Margaret S. Andreasen

1935 - 2022

Nearing her 87th birthday, Margaret Andreasen died in Louisville, CO on March 7 of peritoneal cancer. Margaret was a remarkable scholar, broadcaster and mother. As a university professor and as radio and television talk show host, Margaret was a tenacious and visionary leader, well known in the community and well loved by all who knew her. Called a renaissance woman by the Milwaukee Journal, Margaret was a delightful, vivacious woman with a sparkling personality and a curiosity-driven intelligence. As a creative conversationalist, she was respectful, playful, curious, open-hearted and open-minded. Margaret had gift of getting people to open up, let down their guards and have real conversations. This gift served her well in her twenty-year career both as an interviewer and collaborative educator. Margaret was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Julian R. Schlaeger, both deceased. Her father was a research chemist who was issued a variety of patents for everything from toothpaste to baking powder and her mother was a full-time mom. She and her sister Dorothy Schlaeger spent their childhoods in Illinois and Indiana. Family summer road trips to national parks and historic sites across the US, Canada and Mexico sparked in Margaret a desire to travel and fueled her adventuresome spirit. Margaret earned her BA, with highest honors, an MA and a PhD in English literature, all from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. In 1986, she was also bestowed an Honorary Doctorate degree from Ripon College in for her contributions to media. Margaret taught American and British literature at the University of Illinois, Illinois State University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the late 1970s, Margaret took a hiatus from academia and spent four years as the Public Affairs Director at WICD, an Illinois NBC television affiliate where she also hosted a daily TV interview program interviewing national and local newsmakers. During this time, she also served as a volunteer for Planned Parenthood and the Champaign County suicide prevention line. In 1980, she accepted an appointment at the University of Wisconsin Madison as an Assistant Professor of journalism. As a result of her research and writings, she became a tenured professor and later Chair of the Family and Consumer Communications department. While working at UW-Madison, she also began to produce and host a live talk show for Wisconsin Public Radio. Margaret's belief that "rarely are there two sides to an issue" and that "most issues have about 25 sides" combined with her ability to engage guests in exploring these multiple perspectives on an issue, led her to become one of Wisconsin Public Radio's most admired and accomplished radio hosts. In addition to hosting her own call-in program, Margaret also helped cocreate and cohost the much-acclaimed public radio program "To the Best of Our Knowledge" which is still in production and broadcast by public radio stations across the country every week. In the fall of 1999, Margaret retired from UW-Madison and took a one-year position as an assistant dean and professor of Family Sciences at Zayed University in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The opportunity to learn about new places and cultures and the university's proximity to Africa and the Middle East were key in her accepting this position. While there, she indulged her penchant for exploration and traveled widely throughout Egypt, Turkey, Kenya and Yemen as well as the Emirates. She returned to Wisconsin in 2000 and, unaccustomed to idleness, she took up a number of volunteer endeavors. She supported the campaigns of local democrats and became a hospice volunteer. She was also elected multiple times to the Board of Trustees for the Village of Shorewood Hills and served as chair of the parks committee and the public safety committee for that municipality. Beyond her lifetime of sterling academic and community service, her proudest accomplishment was being a single mother to her bright and also accomplished daughter, Maia. In 2016 Margaret moved to Boulder, Colorado to be closer to her daughter. In 2018 Margaret once again became a student at the age of 83 serving as a volunteer Community Member in an intergenerational upper division writing class at the University of Colorado. Margaret is survived by her daughter, Maia, of Boulder, CO; and her sister, Sr. Dorothy Schlaeger, OSF, of Colorado Springs. Plans for a Celebration of Life will be announced later this summer.