New accounting scholarship honors alumna who was among major’s first graduates

A new scholarship at Northwest Missouri State University will assist students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in accounting while memorializing an alumna who achieved a successful career in the field.

Irvin “Skip” Boysen recently established the Patricia Boysen Accounting Scholarship in honor of his late wife. He has pledged a gift totaling $30,000 during the next five years, and the scholarship fund remains open and capable of receiving additional contributions.

A scholarship of no less than $1,000 will be awarded annually to a full-time Northwest student studying accounting. The recipient will be an undergraduate student with a minimum 3.5 GPA and a graduate of a high school in Iowa.

“It was a joy to work with Skip on this beautiful gift honoring Patricia,” Jill Brown, the assistant vice president of university advancement at Northwest, said. “Her trailblazing legacy in accounting will surely inspire future generations of Bearcats.”

A native of Orient, Iowa, Patricia Ehlers, as she was known then, graduated from Northwest in 1968. She was a member of the Bearcat Marching Band and earned the highest academic honors. She also was among the institution’s first female accounting majors, breaking a mold in a male-dominated field.

“She always had good feelings about Northwest and she liked all the teachers there,” Skip said, adding, “She had to kind of find her own way with studying because the guys in the class didn’t want to study with her.”

After trying to break the glass ceiling for female auditors at the largest accounting firms, she began her career with the federal government, first with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and then the U.S. Army intern program. She and Skip met as classmates in a budget course at Fort Ben Harrison in Indiana in 1978.

“I talked to her once there and then we had a party one night, and I danced with her and then we hit it off,” Skip said.

They were married in 1979 and began their life together in Indianapolis, where Patricia was a field auditor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Packers and Stockyards Division (PSD).

In 1980, she went to work for PSD headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Skip secured employment at the Pentagon, but they grew tired of the city traffic there after six years and returned to the Midwest. Patricia returned to the IRS, working with large case groups auditing large corporations in the Des Moines area.

“She was so exact on everything,” Skip said, recalling Patricia’s attention to detail.

Meanwhile, Skip accepted an active-duty tour at Fort Des Moines and even served briefly as an ROTC instructor at Northwest. His lengthy and distinguished military career began when he was drafted into the Army in 1969. He served in Vietnam as an English teacher and later, as a member of the Army Reserve, was deployed to Germany in the aftermath of the Bosnian War and to Kuwait and Iraq during the early days of the Iraq War.

In support of Skip and other military families, Patricia also volunteered and was head of the 3rd Corps Support Command Family Support group from 1995 to 2004, helping families on Germany and Iraq deployments.

In 2004, Patricia retired after 32 years of employment with the federal government, and Skip retired from his Army Reserve and civil service duties. Patricia died in 2022 with Skip by her side.

To support the Patricia Boysen Accounting Scholarship, visit tponoo.dsworks-os.com/GiveOnline or make a gift to another Northwest fund by contacting the Office of University Advancement at 660.562.1248 or advance@dsworks-os.com.