All-In Alumni

Don’t ask Randy and Pam Oberdiek to try to calculate how much time they’ve spent volunteering for Mizzou. Between 20+ years of meetings for the Kansas City chapter and national governing board of the Mizzou Alumni Association (MAA), case competitions and guest lectures for the Trulaske College of Business, and 150mile drives from Platte City to Columbia and back, the hours add up to more than they can count.

But so do the unforgettable moments they’ve experienced along the way. Like the time they got to hear Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences George Smith talk about winning the Nobel Prize. Or the time they ate dinner with SportsCenter anchor John Anderson, BJ ’87. Or the time they tailgated with Tiger quarterback Chase Daniel’s mom in The Grove at Ole Miss.

“You get so much more than you give,” Pam says. And for a couple of high school sweethearts and first-generation college students from rural Missouri, the university had already given them a great deal. “I grew up in the suburbs of a town of about 200 people,” jokes Randy, who was raised on a farm outside of Farley. Scholarships helped cover their tuition, and their education laid the foundation for their careers — Randy at the CPA firm BKD and Pam at Hallmark. “If you want to improve people’s lives, I think the way you do it is through education,” Randy says.

So, in the mid-1990s, when one of Randy’s business associates asked the couple to help out at a Kansas City alumni chapter picnic that raises money for scholarships, they said yes. “Randy is very much an academic at heart, and Pam is just as passionate about education,” says Vairam Arunachalam, director of the School of Accountancy. “They both have a deep appreciation for the academic values and mission of our great university.” The Oberdieks kept saying yes until, eventually, Pam became MAA president and Randy chair of the Finance Committee. Pam received one of the association’s 2020 Tiger Pride awards.

Randy says one thing just led to another. Pam says there might have been beer involved. MAA Executive Director Todd McCubbin, M Ed ’95, says it’s their small-town values: “They have a high say/do ratio. When they say they’re going to do something, they get it done. They’re there for people. They’re all in.”

When a loved one passes away, they make a memorial gift to the university in their honor, resulting in donations to forestry, accounting, nursing, music, the hospital and athletics. When the football and men’s basketball teams play, they’re in the stands, even in freezing weather in Ames, Iowa, (which is why some people mistakenly believe they have a son on the team) and even on weeknights (which is why some people mistakenly believe they live in Columbia). And when business students need internships, they help place them at their companies.

Owing to the pandemic, it’s been a while since either Oberdiek has been in Columbia — “We’re having withdrawals right now,” Pam says — but they’re still at Mizzou meetings via Zoom. Pam just wrapped up her service as a member of the Mizzou: Our Time to Lead campaign cabinet, and both Oberdieks are on advisory boards — Pam for the Crosby MBA and Randy for the School of Accountancy.

“You don’t always know which one of us is going to show up,” Randy says. “But somebody will.”

Pam, Bus ’84, and Randy, BS Acc ’84, Oberdiek are regular faces at Mizzou events, from tailgates and board meetings to fundraisers and Zoom calls.

Originally published in MIZZOU magazine, Winter 2021