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The ACT college admission and placement exam was brand new and Brusewitz, a Seymour High School senior at the time, was the first to take it, along with 75,000 other teens in 16 states.
The number of test takers grew quickly, and in the 50 years since 1959, more than 64 million ACT tests have been administered in all 50 states and in more than 120 countries.
Nationwide, the high school graduating class of 2009 set a record, as nearly 1.5 million students — 45 percent of all U.S. graduates — took the ACT.
Brusewitz, 67, has little memory of test day other than it was long and the exam was difficult in parts. A photo that appeared in The Post-Crescent shows him hunched determinedly over his exam, pencil in hand.
He doesn't have the foggiest idea what his final scores were — and laughingly said he may not want to know now — but he did well enough to get admitted to the University of Wisconsin. For the son of parents who never went to college, that qualifies as a life-changing event, even if he didn't realize how important the test was then.
Brusewitz spent freshman year of college at what is now the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley in Menasha, transferred to UW-Madison and went on to earn degrees in agriculture and mechanical engineering, followed by master's and doctorate degrees in agricultural engineering.
Today, he's a professor emeritus in biosytems engineering at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla., where he lives with his wife, Glenna.
A math and science whiz in high school, Brusewitz remembers his uncertainty in 1959, interested in college but not quite sure it was in his future. He said his math teacher and guidance counselor encouraged him.
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"My dad finished eighth grade and my mom finished high school and wanted to go to teachers college but was not able to, so I didn't know much about going to college and didn't think I was going," he said. "Then my counselor said, 'Well, aren't you going to go? You have the grades, take the test and see how it comes out.'"

That ACT test was definitely a turning point, he said.
"If I had done poorly on the test, I probably would have said, 'That's OK. That's the way it has to be,'" he said. "In those days, you thought of (ACT results) as once and final. If you didn't do well, you accepted you were not going to college. You were doomed."
Fifty years later, the ACT is still a milestone event for teens planning for college and careers, but even Brusewitz is surprised at how seriously college-bound students and their parents pursue high scores today, from taking it multiple times to getting extra tutoring to bring their scores up.
"I would have never thought of that back in the beginning," he said.
Beth Van Beek, a Seymour High School senior, said getting into college is pressure-packed and competitive. She knows a strong performance on the ACT might open doors for her, which has caused her no small amount of angst.
"If you want to succeed and move on, you have to take it," she said.
Van Beek, 17, who considers herself a solid B student, was methodical in her approach to getting the best possible score. She took the ACT for the first time sophomore year "to get the nerves out." Her second try, spring of junior year, followed a stint in ACT boot camp.
"That helped us strategize. If you don't know a question, skip it and go back later." she said. "We also got packets to improve our skills in each area."
She took the test a third and final time in June, armed with a ACT prep guide of practice tests and study tips to do on her own. Test day was long and mentally exhausting, she recalled.
"I always get nervous before these big tests and I almost psyched myself out," she said.
Her reward is that her ACT scores helped get her accepted by Marian University in Fond du Lac, which