Photo courtesy of Southwest Minnesota State University Southwest Minnesota State University employee Marilee Thomas holds the Cathy Cowan Award for University and Community Service

MARSHALL — Southwest Minnesota State University employee Marilee Thomas was chosen as the 2025 recipient of the Cathy Cowan Award, the school announced on Tuesday.

Thomas works in the Academic Dean’s office as the office and administrative specialist senior.

Thomas was hired at SMSU in 2017 just as her husband was accepting a job opportunity in Marshall.

Thomas said the dean’s office at SMSU was a perfect fit for her.

“We loved it in Iowa, but my husband had a great opportunity here in Marshall,” she said. “I have come to love SMSU. The university is such a gem and the people are so warm. I feel so fortunate to be part of this campus.”

Born in Iowa and raised in Wisconsin, she learned to love the outdoors and find solace in nature. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Iowa State in just over three years. She went to law school and worked for a time as a paralegal. She earned her master’s degree at Briar Cliff University where she was the executive assistant to the vice president for academic and student affairs.

It was at Briar Cliff that she became involved in the American Red Cross. Students were looking to start a campus chapter and needed an advisor trained with the Red Cross. That was in 2013.

Today, Thomas is the regional local disaster action relief manager. As she explains it, being a manager in the Red Cross system means someone has a lot of experience in a particular area. For Thomas, this ranges from staff relations to casework to disaster relief. She has been deployed for disaster relief situations across the United States.

Thomas worked local disasters in northwest Iowa before her first national deployment to Houston, Texas in 2015. She states that this deployment was when she realized that volunteering with the Red Cross to help people was ‘what she was meant to do.’

Since then she has been deployed to national disasters in North Carolina following Hurricane Florence, Florida after Hurricane Ian, Hawaii to support those displaced by the Lahaina wildfire, and Georgia in the wake of Hurricane Helene. She’s worked virtually on many other disasters to connect people with resources and services.

She also leads efforts on what the Red Cross calls “blue sky” efforts like installing smoke alarms, Pillowcase Project for emergency preparedness, as well as information tabling at the Farmer’s Market and National Night Out.