Mary Garland to receive 2009 honorary degree

Mary Ellbogen Garland

To hear Mary Ellbogen Garland discuss to her UW honorary degree, click here.

   When Mary Ellbogen Garland accepts her 2009 University of Wyoming honorary degree, it will be in her adopted home in the College of Education.
   It's a natural place for UW to acknowledge her significant contributions to the institute and the state. Garland, a UW College of Business graduate, has spent most of the last decade working tirelessly to advance Wyoming education.
   Garland will receive her honorary degree at the College of Education commencement ceremony Saturday, May 9, at 9 a.m. in War Memorial Fieldhouse.
   As a founding member of the College of Education Development Board, Mary has played a lead role in efforts to grow private support of its academic programs, scholarships and facilities.  As a founding member and president of the John P. "Jack" Ellbogen Foundation, her impact extends to education at all levels in Wyoming. The connection is direct, and it emanates from the founder's vision and passion.
      "My dad had identified the College of Education and education generally," Mary says of Jack Ellbogen's philanthropic interests. "The Ellbogen Foundation has a responsibility to honor donor intent."
   Jack Ellbogen provided the vision, but he resisted defining exactly where that vision would lead. That task was left to Ellbogen Foundation board members and their leader.
      "He was a wise man," Mary says. "He knew that things change quickly. He let us build the path to what that should look like in changing times."
   Determining how best to begin that path, in ways that have the highest impact for Wyoming residents -- from early childhood through graduate school -- is a process requiring Garland's specific leadership. How that has taken shape, in many respects, reflects Mary's own hands-on approach to service and philanthropy.
   "I love being on the ground level," Garland says. "I don't want to be removed from what's happening locally."
    Advancing the vision laid out by her father is pretty easy: her passions match his in many fundamental ways. But how she acts on those passions is very much a personal expression.
   "I've taken my work and aligned it to who I am personally," Garland says. "The way I decided to do things is probably different from others, but it was intuitive in nature. I needed to find my place, and nobody else could define what that was for me."
    Mary acknowledges that perfect clarity about that place sometimes eluded her. But her parents played pivotal roles in helping to gently guide in a direction where her talents could best serve.
   "They did not say ‘do this' or ‘do that,' but they acknowledged my strengths," she says.
    A natural introvert, Garland says knowing when and how to serve is not always easy, but it is usually pretty clear.  
   "Every time I am asked to do something that is outside of my comfort zone, as much as I fight it -- which I think is natural that's the indication that I ought to be at that table," she says.
   "You have to be willing to take risk," she says of the call to leadership. "You have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone."
   Garland's work for the Ellbogen Foundation requires frequent personal stretches. One of the efforts that required the biggest leaps from what was comfortable was establishing the Wyoming National Board Certification Initiative. Though Jack Ellbogen left few directions for future foundation board members, he specifically supported an effort to bring National Board Certification to his home state. Mary not only became the lead voice for that project, she did much of the legwork necessary to launch the program.
       "I went out with a lot of uncertainty, but I went out and made the phone calls that needed to be made and met the people that I needed to meet," she says, "and began to have more confidence in my ability to move forward."
Responding to the HD
   Garland learned of the honorary degree award in a private meeting with UW President Tom Buchanan.
      "In my mind, I was trying to put the pieces together regarding how this could happen," she explains. "Then, of course, there was the immediate connection to my parents and what they have already done in Wyoming -- the opportunity to stand by them, in unity, to carry on their work. It felt like a real alignment between what I perceived my job to be and my parents' intentions."
   Mary is the second member of the Ellbogen family to be added to the list of recipients. UW presented Jack with an honorary degree in 1998. Significantly younger than her father was when he accepted this award, Garland is accepting it as a challenge rather than a culmination to a life of service.
       "Because of my age, and because I'm mid-career, this kind of acknowledgment propels me to do more," Mary says. "What that is, I don't know. But it means that I've got a lot of work to do."

 

Posted on Monday, March 09, 2009