Alumni

Promises Made, Promises Kept

At your child’s school. Running a winery. Under the hood of your car. At your doctor’s office. Running a tribal government. Thirty thousand feet overhead, in an airplane cockpit.

All these are places where you’ll find graduates with four-year and advanced degrees, earned at NMC’s University Center (UC). They embody the fulfillment of a promise made 30 years ago, when a community-wide goal-setting initiative, Grand Traverse 20/20, determined that it was a top priority for residents to be able to earn bachelor’s degrees and beyond without leaving the region.

9,000 Degrees Awarded

NMC stepped up to the challenge and need, and the UC opened in 1995 with more than forty programs offered by a dozen Michigan colleges and universities. In the 25 years since, UC partners have granted more than 9,000 bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degrees, plus specialty certificates and endorsements.

Programs are clustered in three main areas — business, education and health — and UC graduates have gone on to succeed as professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders. You’ll meet some of them here. Meanwhile, the UC continues to evolve. As more college students shift to online learning, the composition of the campus on Boardman Lake is changing. This fall, for example, the Greenspire School will begin offering high school classes in UC classrooms. Whatever community needs arise over the next five, ten or 25 years, NMC will be a willing partner to meet them.

Over the last few months, in between her nursing shifts in a Kalamazoo hospital’s medical intensive care unit, Karissa Havens followed the worsening COVID-19 epidemic as it swept from China to Europe to the United States.

The Traverse City West High School graduate, who attended NMC from 2013-2014 before transferring to Western Michigan University for her nursing degree, knew she had the skills to help both patients and overwhelmed hospitals in COVID-19 hot spots. She felt called to go where they were desperately needed.

Next week, she is. Havens, 24, has accepted a six-week traveling nurse position in a COVID-19 ICU unit at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. She was able to find a job within two days of deciding to leave Kalamazoo.

“I am completely humbled by this opportunity and ready to give everything I can to help fight this terrible virus,” Havens posted on Facebook announcing her move.

Want a way to stand out from the crowd when it’s time to look for a job?

Consider a study abroad trip. Students who study abroad find a job twice as fast as those who don’t and earn $7,000 more, according to 2012 studies.

NMC Flight Instructor Abigail Smelzer as a student on a 2011 trip to the UK.

Moreover, in a global economy employers increasingly value study abroad experiences, but relatively few students take them, according to the Chicago Tribune. NMC Flight Instructor Abigail Smelzer is one who did and saw it pay off in her job hunt.

As an aviation student at NMC, she visited the United Kingdom in 2011 and South Africa in 2014. Steve Ursell, Head of International Aviation at NMC, said those trips gave Smeltzer an edge when the department was looking to employ flight instructors in August 2014.

“Her experience in both the UK and South Africa certainly assisted her in gaining a flight instructor position at NMC because we have a very active international program,” Ursell said.

“Because I went on the trip as a student, now I understand the whole point of what the international program is about,” Smelzer said.