Retired communication studies professor Erika Vora compares hats with Margaret Vos, Atwood Memorial Center. The two visited at a June 27 reception for the 40th Lemonade Concert and Art Fair. Photo by Jeff Wood ’81 ’87 ’85
Atwood Memorial Center Director Margaret Vos may have retired this summer, but the energy, warmth and style she invested during her 27-year St. Cloud State career will continue to reverberate in the walls of Atwood and the careers of students who followed in her footsteps.
Related links
Faculty and staff at St. Cloud State make differences in students and fellow co-workers’ lives on a regular basis. Often, their work goes unnoticed by others, but their impact is longstanding and sometimes life changing. Here’s your chance to share your testimonial with Outlook readers about how a faculty or staff member at St. Cloud State may have positively impacted you.
Vos was honored this spring with national and state awards for outstanding leadership and contributions to student development. Any one of many grateful students whose futures she influenced will tell you why she has been such a significant force in so many lives.
“Everybody needs a Margaret,” then-Student Association President Jarrod Wiggins ’12 said in his 2012 fall convocation speech to faculty and staff. “She challenged me, encouraged me, motivated me, inspired me.”
The Margaret effect has led a number of the student leaders, graduate assistants and others she mentored into careers in student life and development. “For two years, we learned on a daily basis from Margaret, the consummate professional to everyone in the office,” said Berrilyn Cross ’96, a former Atwood graduate assistant who now is director of student life for Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C.
“Margaret could be your friend, your mentor, your mother if you needed … she could and would do it all,” said Cross, who was a West Georgia College student exploring graduate assistantship opportunities when she met Vos at a national conference. She was dead set on finding a position in the southeast. “Then I was introduced to this vivacious, hilarious and energetic woman named Margaret Vos, from St. Cloud State University.” Suddenly Minnesota was an option.
Kim Bruemmer, assistant director of campus activities at North Dakota State University, had longer exposure to Vos than most former Atwood student leaders. “I grew up in UPB (University Program Board) and Atwood, considering my mom was the office manager there,” she said. “I always looked to Margaret as a mentor. She was a strong, intelligent and powerful woman, and I wanted to be like her.”
“I was able to learn and grow as I worked with Margaret,” said Bruemmer, who as a student became active in UPB, eventually becoming chair of the Atwood Memorial Center Council. “Margaret was there to help me with every step and process along the way. Her work ethic and ability to interact with anyone was something I wanted to attain. I was able to move easily into my role at North Dakota State University because of the things I learned from her. I credit her for the strong woman I am today.”
Retired Atwood Memorial Center director
Vos’s strength lies in being a leader and a doer at the same time, that rare administrator who values attention to detail as well as attention to the needs of the person, place or program she happens to be working with at a given time. It’s a level of caring that’s infectious.
“Atwood is bricks and mortar,” said Vos. “I’m extremely fortunate that Atwood has a team that gets it. They understand the importance of student development and rise to every occasion. This team is invested in this institution.”
The “team” is composed of a group of associates — many of whom are St. Cloud State grads — who have an average of 15 years in Atwood service. “Some have been here their whole adult life,” she said. “Students keep walking in the door and invest their time and energy.”
Vos’s time and energy has been invested in an eclectic string of appointments — a testament to the faith campus leadership has had in her range of abilities. She was hired in 1986, after being a speech, English and theater teacher at Foley High School. She served as university program director until 1995, when she was named Atwood director. She was appointed interim vice president for student life and development for six months in 2006, followed by two years as interim associate vice president for academic affairs/international studies. Through these and other interim assignments, she always returned to leadership of Atwood, the place long known as “the living room of the campus.”
“Atwood should be unique, comfortable, welcoming, but mostly to convey the message that ‘I belong here,’” said Vos. The same words could be used to describe the Atwood administrator who will live on in the hearts of a string of students who took her philosophy to heart.
