West Allis Central Class of 1962    |   home                      Conan S. Edwards Conan S. Edwards Mr. Edwards was the assistant superintendent of schools for instruction in our school district from 1957 to 1960. His picture as he was then appears in the 1960 Wamago. He originated the idea of science seminars for high-school students in a paper he wrote while serving on an international board of superintendents of schools. In West Allis he got support for the idea, and the Joe Berg Science Seminar that he organized in May 1960 was the first time the idea was put into practice. A number of people in our class were in that first group, and it had a special impact on us. In 1968 Edwards got his PhD from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He retired as an educator in 1979. In fact, his son Jim is also now a retired school administrator.   In retirement, Dr. Edwards continued to serve as a volunteer with the AARP, especially on health issues; and he was particularly active on the International Heart Care committee. His involvement led to an invitation to join the board of Metastar (a non-profit organization based in Madison concerned with the improvement of health care) where Dr. Jane (Schneider) Neumann also served and still serves. There both Jane and Dr. Edwards learned to their surprise that they had a previous connection. As Jane reports, “If he hadn't asked me to talk to his granddaughter about a career in medicine, we would never have happened on the conversation about how I got interested in medicine and the influence the Joe Berg Seminar had on me.”