Alumni

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration this year, Northern Michigan University is collecting stories and reflections from alumni, faculty, staff and community members to share throughout 2024 across various NMU platforms. Photos and recordings up to a minute in length are also welcome.

Emily Lanctot, director/curator of NMU's DeVos Art Museum and a 2008 BFA alumna, is profiled in a recent video as part of Travel Marquette's "Made in Marquette" artist series. The video was produced by fellow Art & Design alumni Matthew Hill, a 2011 BFA grad, and Elliot Kennedy, who earned his bachelor's in 2021. Both majored in digital cinema and now form The Elm Creative, a video production and marketing firm based in Marquette. Watch the video here. 

Dallas Seavey, who trained as a wrestler at the U.S. Olympic Education Center at NMU, won a record-breaking sixth Iditarod. The victory came despite a fatal encounter with a moose that his team became entangled with on the trail, which resulted in a two-hour penalty for insufficiently gutting the animal.

Actor Eric Roberts, star of “Intent Unknown,” the first screenplay by Northern Michigan University alumna Beth Rondeau Deacon, delivers a video message to NMU. The shoutout is timed with today's campus visit by Deacon and director/producer Terence Gordon. They are screening the film and conducting a casting call for NMU students for the upcoming sequel and another project on a prominent female pilot. Deacon is also the author of “Seven Doors In: One Teacher's Mission within Prison Walls,” which has been optioned by a prominent production company for a streaming series. View the video here. Read more about the visit by Deacon and Gordon here.

A new college scholarship that honors the memory of former Northern student Barbara (Golenda) Forsberg will be available beginning this year from the Alger Regional Community Foundation.

NMU 2016 graphic communications alumna Alexa Haferkorn is a website design specialist with Packerland Websites, a Green Bay-based digital marketing company that recently opened an office in Marquette. She will also manage the new location.

Northern Michigan University alumna and Ironwood native Beth Rondeau Deacon will return to campus on Wednesday, March 13, for a series of events related to her work as a screenwriter, book author and mathematics teacher. She and director/producer Terence Gordon will present a free 6 p.m. showing of the movie based on Deacon's first screenplay, Intent Unknown, followed by a Q&A in Jamrich 1100. The psychological thriller stars Eric Roberts and revolves around four ambitious psychology students who embark on a risky experiment to unravel the mysteries of human behavior.

NMU alumna Amanda Giracca, who earned a master's degree in English, has expanded her role with Literacy Network (LitNet). She joined the LitNet team in 2020 and most recently served as the organization's Grants and Communications Coordinator. She joins the staff full-time with the additional role of New Programs Coordinator.

When 1983 alumnus and NMU Foundation Board member Mark Pynnonen decided to retire from his Signs Now business in Negaunee Township, he transferred ownership to another member of the Wildcat family. Keven Hagans, who attended NMU from 2007-2010 and played football for the Wildcats, is the new owner.

NMU alumna Mia Cinelli recently published her first book, "Giving Type Meaning: Context and Craft in Typography." As an associate professor in the School of Art and Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky, she engages with textbooks and resources surrounding the subjects of type and design. But she could not find a book that focused on the layers of meaning behind typography and answered her own question: “When we look at typefaces— when we look at words in the world and what they look like—how do we understand what they mean?” So she wrote her own.