SPRING 2021 PANDEMIC ISSUE
MAKING GREAT LAKES HISTORY Pg. 7
GLOWING MAMMALS Pg. 8
SIX RESILIENT ALUMNI Pg. 13
EMBRACING THE NORTH Pg. 30 SPRING 2021
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TO THE EDITOR The May term online seminar gave me what I knew I needed to adapt and change during this pandemic and I will happily share the credit however I am able. Thank you for the work you are doing reaching out to the extended Northland family. Many of my friends from my Northland days have reconnected with me over the past few months after years of falling out of touch. In such times as we are living, every connection seems suddenly more valuable. Many blessings, The Rev. Deborah Woolsey ’95 Church of the Good Shepherd Athens, Ohio
Stay Connected @northland_edu facebook.com/northlandEDU @northland_edu MARY O’BRIEN Strategic Director of Advancement & Marketing Communications mobrien@northland.edu 715-682-1496
JACKIE MOORE ’05 Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving alumni@northland.edu 715-682-1811
JULIE BUCKLES Director of Communications jbuckles@northland.edu 715-682-1664
From the President Dear Readers, For most of us, grit is ineradicably positive, nothing more and nothing less than a non-cognitive quality demarcating perseverance, often in tandem with attempting long-term goals and striving for positive ends. Grit represents a yearning to aspire to something beyond the ordinary or persevere during hardship. Perseverance stimulates the strength to overcome obstacles that impede success, and by the same token, perseverance is a driving force in realizing an end that is personally rewarding and spiritually sustaining. Associated with tenacity and buoyancy, grit can also be linked to an innate talent or tenacity to adapt and flourish. This distinction was brought into focus in 1907 when William James challenged psychology to investigate how certain individuals are capable of accessing richer trait reservoirs, enabling them to accomplish more than others. Ultimately, the construct dates back to Francis Galton, and it goes without saying that the ideals of persistence and tenacity have been understood as a virtue since Aristotle and the classical period in Ancient Greece. Distinct, yet commonly associated concepts, include hardiness, resilience, diligence, and survival.
In its 129 years, Northland College has repeatedly personified grit, and its history has been distinguished by recurring periods of perseverance and resilience, often earning the College accolades for unbridled resolve. The highly compelling pieces in this issue are evocative of what we are made of, our mettle, our innate vigor, and they reflect the determination of our alumni to thrive in whatever their personal aspirations are or might have been. They have been inspired by the Northland difference and subsequently constructed lives that reverberate with the temper of grit. Their stories are an invitation to endorse dreams, and their resiliency is as infectious as it is consummate. Please enjoy what follows . . . . and relish in the rapture of grit! Warm best –
Karl I. Solibakke President
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, SHOW YOUR NORTHLAND PRIDE ON MAY 5
Northland College Magazine SPRING 2021 Mission
Northland College integrates liberal arts studies with an environmental emphasis, enabling those it serves to address the challenges of the future. © 2021 Northland College Printed with soy ink on 10% post-consumer FSC Certified paper. Elemental chlorine free. Made with 100% certified renewable electricity.
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Nimble and Resilient Northland College Carries On
President Karl Solibakke and Trustee Chair Chad Dayton met virtually with Strategic Director of Advancement & Marketing Communications Mary O’Brien to reflect on the challenges of the past year—and to look ahead.
Mary: What measures were taken to successfully navigate this year?
Mary: How have Northland alumni responded to this crisis?
Karl: As an institution that prides itself on in-person classes, we had to develop the infrastructure to provide systematic testing for our campus community. We established quarantine and isolation spaces, as well as processes for contact tracing. We built faculty and staff response teams to undertake comprehensive planning, while addressing the questions and concerns that continue to arise.
Karl: There were major concerns from alumni about whether the institution could survive this kind of emergency, as well as concerns about the health of professors that they may have had, or people that they care about here in the area. For some of our alumni, Northland is their spiritual home, in many respects. So, not being able to come back to campus has been a loss of home for them. But the spirit they have shown and the financial support they have provided to us has been astounding.
Chad: It’s an incredible story of perseverance and resiliency that continues to be written. The amount of immediate pivot and creativity is a testament to leadership, faculty, and staff. Mary: In dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, how did the Northland community fare in comparison to other institutions? Karl: I do feel very lucky that we are faring better than many of our sister institutions across the United States. We’re down about 6.5 percent [in enrollment] in comparison to the prior year, but the standard loss ratio among four-year institutions, such as ours, is about 15 percent. Chad: One of the real successes we demonstrated was the interdisciplinary pandemic course in May term of 2020. I think that was a real injection of positivity. And how fitting for Northland to adopt a number of outdoor classrooms! So innovative, but also true to our core mission and the student experience we offer.
Chad: Thanks to Director of Alumni Relations Jackie Moore’s ’05 incredible work, you can still feel the enthusiasm to find opportunities to engage and support, whatever that looks like. It’s been incredible to see everybody rally around us—from making masks, to making contributions, to just checking in. Mary: While the challenges of the pandemic are still a part of daily life at the College, what do you sense will be the lasting legacy of this time? Karl: Without a doubt, we will change the way that we recruit. Just recently, we had 129 students registered for an online recruitment activity, ten of whom were in other countries. We couldn’t really do that in the past, but now we can. This creates a different environment around recruitment.
Mary: In 2022, we will celebrate our 130th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. What is the significance of these milestones and how do we hope to mark these occasions? Karl: It’s 130 years of resiliency. Despite enormous odds from the very beginning, we have been able to meet every single challenge. I think this is a point at which we have to recognize that. If we’re permitted to come together in larger groups in the spring of 2022, I think that is a time that we need to take for ourselves. There’s a need to catch up, a need to be together. Mary: If the College is going to be successful in the coming years, what is required of us? Karl: I think we need to be nimble. We need to be absolutely clear about our identity, so that there is no question on anybody’s part about what Northland is. We need to continue to build our family of alumni and make sure that family embraces us and carries us forward. They represent the most precious resource we have. And we cannot forget our students. They are the central factor, and if we forget their needs, then we will lose what it is that we represent. Chad: From the perspective of the Board, it’s really about supporting that vision and continuing to be engaged in meaningful ways. To calibrate the infrastructures and the governance systems that will allow Karl and his successors to achieve that goal.
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Students Investing in
Campus Sustainability Solar Energy
REFund Turns 20 In 2000, the Board of Trustees approved a proposal from the Northland College Student Association for a student-led, student-financed, student-run fund for campus sustainability. And REF, later re-named REFund, was born. “We wanted to see results, to put our money where our mouth is,” said Trustee Ben Shepherd who was NCSA president when the effort began.
Sauna
Since then, students have dedicated more than a half-million of their dollars—raised through student fees—into projects that range from buying a Toyota Prius for admissions in 2006 to purchasing composting buckets for the residential halls in 2015—and at least forty other projects in between. “The long term impact on the campus is significant,” said Kate Ullman, teaching instructor and former sustainability coordinator. “You can look around and see REFund projects all around you.” In the last two years alone. REFund has added to campus, bike racks, fountains for filling water bottles, and mosaic murals, and retrofitted LED lights in the Larson Juhl Center for Science and the Environment.
SAD Light
The projects all aspire to improve sustainability on campus. Students have the unique opportunity to dream up ideas, create a proposal, pitch the proposal to students, and then work with the sustainability committee to implement the projects. “It was a great opportunity to spread our wings and show what could be achieved if everyone chipped in a bit more to do greater things as a group than we could do on our own individually,” Shepherd said. “Faculty and staff saw the value and helped push and it was the closest thing to a business plan that many of us had written at that point in our lives.”
Bicycle Culture
In 2019, student Liam Janson pitched the idea of a mobile sauna first to students then to the Sustainability Committee. His sauna would be built from reclaimed wood by he and his father at his father’s woodshop. They built the sauna over the summer of 2019 and hauled the trailer to campus—and then the pandemic hit before the first fire was lit. For now, it sits in a parking lot and Liam is working with the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute to develop policies and protocols to ensure a longer life for the sauna on campus. “It is unparalleled, the way students have invested in infrastructure to save energy, water, and build green communities,” Ullman said. In 2018, the Northland College Student Association voted to invest $32,000 for 20kW of solar shares from a community solar garden down the road. The energy harnessed now powers the Larson Juhl Center for Science and the Environment and greenhouse.
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“REFund continues to allow students to invest our money where we determine it will have the greatest positive impact in our community and society as a whole,” said Jenise Swartley ’19, who was NCSA president at the time.
2021 Wolf Harvest Exceeds Quota Timber Wolf Alliance Responds The February 2021 wolf hunting and trapping season will be remembered as a dark mark on a state with a rich history of sound and effective wildlife management. Unlike past hunting and trapping seasons, which were highly regulated, based on sound science, and informed by an open and transparent public process, the February 2021 season was a politicallydriven, court-ordered hunt done in haste, without adequate time for public input and consultation with scientists, stakeholders, and tribes. The February 2021 season, which ended less than seventy-two hours after it started, resulted in a harvest at 182 percent of the state-licensed quota— meaning 216 wolves were killed, rather than 119. In this regard, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was set up to fail. The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board approved double the number of harvest permits recommended by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. This high ratio of hunters to quota, as well as the guidelines for reporting killed wolves (also set by the Natural Resources Board), the guidelines for closing zones to harvest (strangely established in state law), and the broad allowances of harvest methods (again, determined by state law) left the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources trying to manage a process they had little control over— not to mention, one that the public and the tribes had relatively little say in. Aside from greatly exceeding the state-licensed quota, this hunting and trapping season also raises the following concerns: • The season occurred at the peak of the breeding season—which means it could very likely result in reduced reproduction—unlike a fall harvest which would have had less of an effect in this regard.
• Due to the large number of wolves killed using hounds (86 percent of the kill), it is likely that multiple wolves were killed from individual packs—which increases the probability of a pack dissolving and failing to reproduce. • The coincidence of the February 2021 hunt with the Department of Natural Resources use of a new monitoring strategy, which uses occupancy models rather than the traditional minimum count system, will add additional challenges to future wolf conservation. It is also unfortunate that the DNR opted not to collect certain biological data from harvested wolves that could have increased our understanding of the impact of this hunt. • It appears some harvesters may have contributed to this overharvest by encouraging others to delay as long as possible to report their take—a practice that can intentionally contribute to quotas being exceeded. This practice violates hunter ethics, taints the role of regulated hunting in wildlife management, and casts a pall of distrust. It also calls into question how future quotas for wolves will be established and managed. • This season has further strained state-tribal relations regarding the shared conservation of wildlife species, especially wolves, within the Ceded Territories of the Tribes, raising new questions regarding the expectations of quotas in state-tribal relations.
The Timber Wolf Alliance, a program of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, is committed to using science-based information to promote an ecologically-functional wolf population in areas of suitable habitat and to promoting human coexistence with wolves.
Alum Purchases Ashland Area Veterinary Clinic
Margaret Koosmann ’10 grew up on a five-generation beef farm, twenty minutes south of campus. She attended Northland, played sports, and went on to graduate from UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. She now owns Ashland Area Veterinary Clinic, located near campus, and employs four other veterinarians, including her sister Fay ’15, another Northland graduate.
“Attending Northland made me the well-rounded student vet schools were looking for,” she said. “I took biology and chemistry but I also took the humanities—it all helps you think outside the box and as a vet, it’s what we’re doing daily.”
HOT TOPICS Meet the Newest Member of the Fluorescent Mammal Club New York Times February 18, 2021 Faculty add the springhare—whose coat glows a patchy pinkish-orange under UV light—to the list of other mammals with this perplexing trait. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ A Tradition in Peril: The Last Black Ash Weaver of Bad River Milwaukee Magazine February 17, 2021 Northland alum and instructor April Stone ’95 is the last black ash basket weaver of her tribe. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Report Urges US And Canada To Eliminate Blue-Green Algae Blooms On Lake Superior Wisconsin Public Radio December 16, 2020 The International Joint Commission released a report for Lake Superior. The Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation is responsible for having brought the IJC to campus for a listening session with experts and the public. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ A Blue-Green Glow Adds to Platypuses’ Long List of Bizarre Features Science News November 6, 2020 Northland faculty publish findings that the fur of Australia’s iconic oddity fluoresces under ultraviolet light.
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Peter Annin Recognized for Excellence The Great Lakes Protection Fund—the world’s first ecosystem endowment—named three individuals and three organizations as recipients of the 2020 Great Lakes Leadership Award for Communication Excellence. This award celebrates the recipients’ outstanding storytelling efforts— better connecting their audiences to the ecosystem, its challenges, and efforts to solve those challenges.
Watch the video
northland.edu/annin-award
Peter Annin, director of the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation, was named as one of the individuals. Annin is a long-time environmental reporter and author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, who says we are leaving the century of oil and entering the century of water. “I try to keep my eye on the longer ball issues where really important storytelling needs to happen that will change history,” Annin said. “The reason I wrote my book, in part, is a wake-up call so that the citizens and policymakers would truly grasp the significance of these water bodies.”
Penokee Lakes Project In 2015, the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation initiated the Penokee Lakes project to provide an assessment of the quality of eleven inland lakes located in the Penokee Hills at the headwaters of the Bad River watershed. This largely undeveloped suite of lakes is located in and around a site that was proposed in 2011 for an open-pit iron mine development. The Penokee Lakes project started as a way to better understand baseline conditions in the lakes prior to any mining activity. The mine project did not come to fruition, but the project has provided a wealth of data and information for lake managers and users to understand
what healthy lakes should look like. Data collected for the Penokee Lakes project are publicly available via Wisconsin’s Surface Water Integrated Monitoring System database. Data are also being used to develop a lake management plan that will identify actions to maintain and improve the health of all eleven lakes. The Penokee Lakes Management Plan is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.
A Voice for Wildness and Wonder From the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute
Featuring writers, photographers, and thinkers like:
Watch the video
northlnd.edu/penokee-lakes The Penokee Lakes project is funded by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Surface Water Grants Program, with additional support from the Burke Center’s endowment funds.
LoonWatch Posters Available
David Backes Tayo Basquit Craig Childs Lyanda Lynn Haupt Kathleen Dean Moore Conor Mihell Quince Mountain Jeff Rennicke Ambreen Tariq
Sign up now to get yours.
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Making Great Lakes History
Student Perspective By Emma Holtan ’20
In September of 2019, the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation hosted a conference with the International Joint Commission (IJC). The purpose was to give local experts and the public an opportunity to share their water quality concerns for Lake Superior and the larger Great Lakes basin. The public hearing portion of the event stays with me vividly. I was a student working with the Burke Center, and we all were anxiously awaiting to see how many people would come. When I finally walked in and saw the crowd, tears welled in my eyes. All the work over the last five months had come to fruition. The Northland College Alvord Theatre was full—standing room only. Approximately two-hundred people turned out and we listened to them share their concerns and dreams for Lake Superior for hours. Comments covered climate change, treaty rights, algal blooms, infrastructure, public engagement, and beyond. The commission, appointed by the Canadian prime minister and the American president, use this sort of public input from communities around the Great Lakes basin, along with current Great Lakes research, to fulfill one of their main responsibilities: assessing the progress of governments, organizations, and the public towards goals
and objectives outlined in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The Agreement was created to support the people in protecting, restoring, and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Great Lakes. The IJC publishes an assessment of progress reports with recommendations for the governments on how to best create and adapt Great Lakes policies and programs to meet these goals. Their latest Triennial Assessment of Progress Report was released in December 2020. My colleague, Valerie Damstra, and I were honored to participate in the digital release of the report. The report includes three recommendations. The first is to lead a collaborative and coordinated effort to eliminate blue-green algal blooms on Lake Superior. The topic of algal blooms was brought up and explored in detail in both parts of the conference in Ashland as it has become a large focus of research and collaboration efforts through the Burke Center. The two other recommendations include transforming outreach in the Lake Action Management plans, with the intention to give the public and stakeholders more variant and meaningful ways to engage, looking to the once highly successful Lake Superior Binational forum as a model; and developing a new assessment framework
for the IJC with the intent to improve accountability and better honor the independence of stakeholders working with Great Lakes water quality. Valerie and I both shared personal statements based on the recommendations. Valerie spoke of the excitement and gratitude from our region for the recommendation to expand research and collaboration around Lake Superior algal blooms. I addressed the importance of the other two recommendations for the potential support they may provide to the work of relationship building and of centering historically marginalized voices and experiences; work I believe is vital to the overall maintenance and preservation of Great Lakes water quality. For me, the experience was fulfilling and exciting. The recommendations presented, strongly reflected the comments from the Chequamegon Bay community, illustrating to me the power our relationship to water holds and the impact of stories from those who depend on these waters for their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Emma Holtan ’20 graduated from Northland College last May and is currently working for the Burke Center as a water research specialist focusing on communications.
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RESEARCH
Shining a Light on Curiosity By Emily Stone ’04
Once upon a time, in the cool, dark air of his own backyard, a forestry professor swept the beam of a UV flashlight through the trees. He wanted to know if gray tree frogs fluoresce. They don’t. But when a furry shape found its way into the beam and glowed hot pink, Jon Martin discovered that flying squirrels do. This serendipitous discovery in May of 2017—spurred on by a bit of previous knowledge and a scientist’s curiosity—sent Jon and his colleagues on quite the scientific journey. In 2018 and 2019, faculty from Northland descended into the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to examine the flying squirrel specimens stored there. The interdisciplinary team was determined to learn more about Jon’s discovery that flying squirrels fluoresce under UV light. After shining their UV flashlights at specimens of all three species of North American flying squirrels and being rewarded by flashes of pink, the next question was “what else?” Previously, opossums were the only mammals known to fluoresce. But, opossums are weird. And although their fluorescence was discovered in the 1980s, no one, it seems, dug much deeper. Where was their sense of curiosity? The Northland crew was curious. Would the startling trait be common among other furry critters? As it turns out, platypuses (who are even weirder than opossums) biofluoresce, too, and the Northland scientists published that discovery last October. During their black light safari through the collections, the scientists logically sought out the cabinet that held Old World flying squirrels, who live in Europe and Asia, as well as “scaly-tailed squirrels,” who aren’t squirrels at all, but small rodents from central Africa with a similar stretch of skin and ability to glide. No glow for the scaly-tailed squirrels.
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The scientists really didn’t expect every species to fluoresce, acknowledged Natural Resources Professor Erik Olson, as he recapped the story for me recently. But as the next drawer in the cabinet slid open, flaming orange fluorescence flickered under the flashlight’s beam. “We’ve got one!” someone exclaimed, without even knowing exactly what the drawer held. The specimens were of African springhares, as it turns out. That discovery was just published in the journal Scientific Reports. The authors include Jon, Erik, and also Northland faculty, chemists Michaela Carlson and Sharon Anthony, mammologist Paula Anich, and microbiologist Alissa Hulstrand, among others. Springhares, I’ve learned, are rabbit-sized rodents who leap like kangaroos, but lack a pouch. They are close relatives of the scaly-tailed squirrels, which is why their drawer was nearby. They live only in Africa, where they forage under the cover of darkness and not much else; not even with friends to help keep an eye out for danger. On a field trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, the team confirmed that living springhares fluoresce even more brightly than the decades-old specimens. Erik also noted that the springhares—both living and dead—glowed much more vibrantly in person than in the published photographs, where the researchers’ careful, scientific process had captured a narrower range of wavelengths. There is much left to learn about biofluorescence in mammals. Describing the trait is just the first step, but figuring out what the
trait means is quite another process. Does it have ecological benefits? Is it a disease response? Might it be useful for conservation? Or could it possibly have no purpose whatsoever? It will take a bevy of scientists from different disciplines to begin to answer those questions. “To me it’s just exciting to be part of the description of a trait that was unknown.” Erik told me—especially since the animals themselves are all common and well-studied. “These kinds of discoveries really enhance the sense of awe we have for the natural world; they give us a moment to pause and reflect on the world around us.” Erik was initially skeptical and cautious when Jon told him about the pink flying squirrels in his backyard. Jon wouldn’t give up, though, and the rest is history. The rest has also been covered in the New York Times, published in the Journal of Mammalogy, and has captured the imaginations of both scientists and the public. And it all started once upon a time with a particularly persistent forester who let his curiosity run wild in his own backyard.
Emily Stone ’04 is a naturalist and the education director at the Cable History Museum and writes a column called Natural Connections. This article is one of her columns.
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A fifteen-year gap followed Frank Lane
and Jesse Caskey’s original survey of the flora and fauna of the Apostle Islands in 1957 (Part I from Fall 2020). The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (AINL) was established in 1970 and from 19722005, professors Lelyn Stadnyk, Dick Verch, Bruce Goetz, Jim Meeker, Gus Smith ’84, and others conducted at least thirty studies on soils, plants, economics, fisheries, and cultural resources within the AINL. The following is from a student who worked in the Islands the summer of 1975.
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The Beauty and Fury of Lake Superior Notes from the Field By Tom Dahl ’76 Employed by the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute under a contract from the National Park Service, I was part of a team of students who conducted an ecological inventory of the Apostle Islands in the summer of 1975. I believe there were five teams composed of five members each that were to conduct an ecological inventory of nine different islands—Basswood, Cat, Ironwood, Manitou, Michigan, Oak, Rocky, and South Twin. Work included the collection and documentation of the flora and fauna on these islands and entailed detailed field analysis of soils, vegetative growth (density and diversity), trapping of mammals, inland water studies, mapping of nesting and rookery sites, and recording historical land use information and sites of cultural importance. We were dropped off by boat on a designated island on Mondays and picked-up (weather permitting) on Fridays. We camped on the island, packed-in our supplies—we drank Lake Superior water and ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. Teams were assigned, designated sample plots to locate and conduct the field work. There was no GPS, no cell phone–we navigated by topographic map and compass pacing off distance from known landmarks to determine sample plot locations. We were paid $4/hour (which was a good summer job wage at the time) and spent weekends on the Northland campus. We experienced and saw some pretty cool stuff, including the beauty and fury of Lake Superior, abandoned logging skids and equipment from earlier decades, the brownstone quarries that had provided the material for many of the buildings in downtown Ashland, and the historic fish camps, complete with cultural relics of bygone times and saw one of the largest yellow birch trees in Wisconsin at that time. We were also afforded the opportunity to see the islands as few people will ever see them. Following completion of the work for the Park Service, I was fortunate enough to be part of a smaller team that re-visited Outer Island to conduct a more in-depth study of land-locked lake on the south end of the island. As students of the 1970s, we did not have much in the way of cameras, so there are very few photographs of our experiences—those that I do have are somewhat faded but serve to bring back great memories of the people and time on the islands.
Where is he now? After Tom Dahl graduated from Northland, he attended graduate school in Kentucky, majoring in aquatic ecology. In 1980, he was hired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and moved to Minnesota, where he spent the next thirty-four years working for USFWS as a biologist on a National Wildlife Refuge, coordinator for the National Wetlands Status and Trends studies, senior scientist for wetlands and finally as chief of the National Standards and Support Team for USFWS in Madison, Wisconsin. He retired in 2014 and now lives with his wife on the north end of the Minong Flowage where he hikes and fishes. He has two kids and two grandkids. Prior to COVID-19, he traveled to South Africa, Central America, the Galapagos Islands, Norway, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Professor Lelyn Stadnyk snapped this photo of Professor Dick Verch and student Karen Riva Murray ’75 recording plant taxonomy samples on Stockton Island in the early 1970s. The two researchers along with Professor Bruce Goetz conducted ecological surveys of Stockton Island resulting in a 1974 report. This is the second in a series to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. If you have participated in faculty-student research in the Apostle Islands and have photos or stories to tell, please contact jbuckles@northland.edu.
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WINTER | 2021
Heading into this pandemic winter, staff and faculty knew it was more important than ever to get students outdoors—to socialize, recreate, and find inspiration. With the help of donors, faculty and staff from all corners of campus collaborated to transform Northland into a winter wonderland. Memorial Medical Center, the Bock Foundation, and Northland Trustee Jim Hagstrom and his wife Beth provided $61,000 in total to purchase grooming and ski equipment for use on the re-established campus Nordic ski trails, build an outdoor skating rink,
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organize weekend snowshoe, ice climbing, and campus Nordic ski outings, and provide students with ski passes to Mt. Ashwabay. “With winter such a big part of our normal year it makes so much sense for Northland to embrace it and foster ideas like these to get students outside and active,” Hagstrom said. “They will remember these activities going forward and hopefully the news will spread about the fun of Northland both inside and outside the classroom.”
GRIT Grit is a firmness of character and indomitable spirit, an understated
quality that shows itself in the face of challenge and adversity. There are many words we use to describe ourselves—scrappy, nimble, resilient, gutsy. We chose grit for the cover because it carries the weight to describe the Northland community this past year, and always. We have built outdoor blackboards, implemented rigorous testing, and changed the way we do everything to keep campus going. For 129 years, alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends have banded together to find a way through all obstacles. We don’t stop. You don’t stop. Here’s six stories of alumni and how they navigated their lives this past year.
BY JULIE BUCKLES | PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB GROSS
Hitting the Ground Running In November 2019, Sarah Szymaniak ’17 began her new job as the City of Ashland deputy clerk. Responsible for executing elections, she had read reams of election law guidelines, made it through her first election in February 2020—and then in mid-March, the city locked down. “Elections can’t just stop,” she said. “There’s no way to pause or delay—it wasn’t going to stop so we had figure out how to conduct an election during a pandemic.” She says she reached for her outdoor education degree for logistics, leadership, and safety protocols. She worked night and day to learn about COVID-19, how to keep volunteers and voters safe, and in time for April spring election. “I went into risk management mode,” she said. Hand sanitizer had vanished, masks non-existent, and so she went looking and with the help of the Ashland Police Department was able to order masks from Stormy Kromer in Ironwood, Michigan. She had to redesign her office, the polling places, and work procedures. “I have this distinct memory of sanitizing, and wiping down every surface and stuffing masks for poll workers into baggies,” she said. “And remember that in April, not everyone wore masks—compare that to the fall elections where the world has adapted to a pandemic.” She lost all but five of her ninety poll workers due to COVID-19 concerns. So, she started with the remaining five and built up a new squad of fifty—running elections with nearly half the usual polling staff. She also had to shift the entire election system to accommodate new ways of voting—like from vehicles. In the April election, she received ten-times more absentee requests than the year before. “We have one business day to process a request once we get it, so we had to invent new ways of handling the load while following Wisconsin election law,” she said.
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And then came November presidential election with the potential violence and unrest, heightened election security, and false reports of voter fraud. “All year long, I checked in with the State when I was uncertain so I didn’t make mistakes,” she said. “We implemented additional security measures including cameras and drop box security seals. We followed voter registration and absentee ballot laws to the tee.” While the election went way smoother than Sarah had anticipated, she received hurtful comments like “you’re going to change my vote anyway” and “where are you going to dump my ballot.” “It was really hard to listen to the anti-clerk, antielection, anti-poll worker rhetoric,” she said. Which is why she believes voter education and communication will be vital to ensure fair, open, and transparent elections. “Election law is inherently confusing, but I think it’s up to clerk professionals to help translate and explain those laws to their community members,” she said. After the November election, Sarah said she was asked to do a machine audit but not a recount. “The city clerk and I literally sat for ten-to-twelve hours to make sure the machine counted it right,” she said. “And we were right.” One year and six elections later, Sarah says the process is like day and night. “It’s almost an expedition mind set. I had to make every day as effective as possible—and know I needed to grind through, move forward, and make progress,” she said. “A year into this expedition, feels like Day Thirty,” she said and started to list off the joys of Day Thirty— solid systems, etc.— and then reconsiders, laughs, and knocks on wood.
Sarah Szymaniak ’17
City of Ashland Deputy Clerk Ashland, Wisconsin SPRING 2021
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Holding it All Together At the start of the pandemic, Haley Hyde ’19 not only had to figure out new ways to do her job remotely but she had to do it with two young children. “Those first few weeks were nothing but stress—lying-inthe-bathtub-crying-for-three-hours-at-night-kind-ofstress,” she said. As an early Head Start home-based teacher, Haley’s job was built on face-to-face interactions with prenatal moms, newborns, and young children. When Wisconsin shut down last spring, like most people, she started working from home—communicating by phone, emails, and mail. “I was trying to achieve what I had achieved on site,” she said. “The fact was, it was completely different.” For one, her two children—ages 2 and 6—were at also at home. “I had to balance the needs of two tiny humans, as well as myself, while still doing my job,” she said. “It all felt like a chaotic balancing act.” And Haley is no stranger to balancing chaos. She had two babies while attending college and working full time. Her youngest was born in August 2018. A month later, she was back at work and starting her final semester at Northland with a one-month-old strapped to her chest. “It’s the only way I could have made it through that last semester,” she said. So, to make it through the pandemic, she found new ways of doing things. She designed an outdoor office so that she could remain in Wifi range while her kids played in the yard. “They were able to accomplish so
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much without me intervening at all and I think that watching that really helped me steer myself in the direction that I plan to follow as an educator.” In July 2020, she was offered a position as a 4K teacher—and so began learning a new role while juggling remote communication. That said, she’s had great support from her coworkers. “I think that the pandemic has actually made it easier for me to reach out and ask for help,” she said. She was also able to use the technology to ask for feedback from caregivers. “I have always looked at education as a team approach—student, teacher, caregivers, community—and this year has only amplified that belief and pushed me to find alternative ways to put that into my practice,” she said. One of the first things she did when she started her new job was to help create an outdoor classroom for kids with stumps for chairs arranged in a circle. The kids will be returning for the first time in March 2021— and she’s ready. Nearly one year into the pandemic, Haley says her biggest takeaway is this: slow down. “I think that even though it was stressful to work from home and deal with such a huge unknown, it was also a great time to self-reflect and slow down. I re-evaluated a lot of my goals in education,” she said. “I will be keeping the emphasis on outdoor education, even after the pandemic is over.
Haley Hyde ’19
4K teacher Red Cliff, Wisconsin SPRING 2021
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Switching Gears By Kelsie Shields ’21 Owning a small business is no small task. Owning a small business focused on selling outdoor recreational gear during a pandemic? Well, that is a whole other story. Chris ’94 and Judy Young ’93 purchased New Moon Ski and Bike Shop in Hayward, Wisconsin, with business partners Joel and Kristy Harrison in 2005, but this year has created successes and challenges like they have never seen before. Outdoor recreation in Wisconsin has been exploding in the past decade. Instead of slowing this growth, COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst, launching individuals from both Wisconsin and neighboring states into the outdoors. Like all businesses, New Moon, located an hour south of the College, hustled at the beginning of 2020 to figure out how to operate during a pandemic and within the initial lockdown. The shop shut its doors but continued to offer online orders and curbside pickup. When lockdown ended in May, however, it was like a cannon went off. “At that time, we realized it was game on. People just went bonkers with outdoor recreation” said Chris. “We started selling bikes, and then we sold out of bikes. Then we started running out of equipment to repair bikes with. In about a two months’ span we had basically seen an entire bike season.” Customers took old bikes from the 80s and 90s out of storage and brought them in for a tune-up. Staff filled notebook pages with names of people looking for bikes yet-to-be delivered to the shop. Chris and Judy took out walls to make larger spaces, installed an air exchanger, and limited capacity in the shop. “So dealing with that, plus trying to make things as safe as possible took a lot of thought,” said Judy. “We were always having meetings.” Spring and summer flew by, and winter has shown a similar story. New Moon, whose birth and evolution has followed right alongside that of the American Birkebeiner, has been a key player in Nordic skiing of the Midwest. This past year,
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seven weeks into ski season and they had already done a whole year’s worth of ski business. Along with their regular customer base, a whole new group of people seems to be coming out of the woodwork and jumping into the north woods. Entire groups are trying the activities one family member or friend is involved in. People who have not had time to invest in the sports they used to love are getting back on their bikes and their skis. “[New Moon] really truly lives their values,” said Evan Coulson, assistant professor of outdoor education, who organizes the College’s outdoor recreation and orientation programs. For instance, New Moon has rented gear at extremely discounted rates to the College and even helped the school research the right bikes to invest in, with no expectation of being the one to do the sales. That investment in local programs—from high school teams, different organizations like Northland, to events as big as the American Birkebeiner— is part of New Moon’s goal to get people outside. “I want people to see our logo and recognize that we are there to help. It’s a lot more than getting that sale down the road, it’s a place to come for help,” Judy said The effort is rewarding. “I love knowing that people trust us enough to come see us in northern Wisconsin,” said Chris. As for the immediate future, Chris said there are still challenges. The outdoor industry is playing catch up, and supply shortages are going to be noticeable well into 2021. Chris said he’s been told by suppliers to order all he will need— he’s unlikely to get more than one chance to order. If 2020 has taught Chris and Judy anything, it is to be proactive and find the silver lining. Their hope is that this growth in the outdoor industry will stick on a meaningful level. Whether people start spending more time snowmobiling or skiing, biking or running, it doesn’t matter, they said. “The outdoors is for everyone,” Judy said.
How They Got Started Becoming business owners was not in Chris and Judy’s after-graduation plan. Chris graduated from Northland with a degree in biology, Judy with a degree in English. In 1996, two years after graduation, between seasonal work with the DNR’s fisheries office in Brule, Chris began working at New Moon as a bike tech. That position grew soon grew to full-time work until the option to buy the shop with coworker Joel Harrison came in 2005. Judy worked at the newspaper in Hayward until Chris and Joel bought the shop, then she jumped into purchasing clothing, writing blogs and newsletters, and marketing. “Northland undoubtedly changed our lives and our futures,” Judy said.
Chris ’94, Judy Young ’93 and Boomer Owners of New Moon Ski and Bike Shop Hayward, Wisconsin
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Responding with Care Rural communities rely on volunteers and good Samaritans. Andy Okey ’87 is that person for the Chequamegon Bay region. “Everybody knows they can count on him,” said English Instructor Gina Kirsten, who has known Andy for twenty-something years. “If he can’t personally help you, he will find someone who will.” Like this past winter when Gina and her husband Olaf [Kirsten] ’85 went out of town and it snowed. Andy plowed their driveway so they could get to their house when they arrived home. “That’s the kind of thing he does and he would do it for anybody—his whole life is helping people.” While the world focuses on COVID-19, people continue to break legs, have heart attacks, and crash their cars. And Andy is the one who puts on his gown and mask and drives for hours in an ambulance to assist. He’s also the guy you’ll find volunteering in the first-aid tent at community events. He has been a volunteer EMT for thirty years, basically since he graduated from Northland in 1987. He worked in the music industry for eighteen years before making a career shift to paramedic. He’s been with the Great Divide Ambulance Service as an EMT and paramedic for a dozen years. He first heard about COVID-19 on the national news. “And not long after, it was local news. Everyone
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thought it was just another flu. It took several months for folks to figure out what was happening and to change protocols to work safely with COVID-19 patients,” he said. The biggest changes have been around protective gear. “We are used to trying to get to the patient as fast as we can to help them,” he said. “Now just to interact with the patient, we pull on the mask and gown.” This past year, to reduce his exposure to the virus, he reluctantly took a step away from volunteering as an EMT. He says it’s still strange to not run when the pager goes off. “But if I get sick, I can’t work,” he said. In the last year, he’s been tested for COVID-19 three times—all negative. “Self-isolating from family (he’s married to Carrie [Villringer] ’98) in our home has been a strange experience,” he said. “Lots of hospital workers stayed away from their homes to help protect their families at first but after a year, folks are trusting their protective gear and leaving their work clothes at work.” In his free time, he is mastering photography—look at his Facebook page for a recent shoot of kites on Chequamegon Bay—and he and Carrie both love to search for geocaches. In February Andy received two rounds of vaccinations, and to no one’s surprise, he quietly added himself back onto the EMT schedule.
Andy Okey ’87
EMT/Paramedic Washburn, Wisconsin SPRING 2021
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Stepping Back, Leaning In For Kealy White ’99, this past year was one of reflection and redefinition. Of stepping back from her professional duties and leaning into motherhood. In the last year, she’s done more home cooking, skied more, and had more outdoor adventures than ever. “It’s been nice to slow down, re-evaluate, and have some creative time,” she said, sitting in the back of the Black Cat Coffeehouse masked and six feet away. “The pandemic created the situation for me to reflect and understand that I wanted more quality time with my family.” The coffeeshop, usually alive with the sound of cutlery and customers, is empty save for an employee in the kitchen and barista behind the bar. The Black Cat has been closed to indoor seating for the last year. Kealy has been working in this space since she graduated from Northland. She started out baking pastries in the Black Cat in 2000 and then in 2001, she moved across the street to the bakery—specializing in baking cakes and became the general manager of the Black Cat and the Ashland Baking Company. “Here was a thing I was really good at,” she said. “Sometimes tools in your hand feel good and it was that way with pastry tools.” In mid-March, the pandemic was national news and the bakery and the coffee shop closed to the public.
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With so many unknowns, most of staff was laid off for four weeks. At the same time, Kealy’s seven-yearold daughter Fiona’s school closed, childcare options were limited, and her husband Steve White ’99 was starting a new job. “It wasn’t realistic for me to be at the bakery,” she said. Instead, she and Fiona started adventuring. They camped in the backyard, biked, hiked, and hung out. “I’ve been a full-time working mom since she was eight weeks old,” Kealy said. “This was our chance—biking riding and sidewalk chalk was totally our jam.” Kealy clocked backed in after four weeks, working from home at first and slowly returning to the physical building. “Having an employer that valued my perspective and allowed me the space to explore that has meant the world to me,” she said. Fiona attended virtual first grade in the fall and Kealy and Steve created a schedule so one of them was home every day with Fiona, helping her with school work. Fiona returned to in-person instruction this winter and Kealy increased her time at the bakery. “I’ve worked less during the pandemic but I’ve also developed a stronger connection to my work,” she said. “For me it has truly been a year of shifting and finding balance that I hadn’t realized I was craving.”
Kealy Gavin White ’99
General Manager Black Cat and Ashland Baking Company Ashland, Wisconsin SPRING 2021
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Looking Forward Jason Akl ’99 is standing near his truck parked in front the Ashland Baking Company on Chapple Avenue ready for his interview. He’s wearing winter wear over his suit, talking to a coworker at Northlakes Community Clinic where he is the CEO. It’s single digits, a pandemic, and the clinic just started dispensing vaccinations this morning. In other words, there’s stuff to talk about. Jason, who is from Mississauga, Ontario, came to Northland to play basketball. He studied biology and chemistry and went to graduate school at Florida International University in Miami for Medical Lab Science and Immunology. City life had never appealed to him—and Miami was no different. So, he returned to Ashland after grad school ready to do whatever he needed to live here. As it turns out, he found a job in a lab at Main Street Clinic, working alongside Dr. Andy Matheus ’85—and helped coach basketball for Northland. In 2009, Jason was hired as the clinic manger and a year or so later become the chief operating officer for Northlakes Community Clinic. An upstart clinic, NorthLakes started with one location in 2009 and has grown to fourteen clinics in twelve communities. Add to that, the clinic runs Wisconsin’s largest geographic Seal-a-Smile school based dental program. In all, NorthLakes serves over 25,000 patients plus another 15,000 outreach patients. As someone with a background in immunology, the SARS-COV 2 did not surprise Jason nor did it slow him down. “HIV taught us a lot, Ebola missed us,” he said. “But the world was ripe for a pandemic.”
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He said the clinics were situated to pivot—and quickly. They secured personal protection equipment and fogging equipment used to clean rooms, and they booted up telehealth services. The challenge was to implement safety systems while communicating with patients. “A year later—it was a difficult year, yes—but a year later, we’re in a really good place. We can carry out COVID-19 PCR testing, curbside antigen testing—and we started giving vaccines this week.” As a clinical consultant for Health Resources and Services Administration Operational Site Visits, Jason is well aware of the nationwide devastation brought on by COVID-19. While northern Wisconsin has fared relatively well in regards to COVID-19-related deaths, he said he’s talking to colleagues around the country who are struggling with significantly more cases and losses. COVID-19 will never go away completely, and, in the same way that HIV changed medicine thirty years ago by heightening precautions around bloodborne pathogens and changing the requirements for barrier protection, Jason said COVID-19 has done the same for our understanding of airborne transmission and disinfection practices. For instance, masking practices will likely become the new standard, along with face shields, and using antiseptics on all surfaces. The past year has also shown that telehealth works. “It’s been something patients have been asking for and healthcare has been resisting,” he said. “COVID-19 forced us out of our comfort zone.”
Jason Akl ’99
Chief Operating Officer Northlakes Community Clinic Ashland, Wisconsin SPRING 2021
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FIRST PERSON
Northland College Alumni January 11 We’ve also been asking staff members how they have been keeping busy over break, and Professor Small sent us her lovely response.
Chelsea Meierotto (left) and Mackenzie Sexton prepare to test students for COVID-19 as they arrive back on campus for the winter semester. The campus testing team used tents and curbside service to test all students, faculty, and staff at the beginning of the term, and provide ongoing testing throughout the semester for traveling athletes and others who may have been exposed to the virus.
“I believe in the power of habit—habits of the body, habits of the heart, habits of the mind—and these habits have kept me grounded, happy, and healthy. “Since I cannot go back to Europe to visit family and friends, or to Latin America to continue my professional development in Spanish, I have been in my office every morning before 8 am, and I work all day: retooling my courses to have the flexibility to move from face-to-face, to hybrid, to online, if circumstances warrant it; continuing my research on my new English class on CliFi: Climate Fiction, for the winter session; keeping abreast of news; and, of course, “attacking” with pleasure those piles of books in English, French, and Spanish which are cluttering my apartment. And then, at the end of a busy day, I will give myself the pleasure of watching some first-class TV series. “My advice to students: live each day as if it were the last, give it 100%, enjoy it thoroughly, and count your blessings—realize, as I do all the time, that we are all here very privileged indeed!” —Dr. Michele Small, Professor of English and Modern Languages 187
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Protecting the Delicate Bubble By Jen Newago, Campus Nurse
I joke that the majority of things I have learned this past year revolve mostly around what NOT to do, but it’s true. Through trial and error, I feel we have learned how to provide mass testing in a very efficient manor when compared to our previous efforts. Part of this improved efficiency is due to the tech help provided by IT and facilities. We are now able to scan the needed information into the analyzer, significantly improving the amount of time each test takes to run. We were also better staffed coming in to the winter semester, as we learned the various components this type of endeavor entails. Four additional staff members with a healthcare background were brought on to the team. Three of these staff members are from Dr. [Andy] Matheus ’85 team at Main Street Clinic who graciously assisted on weekend arrival days. The fourth person was brought on to provide continued support throughout the entirety of the semester on a full time basis as the assistant health services manager.
Unprecedented and Unconventional By Greg Gilmore, Men’s Soccer Coach
This past year has been a year that coaches and administrators will never forget—one of testing, quarantines, delays, cancellations, and unknowns. This was felt from the student living quarters to the dining hall to the classroom to the athletic fields and arenas. Every coach and student-athlete has had to make sacrifices to keep the ball rolling, so to speak. As a coach, every trip outside of our homes has become a trip that could potentially derail and delay our season. As a player, every encounter with someone who might not be as diligent and cautious as they are could potentially sideline them and their teammates. Being part of a team is a special experience. The relationships we form in the competitive environment extend far beyond the playing field. These relationships have been challenged like never before as our in-person interactions have been reduced and altered in ways not previously experienced. Games have been moved and postponed at an unprecedented rate. In August, it was decided our fall season would be delayed for five months. In January, basketball and hockey took one shaky step toward normal and started their seasons—finishing their playoff matchups in March. In March, spring sports—baseball, softball, and lacrosse—have been playing their first games, and fall sports—soccer, cross country, and golf—have started prepping for theirs. In order to play these sports, players and coaches underwent constant nasal swabs and rounds of quarantining. On a personal note, I have
Teaching Tomorrow’s Generation of Skiers
yet to find a proper analogy for the feeling of standing outside in sub-freezing temperatures, knowing the current discomfort is about to be trumped for three seconds once it’s my turn to be tested. This year has been a constant reminder to student-athletes that no matter what, you’re going to face adversity and a reminder that what’s most important is how you respond. Northland Athletics has responded to the challenges imposed by COVID-19 with the best interests of the student-athletes, campus community, and larger community in mind. Because of this, we have been able to patch together an athletic calendar, face competition, and remain unified.
By Mary Cunningham Outdoor Education Senior Last year was a year of grief and challenge with change being the only constant. Being backed by the Parsonage Fund inspired me to move out West this winter, set goals and expand my teaching experience, while living near my family, with my partner, and deep in the Cascade Mountain Range. I set numerous goals for the winter. I am determined to stay connected to my Northland community via engagement in online classes and weekly check-ins with friends. I also am on a journey of improving my downhill skiing and knowledge of recreating in the mountains. Parsonage Fund made it possible for me to continue my education of backcountry skiing, safety, and rescue skills. Last month I spent three days practicing the use of rescue equipment, digging snow study pits, and researching avalanche terrain in the greater Steven’s Pass ski area. The avalanche safety course allows me to travel more safely while skiing “out of bounds” and in more remote places. The best part of backcountry skiing is the stillness and serenity. Allowing me and my ski partners to connect more deeply with the snow, ourselves, and one another. As an outdoor education senior, I am beginning to explore the world of young professionals in the outdoor field. With the ability to get to live remotely, I am teaching ski lessons to itty bitty students. There are certainly trials and tribulations, but seeing a six-year-old ski down the bunny hill for the first time without falling is beyond rewarding. It’s pretty cool to be teaching tomorrow’s generation of skiers.
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REFLECTIONS
Skills for a Meaningful Life Professor Tim Doyle Retires By David Saetre Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religion If one were to write a People’s History of Northland College the first chapter would probably feature Newton Bobb and Joseph Brownell. But the second chapter would begin with Tim Doyle ’84. Tim’s relationship to Northland covers four decades, first as a student and then as a professor of philosophy and religion from 2000 until his retirement in the fall of 2020. During his teaching tenure Tim provided the College’s liberal arts mission with the essential discipline of philosophy, implementing Northland’s philosophy minor. His range of interests extended beyond his expertise in the philosophy of language as he taught courses in environmental ethics, aesthetics, logic, the philosophy of science, as well as Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics. His work on Wittgenstein, with German philosopher Hans Julius Schneider, and his development of Zen garden spaces are notable achievements as well. He influenced generations of students in the disciplines of critical thinking, and how one might apply those skills to living a meaningful life. As a student Tim arrived at Northland in a circular fashion. His early youth in Massachusetts included a passion for the outdoors, bicycling, and catechetical skepticism. But, before enrolling as an older college freshman, he went to work as a union man on a railroad. During his first year at Northland he found his way to Mead Hall, the dorm for “smart hippies,” according Janet Bewley, the student dean of that era. Tim’s roommate, Andy Noyes ’84, still talks about “the wow of now” that characterized those student years. “That’s the resonant experience of hanging with Tim,” said Noyes, adding, “It’s powerful stuff! Tim inspires that in his friendships and students with a high standard for all around. It’s all A-game.” Tim shared that Mead Hall room with his avatar Floyd E. Queeb. Queeb hagiography continues forty years later. To this day, Northland professors notice a significant drop in attendance the last week of October, and 10/28 has become sacrosanct for contemporary students and alumni alike. College presidents, students, even professors come and go. Queeb remains. How’s that for a legacy? Tim Doyle was also a serious student. A conversation with Tim regarding his student years begins with a tribute to his professors, especially Tom Kasulis and a visiting professor named Mike Fitzgerald. Studying Buddhism with Kasulis, and analytic philosophy and logic with Fitzgerald, Doyle reflects on his own turn to college teaching at Northland: “Having received an amazingly high-level education in philosophy at Northland, I
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wanted to make sure that students continued to be able to get the kind of education that I had received there.” Tim’s influence on his students evokes the same kind of gratitude. Scott Wold ’09 notes, “Tim was a force of nature in the classroom, more than just a professor. He is a lifelong mentor who cared deeply about his students.” Wold remarked that Dr. Doyle brought out the best, “because I did not want to disappoint him with a late or poorly thought-out paper.” Another former student, now teaching at Northland, Stacy Craig ’04 commented, “It was empowering to learn philosophy, the depth of an argument, and how one’s positions manifest our values and ethics.” As Tim approached the fall of 2020, he realized that his battle with recurrent cancer had taken its toll, so he announced his retirement. The following months have been kind to Tim. He has experienced a reprieve from the debilitating pain that he hid from his students the past year. Now, he spends the days on his small homestead farm near the south shore of Lake Superior. Arriving at his home at 10:28 on a lovely fall afternoon, I find Tim waiting on his portico, with his cat, Caruso, purring on his lap.
“I wanted to make sure that students were able to get the kind of education that I had received at Northland.” The pulsing waves of Lake Superior provide the background music as we look out over his flower gardens toward the meadow and forest beyond. He talks of appreciating the “pure, aesthetic joy of nature,” of listening to the owls, coyotes, waves and wind, of quiet evenings with friends around his campfire. When asked how he is doing, Tim replies, “I am more present in what I am doing.” As I leave his generous, little farm in the late afternoon light, I become aware of a sense of contentment, a kind of at-peace-with-the-world, and I hope this lasts for Tim, as for us all. May we all find a measure of gratitude for students and teachers and colleagues like Tim Doyle, and contentment for good work and abiding friendships.
GIVING
Tim’s Zen Garden Tim had one wish when he retired last fall—that the Zen garden that he has been building at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute be completed. Professor Cynthia Belmont created a GoFundMe page to raise $5,800—and colleagues and friends contributed $6,407 to make it happen. The fund will cover the expenses of landscaping, the completion of walls and construction of structural elements, and the purchase of design features such as a Shinto lantern and rustic stone bench. “It’s only fitting that we finish this Zen garden project that he started with love and with the help of his students, following his vision and plans,” Belmont said. “The main thing I’ve learned in doing this is that so many people love Tim.”
Walking in Sigurd Olson’s Footsteps Supporting Stewardship Through Scholarships
and raised a gaggle of boys. Summers were always for the cabin. “For a few years, we had three boys, two small dogs, and Charley the cat all in the station wagon,” she said. “No wonder we drove straight through for thirty-six hours, taking turns driving and sleeping for two nights and a day.” George died eighteen years ago, but Donna still stays at the cabin for four months every summer—even last summer during the pandemic. “I go back [to Tacoma] and people want to know if I’m happy to be back and I say, ‘no,’” she laughed.
About the time Sigurd F. Olson was crafting his first book, The Singing Wilderness, Donna Arbaugh and her new husband, George, were building a summer place near the Boundary Waters. It was 1954 and, using only hand tools, they built a small, off-the-grid cabin on a lot they leased from the government for $50 per year. “Newlyweds can afford that,” she said during a phone conversation from her home in Tacoma, Washington. In the early years, the couple lived in Iowa City where George attended graduate school and Donna taught third grade. Afterward, George took a position as philosophy professor at Pacific Lutheran University while Donna worked in administration
Donna heard Sigurd Olson speak a few times in Ely, and her interest in him and his philosophy has grown through the years. Her acquaintance with people at the Listening Point Foundation, an Ely nonprofit dedicated to preserving Olson’s Listening Point cabin on Burntside Lake, led her to Northland College and the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Because of her life in academia and teaching, she was intrigued by Northland’s unique environmental liberal arts mission and its commitment to cultivating environmental leaders who are grounded in the liberal arts. “I’ve always been into environmental issues,” she said. “Over the years, I got even more involved.” In 2009, Donna established the Arbaugh Endowed Scholarship at Northland College. The scholarship aids a junior or senior majoring in a field focused on environmental studies or sustainability; twelve Northland students have received the scholarship so far.
The 2014 recipient, Carissa Hudson, of Greenville, Texas, who majored in natural resources and was a research assistant in a plant ecology lab, wrote: “Attending Northland has opened so many doors for me, and I, too, strive to walk in the footsteps of Sigurd Olson.” Donna has been impressed by the students of Northland College and the College itself. She loves Northland’s emphasis on environmental studies and appreciates its Native American studies program. So much so that she has included Northland College and the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in her estate planning. Through her estate planning gift, she intends to establish the Arbaugh Singing Wilderness Endowment. The endowment will provide on-going financial support for activities of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, including internships and fellowships that help create the next generation of environmental leaders. Donna was able to visit campus in the fall of 2007 to attend a talk by David Backes, author of A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson. And last year, she attended a graveside memorial service for Bob Olson, Sigurd’s son, in Seeley, Wisconsin. “Donna is truly a kindred spirit,” said Alan Brew, executive director of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. “She manifests the core values of the College and its Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute through her life choices, her philanthropy, and her vibrant engagement with the world.”
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Embracing the North
A cross country move, thirty-three years in the making Robert Rue Parsonage, Northland’s president from 1987-2002, made an imprint as indelible as the Northland seal. Filled with confidence, boldness, and a Midwestern work ethic, he built a college for the twenty-first century while giving credence to the past. “I expected great things and pushed to get them done,” said Bob in a telephone interview from his home on Lake Namekagon. “I wasn’t surprised when they did get done—I enjoyed what I was doing and the people I had to work with. It became a vocation for me.”
of his position, had received many inquiries from search firms. “When Bob told me he had got a call from Northland College, I grabbed my map,” Ruth said. “I didn’t want to be in the middle of the middle of the middle. But, then, there was Lake Superior. Yes, I can do that. It’s a major body of water. I had grown up swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, and this one is without salt.” Ruth remembers arriving on campus to a pile of wood delivered by a few faculty. “I knew Bob was going to be chopping that wood,” she laughed. Bob had grown up in Minnesota, canoeing its streams as an Eagle Scout. “It was a homecoming for me,” he said. “I was coming home.” Ruth also remembers the first party at the house. She and Bob lit a fire, but the damper was wrongly placed. “We were smoked out of the place, people standing outside until the smoke cleared.”
He raised funds to build the Larson Juhl Center for Science and the Environment, the Craig A. Ponzio Center, the McLean Environmental Living and Learning Center, and the Mary Van Evera Fine Arts Building. He repurposed and renovated Brownell Hall and restored Northland’s original building, Wheeler Hall—a building that unites every student who has ever attended Northland College during its 125+ year history. Wheeler Hall had fallen into serious disrepair, and some advised he tear it down. “Bob was adamant about not wanting to do that,” said Don Chase, who worked alongside Bob during his tenure, and still talks to him periodically. “I think we can say Bob saved that building.” His wife, Ruth Lull, says they had come from a part of the country where you don’t tear down old buildings. You restore them. She and Bob and their sons, Noah ’97 and Ethan ’99, had been living in New Jersey. Bob worked at the headquarters of the National Council of Churches of Christ in New York; Ruth worked as a full-time parent, children’s book illustrator, and gallery painter. Bob aspired to be a college president and, because
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NORTHLAND COLLEGE MAGAZINE
Ruth embraced it all. She signed up for courses in snowshoeing, wildlife tracking, downhill skiing, and crosscountry skiing. Initially inspired by the Atlantic Ocean, beachcombing, and seashells, the north woods became her new muse. She served for more than a decade on the Wisconsin Arts Board and was an assistant professor of art at Northland until her retirement in 2019. “Those first two years, coming from New England and New York City, learning skills in my new, wild environment were, frankly, life-changing,” she said. “It gave me a new perspective and broadened my comfort level, which was reflected in my paintings.” Bob flourished as well. He expanded the board of trustees, reaching out to people who had never been asked. He wanted to recruit people who knew the College from the inside—and that meant alumni. Jonathan Morgan, who served as the board of trustee president at the time, remembers flying to Atlanta, Georgia, with Bob to meet with Craig Ponzio, a Northland alum who had turned Larson Juhl from a small shop in Ashland, Wisconsin, into the largest picture frame company in the world. “Bob was not bashful about asking—he was driven to connect with people,” Morgan said. “Fearless in his approach, he recruited Craig, who became, and is still, one of the foundational board members.”
Bob also did the less visible work. He served on community, state, and national boards, taught philosophy and religion when he could, and still found the time to tend flowers and make desserts for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra when they played on campus. “It was the greatest time of my life, and I enjoyed working with the people there; they were so dedicated and so special, and I still, today, have pleasant relations with people I brought to the College,” he said. Bob’s name lives in very real ways on the campus today. Upon his retirement in 2002, friends created the Robert Rue Parsonage Fund for Opportunities. “During my years at the College, students would ask for a little money to help do interesting things outside the bounds of their education,” he said. “The Parsonage Fund is dedicated to providing funds for those types of experiences,” Every year, students apply for funds to attend and present at conferences and workshops and travel for research and internships. The fund provides the money necessary for these life-changing, careerbuilding experiences. Bob loves hearing about them all.
“ Bob was not bashful about asking—he was driven to connect with people.”
—Jonathan Morgan
Bob and Ruth have taken up full-time residence at the cottage they built while Bob was president. They have been joined by their son Noah, who helps take care of Bob, who has been in ill-health for the last few years. Bob and Ruth talk daily via Facetime with their other son Ethan, a musician, his wife Amy Gruber, and their five-year-old grandson, Akiva, who live outside Portland. “Akiva has his own YouTube channel,” Ruth says. Bob is filled with gratitude for his family and his life and his College in the north. “At 83, I’m happy I’m still able to see this College thriving in the care of those who continue to help it advance.”
IN MEMORIAM
Moka’ang Giizis Rising Sun
Joe M. Rose ’58
April 24, 1935 - Feburary 23, 2021
Sympathy to the Families of: Edith (Schindler) Smith ’46, Bonita Springs, FL, 1/5/2017
Donald E. Krall ’63, Kingsford, MI, 12/5/2020
Fredrick R. Richards ’70, Flowery Branch, GA, 6/14/2018
Daniel M. Petersen ’66, Ortonville, MN, 12/13/2020
Jacqueline (Davies) Anderson ’71, Northglenn, CO, 2020
Donna (Detle) Farning ’54, Superior, WI, 12/13/2020
John Broshat ’51, Racine, WI, 3/3/2020
Shirley (Holman) Gaudreau ’72, Ashland, WI, 12/15/2020
John S. Michalski ’62, Chipley, FL, 3/18/2020
Ray L. Armstrong ’53, Westby, WI, 1/18/2021
Marshall W. Simon ’68, Potomac, MD, 4/19/2020
Joyce (Carlson) Fryklund ’51, Minnepolis, MN, 1/27/2021
Roy A. Swope ’57, Tucson, AZ, 5/9/2020
Marvin A. Anderson ’62, Chicago, IL, 1/27/2021
Jack W. Netzel ’83, Wakefield, MI, 8/31/2020
Mary (Grubisic) Maccani ’49, Bessemer, MI, 2/2/2021
Patrick P. Ryan ’79, Flemington, NJ, 9/8/2020
Robert W. Sibbald ’65, Scottsville, VA, 2/3/2021
Dennis J. Westlund ’84, Ashland, WI, 9/10/2020
Duane R. Borst ’43, Cary, NC, 2/6/2021
Jack A. Birkholz ’54, Washburn, WI, 9/11/2020
Mark E. Rogers ’87, Newfield, NJ, 2/8/2021
Marshall E. Leonard ’96, Cleveland, MS, 9/13/2020
Andrew D. Kemp ’89, Mundelein, IL, 2/8/2021
Benita (Rude) Tetreault ’73, Omaha, NE, 9/18/2020
John T. O’Brien ’67, Ashland, WI, 2/18/2021
Dorothy (Maguire) Morrow ’69, Seattle, WA, 9/29/2020
Chauncey A. Peterson, Solvang, CA, 1/30/2021, Former Faculty Member
John E. Kontny ’59, Solon Springs, WI, 10/3/2020 Mary (Ashmun) Miller ’51, Franklin, IN, 10/9/2020
Mary Hulings Rice
Ruth L. Marten ’53, Midland, MI, 10/22/2020
July 22, 1940 – December 2, 2020
John S. Marita ’51, Albuquerque, NM, 10/23/2020 Robert N. Fredrickson ’62, Ironwood, MI, 10/26/2020 Joseph D. Maday ’76, Ashland, WI, 10/26/2020 Joan (Erickson) Mockross ’63, Hurley, WI, 10/28/2020 Beverly (Gehrman) Peters ’51, Sullivan, IL, 11/1/2020 Donald J. Flesia ’53, Plymouth, WI, 11/10/2020 Jean (Rappatta) Smart ’64, Ashland, WI, 11/18/2020 Donald J. Blazek ’68, Ashland, WI, 11/28/2020 Elwyn R. Parlin ’73, Wausau, WI, 11/30/2020
It was with great sadness that our campus and the wider community learned of Mary’s passing this winter. She was at peace in her Bayfield home with her daughters and dearest loved ones by her side. As one of Northland’s most steadfast and passionate supporters, as well as a member of our Board of Trustees for thirty-two years, her extraordinary legacy will live on at the College in innumerable ways. My fondest memory of the past year was a glorious late-summer morning spent on her Bayfield porch, overlooking the spectacular gardens in full bloom. Mary was in good spirits, laughing and telling stories, while expressing her ardent hopes for the future of the College. We reminisced about her decades of work on behalf of Northland and took the photo that would accompany our tribute to her in the Fall 2020 issue of this magazine. The article wasn’t intended as a farewell, but we hope she felt the deep love, respect, and gratitude imbued in every word. —Mary O’Brien
SPRING 2021
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CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED
" My giving is a reflection of who I am."
Photo by Jamie Moquin ’98 Alumni Board President
Madeline Jarvis ’13
Programming Manager Marion Public Library Alumni Board of Directors
It’s a misconception that you have to be wealthy to have planned giving as part of your future. I work hard and want to help. I am a monthly donor to a few nonprofits, as well as an active community volunteer. I recently hit a personal milestone in my retirement savings which was the impetus to make sure my plans match my values, at all levels. I worked with the financial advisor at my credit union to ensure we were only using environmentally ethical funds in my portfolio. I have added Northland to my pension plan, as well as my Roth IRA. Letting Northland know that I intend to make it part of my lifetime giving not only supports the future of the College, but also opens up a conversation with my fellow alumni about giving back. Whatever your stage of life, find an advisor who listens and helps put plans into action that reflect your values. There are some wonderful Northland alumni in the financial planning field! Let’s do what we can for our alma mater. Together, with our support, Northland will thrive for generations to come.
northland.edu/give
