Marker Scholarship honors “remarkable” professor

Neither Mariska Marker nor anyone in her family attended The College of Wooster. But that has not stopped her from establishing the sort of close, personal connection with a Wooster faculty member that so many alumni cherish.

In Marker’s case, the faculty member is Pam Frese, professor of anthropology. They met more than 10 years ago, while Frese was collecting oral histories of the wives of retired military officers. They took an immediate liking to each other.

“We had a good deal in common,” Marker recalls. “We were from fundamentally the same kind of background.”

Marker had a peripatetic childhood, as her family followed her father, a navy surgeon attached to the U.S. Marine Corps, from one posting to another, including Shanghai and Peking. Frese’s father was an air force officer, and she also knew what it was like to pick up and move frequently.

For Marker, each move meant starting over with new teachers, and she developed a keen appreciation for what set the best ones apart. And as she got to know Frese better, she saw those same qualities in her.

“Pam identifies with each student personally in a way a lot of teachers don’t,” she says. “She’s very approachable and when you interact with a student that way they really want to learn. I think she’s rather remarkable.”

Her appreciation for Frese’s “excellent teaching and sincere interest in her students’ welfare” prompted Marker to endow a scholarship in her honor. The $5,000 scholarship, which was awarded for the first time this year, is presented annually to a junior anthropology major with a grade point average of 3.8 or higher who plans to pursue the study of anthropology, either professionally or in graduate school.

“I am very honored by Mariska’s generous gift, but the Mariska P. Marker Scholarship is really a celebration of her continuing quest for knowledge and her love of learning,” Frese says. “ Mariska would have been very happy here as a student and would have been one of our most successful graduates.”

Past Profiles

» Peter Mortensen: Financing dreams

» Will Johnson '66: “Paying it Forward”

» Sarah Fuller '95: My education always led me back to Kauke

» Margaret Stockdale McCoy '39: Shaping the future today

» Jill Gregory ’95: Drawing on her Education

» Value-Added Career (Professor John Sell)

» Preserving History (Jill Henley Shafer ’76 & Dr. Ken Shafer ’75)

» Bill Vodra: Supporting a school that makes a difference