was president of the Wisconsin state technical colleges board, and a UW regent) were advocates for the addition of graduate programs to the UW-Green Bay curriculum.
More on the Hendricksons
In 2004, Phil and Betsy Hendrickson sat down for a feature-story interview with Sue Bodilly for the UW-Green Bay magazine. It is a charming, fun and informative piece — perhaps even Betsy’s closest friends didn’t know she once worked for a Massachusetts plastic manufacturer and helped develop a high-heat compound for wiring Air Force planes. You can find the entire issue (look for the “Profiles: Hendricksons” link in the navigation column), at http://www.uwgb.edu/univcomm/news/insidearchive/04nov2.htm
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