Created in 1972, the Outstanding Alumni Award is BSU Alumni & Foundation’s highest honor and takes professional accomplishments and community service into consideration. Including the 2017 honorees, there are 189 Bemidji State alumni who have received this award.
Initiated in 2011, BSU Alumni & Foundation’s Young Alumni Award honors a Bemidji State graduate 40 years of age or younger who has had outstanding achievement in career, public service and/or volunteer activities.
Jason Edens
Jason Edens ’07 graduated summa cum laude from Bemidji State University with a master’s degree in environmental policy and planning. A former recipient of utility bill assistance, Edens has long had a passion for finding long-term, sustainable solutions to challenges facing low-income families. In graduate school, he began to better understand the programs available, and with support from BSU’s Department of Environmental Studies he laid the groundwork for what would become the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to making solar energy available to all income levels. Edens founded RREAL in 2000 and has served as its visionary executive director ever since, overseeing more than 500 low-income solar installations; facilitating hundreds of solar trainings for community colleges, high schools, the design-build community and community groups; and engaging policymakers and stakeholders regarding low-income solar initiatives, frequently affecting policy decisions. RREAL has become a partner in a presidential initiative — the National Community Solar Partnership — and worked with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe to build the first fully low-income community solar garden in Minnesota, providing solar electricity to energy-assistance recipients on its reservation. He lives in Backus with his wife, BJ Allen, who is the special projects manager for RREAL.
Bruce Maciej
Brian Maciej ’86 earned his bachelor’s degree in design technology from Bemidji State University and cultivated a successful 30-year career in marketing communications and design technology. He is president of Lime Valley Advertising in Mankato, where he has worked since the company’s founding in 1988. Maciej purchased and incorporated the full-service advertising agency in 1996. Employing a staff of 12, Lime Valley Advertising offers business-to-business advertising and marketing communications to manufacturers, businesses, educational institutions and civic organizations. He is a two-time recipient of the International Award of Merit from the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen. Maciej serves as chairman of the commercial arts advisory board at South Central College, on the Rasmussen College multi-media advisory board and on the art and design board at Bemidji State, where he volunteers to evaluate individual senior portfolio presentations. He also serves on the executive board of the Twin Valley Council of the Boy Scouts of America as volunteer vice president of marketing, is a consultant to the Riverbend Center for Entrepreneurial Facilitation board, and provides volunteer marketing assistance for the Greater Mankato Area United Way and other local organizations. He lives in Mankato.
Gene Ness
Dr. Gene Ness ’66 taught a generation of medical and graduate students in biochemistry and molecular biology. After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bemidji State University, Ness won a scholarship to attend graduate school at the University of North Dakota in the Biochemistry Department, School of Medicine. He obtained his doctorate in 1971 and did post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, College of Medicine, in the Department of Physiological Chemistry. In 1974, Ness joined the University of South Florida, College of Medicine, as a faculty member. He later was named a full professor, and after 38 years of service he retired in 2012 as professor emeritus of molecular medicine. Many of Ness’s students went on to become highly successful themselves, filling research positions in major biotech companies and faculty positions at institutions such as Penn State, Baylor, Vanderbilt, University of South Florida and the University of Pittsburgh. Others became caring, dedicated physicians. His research on molecular mechanisms for cholesterol synthesis and degradation in the cell contributed to the understanding of cholesterol metabolism, which was important to the development of statin drugs. His work resulted in the publication of 108 full-length papers in major biochemical and molecular biology journals. Ness and his wife, Colleen, have been married 28 years and have four grown children and three grandchildren. They live in Tampa, Fla.
Dale Greenwalt
Dr. Dale Greenwalt ’77 is a biochemist who has spent much of his retirement volunteering with the Smithsonian National Museum of History to unearth and discover 46-million-year-old insects fossilized in the Kishenehn oil shale formation in Glacier National Park. A Brainerd native, he began his career teaching math and science in Western Samoa through the Peace Corps. Greenwalt graduated from Bemidji State with his teaching certificate and a master’s degree. He taught middle and high school science for one year before enrolling at Iowa State University to begin working toward his doctorate in comparative biochemistry. He earned his doctorate and then completed a post-doctorate program at the University of Maryland before serving as a professor of biochemistry at San Jose State University, where he focused his research on a membrane protein present in cells that secrete milk. When his wife, Kim Warren, took a job with a pharmaceutical company, the couple moved to Maryland, and Greenwalt joined the research institute of the American Red Cross, continuing his work on the membrane protein. Kim eventually founded a biotechnology company named Poietic Technologies, and Greenwalt served as its director of research. Upon retirement in 2007, he sought out volunteer opportunities to stay active.
Guylaine Haché
Dr. Guylaine Haché ’04 is a patent litigation attorney in Chicago. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from Bemidji State University with a double major in biology and chemistry. In 2009, she completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics. Upon completion of her thesis, Haché was awarded the Beatrice Z. Milne and Theodore Brandenburg Award, which recognizes exceptional research by graduate students in the basic biomedical sciences. She then moved on to Northwestern University’s Fienberg School of Medicine in Chicago, where she was a postdoctoral fellow. She was recognized as a finalist for a postdoctoral fellowship by the Life Science Research Foundation. In 2010, she was hired as a technical adviser for Ropes & Gray LLP, a law firm with offices throughout the world. In 2016, she earned her Juris Doctor from the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Now employed by Rakoczy Molino Mazzochi Siwik LLP, Haché represents pharmaceutical companies in patent litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act and the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act. While at Bemidji State, she was a member of the Women’s Hockey team and was named the 2001-01 WCHA Student-Athlete of the Year. She is a five-time marathon finisher and is fluent in French. She lives in Chicago with her wife, Brittany.