Ashland Press Release

February 18, 2003

Contact: Clare Hintz, Evening Degree Program Coordinator (715) 682-1492

From Northland Degree to Community Development

Ashland, WI -“I love living in Ashland,” says Judy Thompson. “I’ve lived in and traveled to many other places, but I think this is a great place to call home.”

Thompson is a former Management and Leadership student at Northland College. She is applying what she has learned in her college education to improving local economic development. Currently working at Jet Travel, Thompson is planning to spin off her own tourism based business.

“I want to build sustainable tourism. Sometimes we don’t realize how unique we are here. There are so many wonderful things to experience in our area, but many people just don’t know about them.”

Community ties are part of sustainable tourism in Thompson's view. “I don’t want to see this area become the Wisconsin Dells. Here we still own our own towns - we still have the option of becoming what we want. We shouldn’t lose our community; we should share it.”

Sharing that community, Thompson believes, benefits the community as well as the travelers. “It’s a diversity of smaller businesses that will raise our standard of living. We have a history of being independent thinkers up here. Let’s build businesses that reflect that past.” One of the benefits she would like to see is "living in a community where the children want to come back after college.” Only by working together, Thompson believes, will the community improve economic conditions.

“I choose to live here because I can live my own lifestyle. I can walk into the movie theater and be greeted by name. This isn’t suburbia where nothing grows and nothing is dynamic. We have this beautiful lake, all of this culture, and it’s very accessible.”

Thompson found people with similar vision in the Management and Leadership Program, Northland’s accelerated major for adults. “The Management and Leadership students have such drive. I went into the program just wanting to finish my degree. I came out with new dreams and a plan.”

Adults can finish their bachelor’s degree at Northland taking classes one night a week. Thompson was attracted to the program’s practical tone and the real-world connections with classmates and instructors.

“We had class the night of September 11. I remember Fred Schnook, who was teaching the class, came in and said that we as business leaders needed to keep going because we needed to show the world that we could be as strong as any terrorists. We spent the rest of the night talking about Strategic Planning. I came away feeling that nothing was going to stop us.”

Networking with the other D.C. students really inspired Thompson. “In most academic settings people talk about changing the world. In the D.C. program we not only talked about theory, but learned how to plan how to make it happen, and then to do it.”

Thompson hopes that many others in the community will stretch their personal boundaries. “I want to work on my economic ideas first,” she says, “but I also hope to have an impact sometime in the future on other issues, like women's issues. None of us have to accept any limitations once we realize that our immediate environment provides us with so many natural resources and limitless opportunities.”

Contact Information

Clare  Hintz    
Evening Degree Program Coordinator
Email: adultlearning@northland.edu
Phone: (715) 682-1492