Alumni Feature:
Dave Westenskow
By Emmy Lu Olson
Fall 2001

He graduated from BYU, with a master's degree majoring in French and a minor in German. He also gained teaching experience as a graduate assistant. Dave studied French literature and taught part-time at the University of Washington for two years and then spent five summers studying foreign language education at the University of Minnesota. He worked in eastern France for a summer in the "French as a Foreign Language" department of the University of Besancon.

Realising after four years of graduate study that it was time to make some money, Dave decided to leave school and check out the job market. In March of 1966, Dave visited Havre where he was somewhat taken back by the appearance of the campus: "The area in front of Cowan looked like it belonged on somebody's farm, and the main parking lot was either dirt, ice, or mud, depending on the season." However, he enjoyed meeting the faculty and students and was fond of the idea of running his own show so he accepted the job offer as assistant professor of languages.

Teaching at Northern turned out to be a good match for him. He loved to spend days with people engaged in scholarly pursuits. His greatest talent was taking students from humble and fearful beginnings and guiding them to a substantial understanding of another language. Dave says he can't picture himself doing anything else but teaching. After all, in high school he was the only kid who had a blackboard in his bedroom.

Currently, Dave and his wife, Dorthy, live in Denver where she teaches English and Yearbook at Denver South High School. They enjoy life in Denver immensely. Altogether, he and Dorothy have seven children. Four sons live in Seattle where they engage in engineering and other technology pursuits while the other son is in the Air Force in Alaska. They have a daughter who owns her own day care center in Fort Benton and another daughter who is a lawyer in Denver.

The timing of Dave's retirement proved to be especially good since his father's health began to deteriorate more rapidly in August, and Dave was able to spend most of the last two months of his fathers life with him in Oregon.

Even though Dave is officially retired, he continues to teach French and German for Northern over the Internet. He states, "I'm definitely not ready to stop teaching. I'm especially interested in getting more involved in my first love, French." Dave will most likely start working part-time in Denver after Christmas but for now he will just enjoy a little break in the action.