Kathleen Zawadski Reehil '67, will not take credit for the Paul Reehil Endowed Scholarship, given each year to a fourth year Architecture student in memory of her husband Paul Reehil '67, '71. Rather, it's his classmates who got the ball rolling.

"Algis Bublys '65, Eli Stanesa '71, and Bob Wagner, three very good friends of Paul, were behind the idea and efforts to create the scholarship," she says.  "They were inspired by their friendship and respect for Paul." According to Reehil, the scholarship is an endowed scholarship. The recipient is chosen by the dean and faculty from among existing students. The student must demonstrate talent and commitment to architecture and be deserving of support.  (Read about the 2007 recipient.)

Reehil attended UDM for five years, during which time she met and married Paul Reehil, and then returned for the 6th year. "Three women were in my class to start at U of D Architecture," she recalls. "There were no women ahead of us. We were three, for three to four years, which, looking back, was fortunate. We had all gone to a Catholic girls high school, so mutual understanding and respect came naturally."

Her experience at UDM was positive, to say the least. "I enjoyed the classes and the teachers, the scope of the projects," Reehil says. "Architecture encompasses both a very personal scale of exploration and a broad and complex examination of buildings, cities, countries; it connects to man and what he does and what he aspires to. It was a great education."

By 1967, Reehil was pregnant with their first child. "I returned to work in 1974 and have not yet stopped," she says. "Early on, I realized that I was more interested in the interior of architecture, that which man touched and experienced, and on a grand scale."

Reehil worked in Detroit until 2004 and now lives in New York, where she is a workplace strategist for Herman Miller Inc., a manufacturer of office furniture and equipment. "Along the way I became a student of progressing workplace trends, watching the focus shift from right-sizing to the pursuit of quality, to talent retention, brand development, ecological citizenship, learning and innovation," she says.  "My current role allows me to pursue this interest and the conviction that workplace design is a prime tool for supporting individual potential and an organization's strategic vision."