Alumni Newsletter

November 2006

Welcome

Welcome to the November edition of the Michigan Campus alumni e-newsletter. Thank you so much for your overwhelming response of positive feedback from the October edition. Please keep informing us of what you like and what you don’t by filling out this quick online feedback form: Alumni Feedback Form

As our alumni population is growing so are your requests to get back in touch with your former classmates. If you are looking to contact fellow alumni I am more than happy to help. I am also willing to assist you in planning an alumni event if you are interested in sponsoring one. As always, feel free to contact me and I will do what I can to keep our alumni connected. We have many events scheduled over the next few months so make sure to click on the events calendar link for a complete listing of events.

As we are approaching the most wonderful time of the year, I would like to wish you and yours a safe and relaxing holiday season. Just in time for the holidays and the New Year our creative services department has just completed the 2007 Northwood Alumni calendar and they are available for purchase for $10.00. Please send an email to me if you are interested in purchasing one.

Julie Felske
Director of Alumni Relations
Felske@northwood.edu

What's New at Northwood

Just as quick as the 2006 fall term began it came to an end right before Thanksgiving and winter term classes began this week. Here on the Michigan campus we are preparing for the winter commencement ceremony on December 9, 2006. This year we expect almost 200 students to participate in the winter commencement ceremony. We are also looking forward to the numerous holiday events and activities this season including our annual Salvation Army Christmas Party and the Sharing Tree.

Please click on the links below for the most recent press releases from all three campuses.

From the Desk of the President

Thank you for the opportunity to communicate with all of you. My first two months at Northwood have been filled with learning about your alma mater and meeting hundreds of people who care deeply about Northwood University. It has been particularly enjoyable to meet so many alumni at the Michigan campus International Auto Show and homecoming, at the AAPEX/SEMA show, on campus and at many other events. You are truly an extraordinary group and I can’t wait to meet more of you as you represent both our past and our future! By that, I mean your experiences at Northwood create the basis for the programs and activities offered today.

Our academic programs, student activities and athletic programs are all designed based on the experiences we learned from previous generations of students. Our future is predicated on your career and personal successes as you, as graduates, become the role models for future generations of students at Northwood. Your willingness to practice and share the Northwood Idea in your communities of influence will keep your alma mater strong into the future. Alumni like you are some of the university’s greatest assets and my goal is to strengthen and enhance your partnership with Northwood in order to continuously increase the value of your degree(s). With a new Director of Alumni Relations for the Michigan campus, a strong Board of Governors and many exciting activities occurring on campus and across the globe, I hope you will consider how you can contribute and participate more in the activities of your alma mater.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!

Keith A. Pretty, JD
President and Chief Executive Officer
Northwood University

What's New in Student Services

This is what happened during the month of November in Student Life at Northwood University:

We had over 150 students participate in Rake a Difference where teams of students cleaned up the yards of 12 well deserving families.
Big Brothers and Big Sisters came out and signed up over 40 students to be apart of their mentoring program.
We also collected this month many bags of clothing and canned food goods to help the residents of Midland get through these winter months.
Lastly over 200 students between Northwood University and Saginaw Valley State University joined together at Northwood to develop their leadership skills along with Motivational Speaker Nancy Hunter Denney. It was a wonderful learning experience as well as a great time. We will be going to Cardinal country next fall.

Coming up in Student Life:

Salvation Army Christmas Party
Martin Luther King Jr. Luncheon – NADA – Jan. 15th
Coming Home 2007 – “Wild Wild Wood” – Jan. 22nd – 27th….Alumni we will need Judges!

2007 WINTER CAREER EXPO
As a graduate of Northwood University, you are cordially invited to attend our 2007 Winter Career Expo. This event is sponsored by the Career Assistance Center and hosted by Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity.

DATE:         Wednesday, January 17, 2007
TIME:         11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
PLACE:      Hach Student Life Center – Midland Campus

ALUMNI
If you are looking for a job or a new career opportunity, please join us. For the most up-to-date listing of employers scheduled to visit us please follow this link: Career Expo Registered Companies List and click on the Registered Companies List. This list is updated daily, so please check back often.

EMPLOYERS
If you are looking to add quality employees to your staff, we would love to have you! The 2007 Winter Career Expo is FREE OF CHARGE to employers! We will provide a table, chairs, and a tablecloth at your request. Electricity is available on a limited basis. Please follow this link to register today: 2007 Winter Career Expo Company Registration

If you have any questions regarding the Career Expo or any of our other services, please contact the Career Assistance Center at 989.837.4335 or career@northwood.edu

What's New in Athletics

Athletics Update

Northwood’s fall season ended with a third-straight playoff appearance for the football team. The Timberwolves are one of just five teams in the country to have reached the NCAA Division II Playoffs in each of the past three seasons (Grand Valley, North Dakota, Northwest Missouri State, West Chester). Northwood dropped a hard-fought 31-28 contest to South Dakota to finish the season 8-3. A total of 13 football players earned All-GLIAC honors, including GLIAC Defensive Back of the Year Charleston Hughes. In other action, Jon Hodge finished 59th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Pensacola, Florida. He is the first Northwood cross country runner to ever reach the NCAA Championships. Both basketball teams have opened their seasons – Northwood will host a total of 12 men’s and women’s games before the end of the year.

What's New in Academics

Aftermarket Management

The annual aftermarket industry show (AAPEX/SEMA) was held during the first week of November in Las Vegas, NV with 55 NU students in attendance. This is the largest aftermarket show in the USA with an attendance number that exceeds 120,000 trade only people. Once again the show proved to be a great experience for the students who were chosen to participate.

Our Aftermarket Management curriculum continues to evolve with a foreign language elective to be added in the Fall of 2007. A 100% placement rate was achieved for our Spring 2006 graduates and we plan to achieve a similar goal in the Spring of 2007.

Jim John
Chair

As you may already know, Northwood University has committed to constructing a new facility for its aftermarket programs on the Michigan Campus. The Sloan Building for Aftermarket studies will provide a permanent home for the undergraduate degree program, as well as a home for the University of the Aftermarket and executive level training programs for the aftermarket industry. The fund raising committee has over 90% of the funding complete.

Marketing/Management

The Business Department would like to welcome several new advisory board members; Don Corder C.O.O. World Harvest Church, Paul Flora Business Development Manager Akzo Noble Coatings .and Scott Fuson, Vice President of Marketing Dow Corning. The advisory board meeting is scheduled for April 27, 2007.

In other news the American Marketing Association is going to present their campaign to the National Organization in New Orleans in March 29- 31. Professor Fred Honorkamp is the primary advisor to this group. He also holds a position on the National American Marketing Association Board. The management capstone course class has a simulation exercise in which the students are competing against 3,000 plus schools in the country. In the past year the Northwood Chapter has ranked consistently in the top 10 and in some cases number one. This has been developed through the leadership of Professors Magnalvangln, Honorkamp, and Chandran.

The Business Department would also like to welcome a new faculty member, Mary Beth Roussou. She will be instructing Finance courses and Marketing Research as well as other classes in the department.

Dr. Lou Firenze
Chair

Economics

The economics program at Northwood continues to grow, with over 20 sophomores from the Economics and Finance/Economics majors having taken Mathematical Economics in the Fall term. With our new university-wide curriculum in place, this will be the first year that Calculus is required of all freshmen students wishing to pursue the major and is a pre-requisite for Mathematical Economics and the Intermediate Theory courses.

I am still the department chair and creating a business advisory board and I am looking for one or two alumni who are willing to serve as members. If you are interested please contact me at grether@northwood.edu.

A group of Northwood University economics graduates are planning on starting an economics private donor scholarship. If you are interested in participating please contact the alumni office at alumni@northwood.edu.

John D. Grether, J.D. M.A.
Academic Dean
Economics Department Chai

Philosophy 110 Revisited

In memory of Dr. Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science, we have reprinted his foreword to the Philosophy 110 text. He was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1977 to 2006. He passed away on Nov. 16, 2006.

Foreword

For more than two hundred years, the central element of anti-capitalist rhetoric has been the claim that capitalism is inhumane. That theme is still the most effective element in the armory of the opponents of a free market. The fascinating thing is that it is completely contradicted by experience. Where have you had inhumanity in its most extreme forms? By now, everyone knows that it has been in those states that have departed farthest from free markets and individual freedom. It has been in the Communist societies, the totalitarian societies, that you have had the real extremes of inhumanity.

Where in the world do the ordinary people have the most humane existence, the greatest range of opportunity, the greatest ability to develop their own capacities? The answer is obviously in the capitalist societies, in the free market societies.

We must make people understand that the basic idea of a free society is fundamentally a humane idea. It is fundamentally the idea that people as individuals have responsibilities to themselves and to one another that cannot be met by turning them over to somebody else, by electing government officials who will take money out of your pocket in order to spend it on supposedly good objectives. The responsibilities can only be met by us as individuals. In spreading that basic philosophy, we must go beyond the kind of economic studies that I’ve spent my life on, that even the best public policy think tanks produce. It must go beyond economics. It must go beyond philosophy. It must go to novels, to plays, to music, to the core of our culture.

We must move on a broad front. That cannot be done by business executives in their capacity as representatives of their business, or by elected of appointed government officials. Only people in their private capacity, not as representatives of their business, but as citizens of the United States, can shape basic values – by our own behavior and by our influence on others. The main effort will have to be fostered and organized through universities and through foundations. It will require the support of the community of businessmen and of other individuals from all walks of life.

The success achieved so far is certainly cause for all of us to be optimistic. The tide of opinion in the world has been changing, and at a pace that has been greatly accelerated by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today our side – the side of the truth, the side of freedom, the side of individual rights – has strength and an appeal which forty years ago one could hardly have imagined. Nonetheless, our task is far from over. Disillusionment with socialism is not equivalent to an understanding of the true role and function of free private enterprise. In country after country, the leaders preach free enterprise but simultaneously extend the reach of the state over individual behavior. Rhetoric is one thing; practice is a very different thing. The great task before us is to change practice to conform to rhetoric, and that will not be easy.

Books like When We Are Free contain messages that are timeless yet are especially relevant today when the world is at a turning point. Understanding and spreading these messages can help to assure that the opportunity for a major expansion of human freedom becomes a reality.

Milton Friedman
Senior Research Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford, California
July 2001

Eye on Business

The purpose of the Eye on Business section is to provide you with interesting websites to add to your “favorites” on your computers, as well as to provide you with key economic data at a glance.

CEOExpress http://www.ceoexpress.com
Detroit Economic Club http://www.econclub.org

	Present – November 29, 2006	Previous Year – November 29, 2005
Dow Jones Industrial Average	12,226.73	10,888.16
NASDAQ	2,432.23	2,232.71
Price of Crude Oil ($ per barrel)	59.24	58.71
Price of Gold	628.70	492.10
Prime Interest Rate	8.25	7.00
Average Home Mortgage Rate	6.14	6.22
Value of U.S. $ relative to Euro	0.7606	0.8528
Value of U.S. $ relative to Yen	116.32	119.62
U.S. Budget Deficit	248 Billion	319 Billion
Quarterly GDP	13,327.1 billion	12,573.5 billion

Save the Date!

Upcoming Events

December 11 – Alumni Reception in Chicago
January 10 – Alumni Reception at Detroit Auto Show
January 20 – Stafford Dinner

Please click here for additional details and a complete list of upcoming events: Alumni Events Calendar

Feedback

Your suggestions and feedback are vital in our planning of this newsletter and our alumni events and services. Please complete the online feedback form by clicking on the following link:

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