The third recipient of the prestigious Bascom Hill Society scholarship is Eric Nooker, a Green Bay native majoring in horticulture. Although he has no specific career plans after his May 2010 graduation, currently under consideration are plant breeding or restoration ecology.
As a member of the Deaf community, Eric is involved with Accessibility Advocates (AA), an organization he helped found to raise campus awareness of the lack of accommodations for students with disabilities. In the group’s first year, Eric served as treasurer and helped secure a grant to promote campus-wide understanding of the barriers to enjoying the full Wisconsin experience that disabled students face. This year, he is the AA president. Eric also was the first UW-Madison student with a disability to participate in study abroad. He traveled to Costa Rica, where he stayed with a local family and studied native plants and horticulture.