By Tim Leeds
Montana State University-Northern is presenting three Founders' Excellence Awards and one Chancellor's Excellence Award to people for achievements in their fields and contributions to Northern.
Members of the 50-year reunion Class of 1951, the 60-year reunion classes of 1939-1943 and campus fund-raising volunteers also will be honored at the Founders' Excellence Dinner Friday in the Student Union Building dining room.
Founders' Day is a graduation week tradition at Northern to honor and recognize people who promote the ideals of service and excellence. Founders' Day also focuses on campus life and people, places and events which have helped promote an environment for lifelong learning and participation.
Graduation is Saturday morning at the MSU-Northern gym.
A press release from Northern said Dr. August W. "Gus" Korb, Dr. Harold E. Kleinert, M.D., and Dr. Donald L. Stainsby, M.D., will receive the 2001 Founders' Excellence Awards. Turk Lords, a senior at Northern, will receive the Chancellor's Excellence Award for his athletic achievements.
Korb received his associate's degree in construction in 1955 and his bachelor's in industrial arts in 1959 from Northern. He earned a master's in vocational education administration and supervision from Colorado State University and a doctor of philosophy degree from Ohio State University.
Korb started as a faculty member at Northern in 1955. By the time of his retirement in 1994, he had served in positions including chairman of the industrial arts department; dean of education; assistant vice president for academic affairs, and dean of the school of professional and liberal studies.
The Montana Vocational Association named Korb administrator of the year in 1991. He has been and continues to be involved in community and professional organizations and activities such as the Kiwanis, accreditation review teams and educational programs throughout the state.
Kleinert graduated from Northern in 1941 and received his medical degree from Temple University in 1946. He pioneered work in transplant surgery and is considered a foremost authority on hand transplant surgery.
Kleinert is a founder of the clinic Kleinert, Kutz and Associates in Louisville, Ky., which directed the first successful hand transplant surgery in the United States in 1999. He also founded the Christine M. Kleinert Institute for Hand and Micro Surgery, named for his mother.
Kleinert continues to work as a medical doctor, with licenses in Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana; is a world-wide lecturer; teaches at the University of Louisville and Indiana University-Purdue, and is a consultant to the U.S. Surgeon General, the U.S. Air Force, the Shriner's Children's Hospitals and Kosair Children's Hospital.
Stainsby also graduated from Northern in 1941. He graduated from Montana State College in Bozeman in 1943, the University of Oregon Medical School in 1946 and received his doctor of jurisprudence degree from the Northwestern College of Law at Lewis and Clark University.
Stainsby has held private practices in Eugene, Ore., Portland, Ore. and Seattle. He has done extensive work with examination and evaluations for Workman's Compensation cases. Stainsby spent four years as a volunteer in the Peace Corps following his retirement in 1988.
Stainsby has held medical licenses in both Oregon and Washington and has had memberships of many professional organizations, including the American College of Surgeons. He currently is working as a medical consultant for Wal*Mart's claim department in Bentonville, Ark., reviewing treatment in problem liability Workman's Compensation cases.
Turk Lords has won the NAIA National Championship in his weight division for four consecutive years, the sixth NAIA wrestler in 44 years and one of eight in all NAIA and NCAA divisions to ever do so. He is being given the first ever Chancellor's Excellence Award in recognition of this achievement.
Lords began wrestling 16 years ago in Cascade, where his family farmed. He won two Montana state championships, had a 78-2 record and received several awards while wrestling for C.M. Russell High School in Great Falls.
Lords trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for a year before coming to Northern in 1997. His record includes 126 wins and 10 losses, with no losses to an NAIA, NCAA II or NCAA III opponent; 50 pins; a career dual record of 51 wins and two losses. He will graduate this spring with a dual major in diesel technology and farm mechanics.
Dinner tickets are $15 each with reservation required. Call the MSU-Northern Development Office at 265-3711 to make reservations.
