What a year for our mighty little College by the lake! When I enthusiastically accepted the role of major gift officer in Institutional Advancement earlier this year, I could never have imagined what we would soon face as a campus community. Nor how quickly I would come to hold such deep respect and conviction for…
Right now, in a typical year, you’d be as likely to find Northland College professors finalizing camping reservations and route plans as you would be to find them grading term papers and final exams. That’s because, as the winter semester transitions into the month of May, Northland students and faculty immerse themselves in a condensed,…
Just west of where the Missouri meets the Mississippi lies a growing Missouri town called Wentzville, an area I should hope I know fairly well. Until August of 2019, I had lived there for all twenty years of my life. Moving to Ashland, Wisconsin was quite the transition as I adjusted to a new landscape,…
This column excerpted from Intentional Endowments Network. On September 27, 2019, an estimated 500,000 people, mostly high school, college and university students marched in a “climate strike” held in Montreal, Quebec. My two stepsons were among those led by Greta Thunberg. The Montreal event was not an outlier. These climate strikes occurred across North America…
Growing up in southwestern Wisconsin, I spent many educational hours with an ear tightly pressed against the heat vent of the second floor hallway of my childhood home. I strained to catch the jokes, gossip, and stories of the grown-ups who sat directly below me around the kitchen table. As the nights wore on, the…
While wandering the lakeshore on a cloudy morning in Autumn of 2018, following a storm that had blown over the day before, I spotted an object washed up by the waves. Lying at the edge of a parking lot on a pile of leaves and bleached driftwood was a piece of birch bark which seemed,…
The Impossible Burger, a non-animal burger gaining popularity, is being marketed as the solution to saving the planet. How? Persuade people to stop eating beef, double production annually, win over consumers with an ‘equivalent’ and cheaper product, and eliminate animal agriculture by 2035. Despite this lofty goal, Impossible is on track—Impossible Whoppers are available at…
We love to talk about weather in the Midwest. At work or the grocery store, small talk almost always begins with, “How much snow did you get?” or “What did you think of the wind howling last night?” or, my favorite, “Cold enough for you?” This banter, however, has taken on a more serious tone…
The greatest part of being a college coach is getting to work with student athletes during one of the biggest developmental stages of their lives. I moved from Bennington, Vermont, to Ashland last April to become the Northland College men’s soccer coach, which means I’ve been here long enough for my family and friends to…
When I hear people start to despair about the state of the world, I tell them to come and meet my students. I teach in a block called Growing Connections that blends science, literature, and field experiences around the themes of food and agriculture. One of the goals of this course is to get students…
