Graduate dean emeritus Mary Ellen Schmider awarded the Fulbright Association Lifetime Achievement Award
The Fulbright Association recognized Dr. Mary Ellen Heian Schmider as the recipient of its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating a remarkable career of more than five decades that has shaped the lives of countless students, strengthened institutions, and advanced the mission of the Fulbright Program across the world. Mary Ellen worked at Moorhead from 1977 to 1995, retiring as the graduate dean emeritus.
Eighty-seven years young, Mary Ellen was a trailblazer. She says Dr. Roland Dille’s broad vision of education included international experiences, continuing education, and meeting students’ needs where they are.
- She was involved in study abroad and worked with “Eurospring” before it was Eurospring – arranging for students to study for three weeks at Oxford University with scholar Allan Chapman, a British historian of science.
- As director of continuing education, she developed classes for certification and CEUs (think of today’s undergraduate and graduate certificates), and she wrote and typed the very first graduate catalog that she says, “got printed online straight from my office.” She directed the Elderhostel on campus and helped open Oxford’s first Elderhostel.
- She was the first to bring “distance education” to the campus, in the form of a telephone! “We had six telephone sites teaching special ed graduate courses across the region,” Mary Ellen said. “I learned how we can use the telephone to teach distance so people wouldn’t have to drive to Moorhead in a blizzard.”
During her tenure at Moorhead, she also managed a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish the university’s Master of Liberal Arts degree.
After retiring from Moorhead, Mary Ellen began a second career internationally with the University of Maryland (UM) Global Campus and the Fulbright program. She retired from online teaching at UM a year ago.
“Since Moorhead was the heart of my career, nearly everything I was involved in played into the rest of what I accomplished, both in teaching and administration. I am grateful for my years there,” Mary Ellen said.
Mary Ellen received the lifetime achievement honor at the association’s 48th annual conference in October. Read more about her work: https://fulbright.org/2025/09/29/dr-mary-ellen-heian-schmider-2025-lifetime-achievement-awardee/