Scholarship helps UW Veterinary School student achieve childhood dream
Hannah Dassow, a member of the Class of 2025 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) and a Medford native, has been named the 2023-24 recipient of the Fluno Scholars – Ahles Scholarship.
Established in 2018, the annual scholarship is a memorial to the late Peter Ahles, who was a fraternity brother of Jere Fluno when they both attended UW-Stevens Point as undergraduates. The award also honors Ahles’ daughter, Amy, a 1994 graduate of the SVM who specializes in small animal medicine. For years, Dr. Ahles practiced in her hometown of Medford, Wisconsin before recently moving to Montana with her husband, Dr. Mike Ortengren, a 1991 graduate of the SVM.
The Fluno Scholars-Ahles Scholarship awards $20,000 to one UW-Madison doctor of veterinary medicine student annually. Applicants are evaluated based on financial need and academic success, favoring students from Northern Wisconsin.
Dassow says she’s grateful for the scholarship because it will help her focus on her educational and professional goals by significantly lessening the amount of financial stress she’ll face while attending school and after graduation.
“I’ve been worried about how I was going to afford rent and food over the next school year and this scholarship helps with that issue tremendously,” she says. “Now I can spend more of my time focusing on school and learning to become the best veterinarian I can be, instead of worrying about how I’m going to afford to live and the burden of taking on additional student loan debt.”
Dassow says she knew she wanted to be a veterinarian from an early age and attributes her love of veterinary medicine to time spent on her family’s farm in Medford.
“I grew up going to my uncle’s dairy farm every day, and I remember being inspired by the veterinarians that came to do herd checks and occasional surgeries there,” she recalls. “As I got older and became more interested in medicine, I knew that one day I was going to combine my love for animals with my love of medicine.” After graduation, Dassow hopes to go into mixed animal general practice because of the variety of work that it provides, but her true love remains with the large animals she first encountered on the farm. She says she could not be more grateful for the opportunity this scholarship affords her to finally realize her childhood dreams.
“Words cannot accurately express how grateful I am for this scholarship. It truly means the world to me.”
