BROOKINGS – Newly selected Distinguished Alumni from South Dakota State University will be the first to be honored in the just-completed Woster Celebration Hall within the SDSU Alumni Center.
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BROOKINGS – Newly selected Distinguished Alumni from South Dakota State University will be the first to be honored in the just-completed Woster Celebration Hall within the SDSU Alumni Center.
Those to be honored at Hobo Day 2017 Oct. 14 are:
The Alumni Center is part of a two-block development on the west side of the 800 and 900 blocks of Medary Avenue that also included the President’s Home and the Alumni Green. Work began in May 2016 and finished this June. The alumni center features the Jensen-Smith Board Room and the Woster Celebration Hall for banquets.
David Blegen
Blegen, a Lake Benton, Minnesota, native, devoted 42 years to business management at IBM (1964-97) and Pemstar (1997-2007). He also chaired the Budget and Finance Committee for the SDSU Foundation’s Council of Trustees from 2011 to 2016 and contributed to the development of the Hobo Day Gallery, including serving as the model for the Weary Wil statue.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering, Blegen joined IBM in Rochester, working as a resource manager, manufacturing strategic planning manager, business manager and marketing support manager for various IBM products.
In 2003, 40 years after he chaired the Hobo Day Committee, Blegen renewed his service to SDSU when he was invited to join the SDSU Foundation Board. When the board reorganized through the creation of an executive committee, Blegen was included, serving on the Budget and Finance Committee before becoming chair in 2011.
While in that role, he was known for asking tough questions and being diligent to make sure increases in the operating budget were generating a favorable return on investment for the university.
Blegen also took an integral role in a foundation project to create the Hobo Day Gallery in the Student Union, which is understandable since this 1963 Grand Pooba also served as the 1966 Weary Wil. Blegen also agreed to serve as the model for the Weary Wil statue that was erected outside of the Hobo Day Gallery and coined the term “Hobo by choice.”
Zachary Carter
After a preseason in the NFL, Carter went into construction and became a project manager for a firm that does building for the U.S. military and other government entities in remote and dangerous corners of the world.
At 6-4, 300 pounds in his senior year, Carter was a giant even among defensive linemen. Today he is a giant in a specialized construction industry.
Carter worked as a project manager for BL Harbert International, a Birmingham, Alabama-based construction company that is building a $1 billion project in Islamabad, Pakistan. Carter was with BL Harbert for 12 years (through December 2016) and also was project manager for projects in Accra, Ghana; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Lusaka, Zambia.
Carter, the 1994 Gatorade State Player of the Year who was named to the all-Coughlin Alumni Stadium team in 2011, signed as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills after graduating with a construction management degree in 1999.
When he was the final player to be cut before the start of the regular season, Carter, a Spearfish native, turned to his academic training as a construction engineer with Morrison Knudsen.
As manager of the Pakistan project, Carter managed one of the largest design-build projects for the company and overseas U.S. government operations. It had up to 4,000 local employees, 150 American tradesmen and an office staff of 130 engineers and administrative personnel from 12 different nationalities. Additionally, he worked with several U.S. government agencies and host country organizations to manage the eight-year project.
Suzanne Hansen
Hansen started as a pharmacy tech at Walgreens while in college. She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a vice president in 2007. She currently is group vice president of Pharmacy Integration.
Hansen, a native of Jefferson, worked in various pharmacy positions for Walgreens from 1992 to 2000, when she became a pharmacy supervisor in Iowa and Illinois. In 2002, she became a store manager, managing stores in Iowa and Illinois before becoming district manager of the Phoenix West district in 2004.
In 2007, Hansen began her corporate career, first as vice president of store operations. In July 2011, Hansen became group vice president of pharmacy operations, in which she was responsible for the operations of 8,000 retail pharmacies.
In 2014, she oversaw the integration of 400 Healthcare Clinics into Walgreens’ Dearfield, Illinois, corporate office and had full profit-and-loss control of those clinics.
After that seven-month assignment, she became healthcare director for Alliance Boots in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, responsible for overseeing pharmacy, hearing care and optical. During her time there, the merger of the two companies was completed when Walgreens exercised its option to fully buy out Alliance Boots and became Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Hansen also has been instrumental in shaping curriculum approaches for the SDSU College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions through serving on the Dean’s Advisory Council.
John Hendrickson Jr.
Hendrickson is a partner in the international law firm of McDermott Will & Emery. Hendrickson, who is based in Chicago, has served in numerous leadership capacities including head of the firm’s employee benefits and international labor group, the firm’s management and executive committees and for the last eight years has been chair of the firm’s compensation committee.
In 1993, the Dr. J.P. Hendrickson Honors Scholarship in Political Science was created by John Jr.’s parents, J.P. and Susie, to reward a political science major in need of financial support.
John Jr. and his wife, Lisa, helped with initial funding and have been substantial contributors since the beginning. The scholarship now is directed toward an incoming freshman enrolled in Van D. and Barbara B. Fishback Honors College majoring in political science.
The endowment has topped $400,000 and provides a renewable four-year scholarship of at least $5,000 annually. Thus, most years the scholarship is providing $20,000 total in scholarships.
Hendrickson’s father was the first head of the SDSU political science department. He taught at SDSU from 1954 to 1988.
When the younger Hendrickson was a senior at State, he served as vice president of the Students’ Association, which initiated campaigns to nix a planned tuition hike and gain funding for the remodeling of Lincoln Library into a music building.
Hendrickson graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1980 and in 1981 joined McDermott Will & Emery. The National Law Journal has named him one of the top employee benefits lawyers in the U.S.
David Nagelhout
Nagelhout, president of the North Central Heart Institute in Sioux Falls, was a founder of the Avera Heart Hospital in Sioux Falls. He also is immediate past South Dakota governor of the American College of Cardiology and has undertaken significant research in addition to being a practicing cardiologist.
Nagelhout, a Brookings High School graduate, earned a degree in biology and then went to med school at the University of South Dakota, graduating in 1983. He continued with his medical training with an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and a fellowship in cardiology at St. Louis University Medical Center, completing his training in 1990.
Nagelhout joined North Central Heart Hospital in Sioux Falls in 1990. He provides cardiology expertise at outreach clinics in Miller, De Smet, Redfield and Brookings as well as Pipestone, Minnesota.
Nagelhout holds board certifications in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular computer tomography (CT). Nagelhout was a founding member of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He has been a member of the Board of Governors for the American College of Cardiology since 2014.
In addition to practicing medicine, Nagelhout is a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine and is on the Avera Heart Hospital board.
David Thompson
Thompson grew up on a Milbank dairy farm, managed the SDSU dairy plant as a student and began a 31-year career with Abbott Laboratories after graduating in 1964. Thompson advanced to president of Abbott Diagnostic Division and oversaw the development of a test to detect HIV virus in blood samples.
Thompson’s career with Abbott began when the company visited campus his senior year looking for someone to join their new plant in Mitchell that would make Similac infant formula. He worked there one day a week during the final semester before going full time.
By 1974, 10 years after graduation, he was vice president of operations with the Ross Division of Abbott Laboratories. Among his duties were talking with Russia and Ireland about building Similac plants there.
In 1981, he moved to Abbott’s corporate office in Chicago, where he was vice president of materials. A year later he was named vice president of human resources for Abbott worldwide. In 1983, Thompson was named senior vice president of Abbott and president of Abbott Diagnostic Division. During his 12 years at the helm, the division grew its revenue from $200 million to more than $2 billion. It was in 1985 that Abbott introduced the first licensed test to detect HIV in blood.
After retiring from Abbott in 1995, he became lead director for Exact Sciences Corp., which has developed the first noninvasive test for colon cancer.
Thompson gives back to SDSU through the support of $5,000 per year scholarships to the dairy manufacturing and food science departments. When the dairy plant was reconstructed in 2011, he donated $125,000 and that was matched by Abbott Labs.
Ceremony info
The Legends and Leaders banquet and program is at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 13, the evening before Hobo Day, with the social hour from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Alumni Center Atrium. Tickets are $35 ($12 for age 12 and younger). They can be purchased from the SDSU Alumni Association at 605-697-5198 or 888-735-2257 or online at www.statealum.com. Reservations and payments are due by Oct. 7.
Also, there is a free public reception hosted by SDSU’s Office of the President and the Alumni Association honoring recipients at the Alumni Plaza from 4-5 p.m. Oct. 13.
