Mid-Prairie Alumni Awards Service Award Mary Ellen Miller Class

Of 1961

Mary Ellen Miller is a sixth/ seventh generation Iowan with a lifelong interest in sustainable land use, hale environments and healthy food. She has lived a life dedicated to service, inspiring others with her passion and commitment to a variety of organizations and interests. Miller is this year’s alumni service award winner.

Miller graduated eighth grade from the last Johnson County oneroom rural schoolhouse, attended Kalona High School for three years and was a member of Mid-Prairie’s first graduating class in 1961. She discovered the value of sustainable land conservation practices through her participation in 4-H. Passionate about conservation and sustainable land use, she purchased her first farm in Washington County in 1975, and for twenty years raised and custom-sold organic black angus beef, all while pursuing a professional career at the University of Iowa. In the 1980s, she and her brother started a perennial plant nursery business on her farm, which she helped manage for 20 years as it expanded its marketing into three states. She currently owns Rose Haven Farm in Wayne County, focused on developing nut and fruit orchards.

Miller has a long history of public engagement, serving on many local and state boards and commissions. She was appointed by Governor Terry Branstad, and confirmed by the Iowa Senate, to the Iowa State Board of Education in June of 2014, and during her six-year term represented the BOE on the Iowa Community College Council and served as co-chair of the Committee on Student Assessment. She previously served three terms as an elected Trustee of North Iowa Area Community College and was a candidate for the Iowa

House in 1992 and the Iowa Senate in 2002. She has worked as a volunteer on many local, state and national political campaigns. Miller retired in January of 2019 as Executive Director of the non-profit 50-50 in 2020, a tenyear, non-partisan effort to recruit and train Iowa women to run for state-level public offices.

She believes strongly that it is important for citizens to be engaged at all levels of the political process for our democracy to be maintained and preserved. Post college, she spent two years in Washington, D.C., part of the time working in an Iowa Congressional Representative’s office. She later clerked in the Iowa House of Representatives. Miller attributes her public service commitment to hearing Barbara Jordan’s statement, “The stakes … are too high for government to be a spectator sport.”

Miller has spent much of her time serving on various organization boards and in leadership positions. In November 2018, she was elected as Wayne County Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner after serving for three years as an Assistant Commissioner. She currently serves as Wayne County Conservation Foundation Secretary/Treasurer, Conservation Districts of Iowa Board Alternate, Iowa Nut Growers Association President, Sustainable Iowa Land Trust Treasurer, League of Women Voters of Metro Des Moines Vice Chair, LWV Upper Mississippi River Region ILO Board Chair, National Nineteenth Amendment Society Advisory Council and is a member of many other environmentally focused organizations. Miller has also previously served in leadership positions for a number of public service organizations. While at the University of Iowa, she served on the school’s Human Rights Commit- tee and Public Relations Committee, and she was active in her state and national professional organizations. After a thirty-year career in public health research and grant administration at the University of Iowa College of Medicine (in 1970 she became the first female department administrator at the age of 27), Miller worked professionally as a non-profit fund-raiser and organizational consultant. She has helped raise vast amounts of funds for projects surrounding the Mason City area and Iowa’s statewide 2020 19th Amendment Centennial Commemoration Project. Miller’s favorite leisure activities include gardening, reading, cooking and birding. She shares her farmstead with her feline housemates, Tommy, Tabitha and Tinker, along with innumerable outdoor wildlife who believe the farm gardens and orchards are their personal buffet.

Throughout life’s journey, Miller attributes her strong work ethic, love for the land and life-long passion for reading to her parents. She has learned many life lessons along the way and continues to be inspired by The Talmud, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justice, now. Love, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”