Undergraduate Brooke Stibbe and alum Tom Schmidknecht BS’71 came to CALS with similar backgrounds. Both grew up in small rural Wisconsin towns, so both encountered a wave of culture shock when they arrived at UW.

“It was just so loud,” Stibbe remembers of her early days on campus. “I wasn’t used to the traffic. I tried riding my bike, and it was the scariest thing I had ever done in my life.” Schmidknecht’s experience was also overwhelming. “I remember my mom and dad dropping me off, and I had never been in a building taller than three stories,” he says. “They put me on the tenth floor of Sellery Hall. That first year was rough.”

Many rural students encounter similar challenges during the transition to big campus life. The Wisconsin Rural Youth Scholarship Program is designed to ease some of the burden, at least financially. Launched in 2008, the program awards an average of five $2,000 scholarships each year to support CALS undergraduate students from rural Wisconsin who meet certain merit and financial need requirements. Schmidknecht has been a consistent donor to the scholarship fund, and Stibbe received the scholarship in the 2023-24 academic year.

Stibbe grew up in Montello, a community of about 1,500 people in Marquette County. Her involvement in 4-H programs spurred her interest in becoming a veterinarian, which led her to major in animal and veterinary biosciences at CALS. She hopes to become a mobile large animal veterinarian.

In pursuit of this goal, Stibbe works part-time at a small animal clinic in Oxford and at the UW Dairy Cattle Center. She enrolled at UW in 2022 after a year in the U.S. Army, and she’s using her scholarship to supplement the military aid she receives as an active member of the U.S. Army Reserves.

“I didn’t receive a lot of scholarship money from my local community when graduating from high school,” Stibbe says. “I saved everything I could, worked hard, and thankfully got into UW–Madison, but affording it can be a hurdle. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity this scholarship has provided me and thank the people who founded it.”

Schmidknecht, who grew up in Alma in western Wisconsin, earned a genetics degree at UW before receiving his medical degree from St. Louis University and pursuing a 33-year career as a surgical pathologist. He is now retired and lives in Alamo, California.

Schmidknecht says he supports the rural youth scholarship because he lived the experience of the students it helps.

“I was them,” he says. “When I look back, people urged me to go to Madison when I really couldn’t afford it. But the community kicked in. I got small scholarships from places like the American Legion and Knights of Columbus. I want more kids from rural communities to have that opportunity. In the end, it gave me what I have now. My college experience at the beginning was rough, but in the end it was magical. It just opened up a whole world for me.”

Stibbe’s world is widening too. Since arriving at UW, she has joined the Alpha Omega Epsilon sorority and a variety of clubs to ease into college life. “I have made a lot of friends through the clubs I have been involved in,” she says. “And I love Madison. I love the diversity and the sheer amount of things you can do. I hope that others like me are able to experience the same opportunities that I have been offered through the aid of this scholarship.”

Support Rural Students
To donate to the Wisconsin Rural Youth Scholarship Program, contact Jodi Wickham or give online.