Sentry School of Business and Economics Alumni Services and News

Dan Hauser, a native of Janesville, WI, played football and baseball for the Pointers before graduating from UWSP in 1977 with a degree in business education. As the Executive Vice President for the Detroit Pistons’ Palace Sports and Entertainment (the team’s ownership group), Hauser worked with Fortune 500 companies and built relationships with a number of local businesses. In 2011, the Pistons and Palace Sports was sold, pushing Dan’s career into transition. In 2013, Hauser returned to the NBA as a Senior Vice President of Corporate Sponsorships for the Philadelphia 76ers. Over his 33 years spent with the Detroit Pistons, he has earned seven professional sports championship rings – three from the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, three from the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Detroit Shock and one from the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lightning.

Dick Okray is president of Okray Family Farms, Inc., Plover, which was originally founded by his grandfather in 1905. He is active in the potato industry at the state, national and international levels, traveling to China to attend the World Potato Congress. Okray has worked with UW-Madison on biomass projects and opens his home to UW-Stevens Point international students. He majored in economics.

Jeffrey Polzer, the UPS Foundation Professor of Human Resource Management in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He studies how people collaborate in diverse teams by focusing on the interplay among individual expertise and identity, interpersonal processes such as conflict, and team performance. He also studies the use of communication technologies to foster global collaboration. He has taught courses in the MBA, executive and doctoral programs at Harvard, and has conducted executive training sessions for organizations such as IBM, Novartis, Merrill Lynch, Citizens Band and Ernst & Young.

Dale Klapmeier was raised in the small town of Dekalb, Ill., but he and his brother, Allen, had big soaring dreams that would one day take flight in their business, Cirrus Design Corporation, which manufactures single-engine, piston powered aircraft.

Every pilot understands that it’s risky to take off without a parachute and UWSP provided that for Dale- if a career in the aviation field wasn’t possible.

“I knew that my degree gave me a fallback plan since I could always be a banker,” he says.

Dale, along with this brother, has received the 2007 Dr. Godfrey Cabot Award, the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) 2007 Freedom of Flight Award, the EAA August Raspet, Air Safety Foundation 2005 Admiral de Florez Award, and been named “Living Legends” Aviation Entrepreneurs of the Year by Airport Journal, and 2004 Ernst and Young Entrepreneurs of the Year.

Economics professor at the University of Chicago, John List was described recently by David Deonhardt of the New York Times as an “emerging star” within the growing field of the economics of philanthropy.

Giving Back…A Pointer Way of Life: List Fellowship offers alumni experiences money can’t buy

But List’s star has already become permanently affixed in UWSP’s cosmos. With his father, he has established an outstanding opportunity for Point students.

Through the List Fellowship, promising UWSP economics students will spend time with him and colleague Steve Levitt as part of their research team pioneering field experimental methods to address both positive and normative issues at the University of Chicago.

List created his fellowship in order to recognize “excellence in economics as well as a great potential for scholarship at the highest level.”

He is the author of numerous articles on myriad subjects, varying from the economic aspects of environmental regulation to whether social preferences are important to markets. List currently serves as a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), university fellow at Resources for the Future, and Extramural fellow at Tilburg University.