After Aaron Sadoff became superintendent in North Fond du Lac in 2009, the district was experiencing a loss of students to open enrollment and therefore losing state funding.

“What I realized is the people really weren’t investing in positive psychology and culture,” says Sadoff, who had been inspired by a TED Talk featuring author Shawn Achor and his book “The Happiness Advantage.” Sadoff went to San Diego to study Achor’s “The Orange Frog” curriculum, which introduces cultural change in organizations.

“I went to my school board and said, ‘Hey, I’d love to spend $70,000 on happiness,’” Sadoff recalls. “Well, they laughed.”

Still, they agreed to implement the training. His aim was to create a culture in which the district could recruit and keep top staff members while also prepping students to be “career, college and life ready,” he says.

Sadoff is a Gulf War veteran and UW‑Madison grad who spent 25 years in public education as a teacher, principal and superintendent. Now, as president of Marian University, he continues to be an advocate for a culture of happiness, believing positive psychology can transform the way organizations help staff, clients and students be successful.

This philosophy led him to write a book, “MindCraft: The Art of Positive Thinking Right Now!”

“Sometimes it’s really not easy for people to get under the hood of what really makes you who you are,” Sadoff says. The book allows students to learn more about him and his experiences, which include serving in the military, becoming a father and teaching psychology to more than 1,000 students in high school in North Fond du Lac. “I’m only able to do what I do because of the relationships and the stories I have,” he says.

Sadoff joined Marian University as president in 2024, just a year after the university announced an enrollment emergency. Former President Michelle Majewski implemented numerous changes to keep the university afloat, including staff cuts and elimination of several undergraduate majors, minors and graduate programs. She also launched a new construction management degree in response to industry needs. Sadoff’s son is now one of the students in that program.

Sadoff continues to help the university make strategic changes. In 2024, the university added a bachelor’s degree in thanatology, which had previously only been offered as a master’s degree. It’s one of the few programs in the state that focuses on the study of death, dying and grief, Sadoff says. The program is designed for counselors, health care advocates, hospice workers and others interested in the psychological and cultural sides of the end of life.

“I think it’s a really powerful program, and it really follows our mission … how can we help people feel valued wherever they are in their lives?” Sadoff says.

Marian University also took a close look at its Division III athletics program, this year discontinuing its lacrosse programs for both women and men. But its field hockey program, started in 2021, continues to grow and has drawn players from around the country and internationally. “What it does is now we have real diversity and real culture on our campus,” Sadoff says.

The university will be celebrating its 90‑year anniversary Sept. 8. In his third year at Marian, Sadoff says the region needs to continue to focus on higher education as it works to attract talent: “It will bring in so many new people. It brings in commerce, it creates communities of thought, it creates communities of kindness and thinking … and I believe I heard a stat that almost like 40‑plus percent of students that come from out of state to Wisconsin schools stay here.”

Those out‑of‑state students bring Sadoff joy when he sees his community reflected through  their eyes.

“When I see a student from Los Angeles, Hawaii or Chicago, and they talk about how they love Fond du Lac and how they love Wisconsin, I’m rejuvenated,” Sadoff says. “I get to see my own community … [and] how it helped me to be who I am.”

New Marian bachelor’s programs

Construction management: Led by instructors with experience in the industry, this program helps students develop the skills needed to lead complex projects and manage teams.

Thanatology: This interdisciplinary study of death, dying, grief and bereavement is designed to address the deeply human side of end‑of‑life care and grief.

This article was originally posted on Insight on Business

Date posted: September 3, 2026