McCormack Honored for Years of Service to UW Engineering

An office dedicated to student support in the University of Wyoming’s College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) will be renamed to honor a longtime staff member who touched countless lives in higher education.

Susan McCormack will be honored with her name adorning the college’s service center. The new title will be the Susan McCormack Center for Student Success and Career Services. The center houses a group of employees dedicated to all aspects of the CEAS educational mission, including K-12 outreach, recruiting, retention, diversity and career placement.

“Susan dedicated her career and huge amounts of her personal time to helping our students,” CEAS Dean Michael Pishko says. “Susan also is dearly loved by our alumni, and she is richly deserving of this honor.”

McCormack came to the college in 1988 from UW’s Department of Physics. During her 26 years of service to the engineering college, McCormack’s roles included updating the student databases, advising engineering freshmen, participating in a number of high school recruiting activities, involvement in freshmen summer orientation, chief proctor of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, scholarship coordinator, commencement coordinator and Engineering Summer Program coordinator.

She also put in 16 years as the editor, writer and designer of Foresight, the college’s magazine. She earned a Distinguished Service Award from the college in 2014 and retired from her position the same year.

“I really wanted to help those kids because they deserved it,” McCormack says. “I had a job that I was blessed to come to every day because I loved it.”

In 2005, CEAS alumnus Wayman Wing and his wife endowed a scholarship in McCormack’s name, citing her “dedication, enormous energy and efficient manner.” Notable alumni donated to the fund, including Harold and Bonnie Jane Kester, Harold McCaskey and Albert “Boots” Nelson.

“We have staff and faculty who do fantastic things for students, and we understand they play a critical role here at the university,” Pishko adds.

The dedication for the newly named center will be early in the fall 2016 semester on a date to be announced later.