Postiglione Scholarship Supports Environmental Engineering Students and Our Planet

The EDITH (EDIE) AND GARY POSTIGLIONE SCHOLARSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING in the College of Science and Engineering was established to help the environment by teaching future generations to care for it.

Edie Postiglione’s concern for the environment manifested when she and Gary took her ten-year-old daughter on a cross-country trip. Edie had enjoyed similar trips as a child, and she was eager to show her daughter the beautiful tree-covered mountains she remembered. But the mountains they saw were changed; the hills were nearly bald! Edie was horrified and grief-stricken to see the destruction.

From then on, Edie looked for ways to help the environment. She became a vegetarian, participated in a protest march over glyphosate and GMO food, received a citation for yanking buckthorn from the wooded park behind her home, and was even arrested in Chicago when protesting the KXL Pipeline. Later, she limited her action to financial support of environmental and animal welfare organizations.

Gary and Edie, like other baby boomers, lived in a very fortunate and freewheeling time, but one that was also very destructive to the planet. Edie wanted to enable future generations to fix the catastrophic destruction of past generations.

As her 75th birthday loomed, she and Gary questioned what to do with their life’s savings. They decided that the most effective thing they could do to help the environment was to teach future generations to care for it. Both are grateful to UMN that their legacy will give promising, dedicated environmental engineering students an opportunity to learn what they must to save our world.

Gary and Edie met in 1976 when she came to work at the company where he worked, Western Electric. They married in 1983. Gary Postiglione had earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from UMN in 1970. Gary’s younger brother James (BCE 1982, MSCE 1987) is an alumnus and a long-time environmentalist.

Note: Gary passed away unexpectedly on November 1, 2022, just weeks after their visit to CEGE and after creating the new Edith (Edie) and Gary Postiglione Scholarship in Environmental Engineering.