IE alum receives college honor

Don C. Holloway Jr. (20K JPG)

Although Don C. Holloway Jr. has been an academic, an entrepreneur, an inventor, an author, a manager, a consultant and a philanthropist, the common thread in his career has been his drive to improve the quality of health care services.

He spent 10 years at the University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health and five at Boston University's Health Policy Institute. At Stanford University Hospital, Holloway was director of sales and marketing. For nine years, he consulted with the government of Portugal, introducing industrial engineering methods to management staff at hospitals in that country. He co-invented and patented a system for medical claims review, which later became the basis for one of two companies he founded, and co-authored a popular textbook about how managers of health-care organizations can use industrial engineering methods.

He was chair of the board of the California Women's Recovery Association and currently chairs the advisory board of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Children's Hospital in Boston.

This past July, Holloway rejoined Professor David Gustafson, his major professor from 1968 to 1970, in a project to improve access to and retention in substance abuse treatment programs.

Academics — and UW-Madison engineering — run in Holloway's family. Holloway earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1966, and master's and PhD degrees in industrial engineering in 1968 and 1971. His grandfather graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1904; his father, in 1943. His wife, Janine, is a master's student at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary; their son, Ted, is a senior at the University of Colorado-Boulder; daughter Keri is a junior at Hartwick College in New York, while daughter Alyssa is in fifth grade.