Shawna Stoltenberg:
Student commencement speaker and Miss America
contestant (And, yes, it really is for the scholarships)
It’s not every year the college has a former Miss
America contestant as its student speaker at commencement. Shawna
Stoltenberg, who completed an M.Ed. in human resource development this
past fall, held the title of Miss Minnesota in 1993 and went on to
compete in the Miss America Pageant, where she won an award for talent.
She currently is a senior training specialist for Target Corporation.
Her topic as student speaker at the May 12 commencement
was “Keeping the Learning Alive.” After competing at the Miss America
Pageant, Stoltenberg didn’t find the audience for her speech in Northrop
Auditorium too intimidating.
Like many Miss America contestants, Stoltenberg
participated in the pageant for the scholarships. “The Miss America
Pageant is the number-one scholarship program for women in the country,”
Stoltenberg says. “The biggest win for me in going to Miss America was
that I won enough money to graduate from college debt-free.”
Stoltenberg received undergraduate degrees from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison in broadcast journalism and piano
performance. For Stoltenberg, the pageant provided an opportunity to
perform piano in front of a national crowd. As a former broadcast
journalist, she found herself in the hot seat during the interview
portion of the competition.
“The interview focuses heavily on politics and pretty
controversial topics,” Stoltenberg says. “You need to clearly articulate
where you stand on different issues—abortion, the death penalty, gays in
the military. They fire questions at you in a press conference style.”
Contestants are asked to choose a platform on which they
would speak—for Stoltenberg, the choice was easy. She had already been a
speaker for the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, a Minnesota-based
organization that works nationally to end the sexual exploitation and
abduction of children.
Stoltenberg explains that life is a little different for
Minnesota contestants than it is for their counterparts in the southern
states, where pageants
are a huge industry. “I think the contestants who do the best are the
most down-to-earth.”
—Rebecca Noran |
