January 2023

Two Northern Michigan University student-athletes, along with a recent transfer student, will represent their home countries at the 2023 FISU Winter World University Games, which opened Jan. 12 in Lake Placid, N.Y. The 11-day festival is the largest international multi-sport collegiate event. It combines high-level competition with educational and cultural activities.

NMU alumnus Bill Thompson wrote a tribute on Outside's Climbing.com to his former professor and mentor Phil Watts, who passed away in late December and was known locally as the "Godfather of Marquette Climbing." Watts had retired in 2016 after 38 years at NMU, "directly introducing more than a thousand people to climbing through his classes and indirectly influencing many more through his internationally acclaimed rock climbing and mountaineering research," Thompson wrote.

NMU senior Andie Balenger of Gladstone writes a weekly column on college life for the Daily Press newspaper in Escanaba. In her most recent entry, "Finding comfort in fellowship," she talks about how other political science majors at Northern—particularly those in an international studies and human rights course her junior year—have provided fellowship through the discussion-based nature of the discipline.

Northern Michigan University will honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. with a Day of Service on Monday, Jan. 16, at The Woods residence hall complex. All activities are open to the public. The day will kick off with a noon program and free lunch, followed by four service projects and a workshop on volunteerism.

Seventeen Northern Michigan University students who attended during the fall semester, along with NMU alumni, are among the 150 soldiers from the Michigan Army National Guard's 107th Engineer Battalion deployed Jan. 7. The unit is based in Marquette and Ishpeming. Soldiers gathered with their families and invited guests on campus before departing for southwest Asia for up to a year of duty. 

Local archeologist and Northern Michigan University alumnus Jim Paquette will present “The Find of a Thousand Lifetimes,” the story of the historic 1987 discovery and subsequent excavation of one of the most celebrated archeological finds ever uncovered in the Upper Great Lakes Region. He and fellow NMU graduate John Gorto discovered a large treasure trove of 10,000-year-old Late Paleo-Indian/Early Archaic period projectile points within the drained reservoir bed of the Deer Lake Basin near Ishpeming, confirming Paquette's belief that ancient Native American peoples had once inhabited the central Marquette County area as far back as the end of the last Ice Age.

Jimmy Bruce, a Northern Michigan University alumnus from Escanaba, is serving as a member of the Commission on Services to the Aging (CSA) through July 28, 2025. He was appointed to the role by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Northern Michigan University alumnus Andrew Mendini is in the midst of his first year as the new principal of North Elementary School in Iron Mountain, Mich. He obtained his bachelor of arts degree in social studies/elementary education in 1997, and his master's in educational administration/supervision in 2008.