Foundation
Ron and Ann Anstrom
The Ron and Ann Anstrom scholarship fund was created by Decker Anstrom to honor his parents who were North Dakota teachers. The fund is designed to provide significant grants to NDEA members who are math, science or English teachers pursuing graduate degrees.
The original endowment was received in 2007 and is permanently restricted with the interest earnings used to fund the annual awards. A second donation in 2008 has allowed the fund to broaden its eligibility standards to reflect innovative trends in education while maintaining the focus on obtaining a graduate degree.
Decker Anstrom has served as the president and chief executive officer of Landmark Communications where he is also chairman of The Weather Channel. After graduating from Drayton High School, Anstrom attended Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. "I had a wonderful experience there for four years and then attended graduate school for one year at Princeton. Then, it was off to a part-time job in Washington, DC. I never made it back to finish my graduate degree," he said.
With the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Anstrom worked with the Office of Budget and Management on the creation of the new Department of Education. He then moved to the Office of Presidential Personnel, which is the office that recruits all presidential appointments. He assisted in recruiting the Secretary and other senior appointees for the first Department of Education.
During their careers, both his parents were teachers not only in North Dakota, but also in South Carolina, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon and Minnesota. Ron Anstrom was a math and science teacher and Ann was an English teacher. "So I grew up in an environment where books mattered and school mattered," Anstrom said. "There wasn't even a television in our home when I was growing up, which is quite ironic because of the job I'm doing now."
Anstrom explained the reason the family moved around so much was because his father had a penchant for organizing teacher unions wherever he took a job. "He always taught in a small town," said Anstrom. "The general cycle was --he would come in his first year to teach and pledge not to get involved in terms of arguing at the school board meetings about what teachers should be paid.
"At the end of the first year, he would get involved in organizing a union," he said. "The second year was always a building year. The third year of teaching was the year where everything was worked out with the school board through the union process, and it was time to move on to the next community because of the politics of the local school board.
