From the Alumni Office:

Jennifer Hamlin Church, Associate VP for Advancement & Director of Alumni Relations

No Typical Alumni!

My first encounter with Siena Heights occurred 25 years ago when I answered a phone call for my husband, Tracy. The caller was a professor, my husband’s advisor, but he hadn’t seen Tracy for a while. I knew that Tracy had had other things on his mind: a wedding, a demanding job, kidney dialysis, a kidney transplant, and then a leg amputation. But this professor didn’t know any of that. He just knew Tracy was close to completing his B.A., and he didn’t want him to quit: “Tell him we hope he’ll come back,” he said. “We want him to finish that degree.”

I was dumbfounded. Who bothered to keep track of individual students and notice when they stopped out? What college took the time to call a part-time guy on the 27-year plan…and encourage him to keep going? Who did that?

Siena Heights did. Professor Bill Blackerby did.

Tracy’s graduation a few years later was another eye-opener. I had attended a traditional liberal arts college and worked at two others; there, a “typical” graduate was about 22 years old. But sitting in the Fieldhouse in 1993, I knew … knew in a new way … that no senior had worked harder to reach this day than my 45-year-old husband. And no family was any prouder of their graduate than we were. What an epiphany!

At that moment, I became a fan of non-traditional education.

From the Editor:

Dominican “Daisies” In Bloom at SHU

“The memory of Mother Augustine Neuhierl lived on in the prophetic words spoken to the professed nuns gathered around her bedside during her last hours on this earth. She told them of the ‘daisy field,’ her vision of a peninsula in the West dotted white with Dominican foundations; and she reminded them that, though they were contemplatives, their active work would take them into the schools awaiting them.”
— From “Amid the Alien Corn,” Sister Mary Philip Ryan, OP.

I love history. I’ve learned from my personal and professional experience there are few things that put the present in perspective and help map the future better than studying the past.

So, not long after I arrived at Siena Heights, I had a chance to read “Amid the Alien Corn,” a 1967 work chronicling the history of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, which, of course, includes the founding of St. Joseph College, now Siena Heights University.

I found the above passage of Mother Augustine fascinating. The title of the chapter was aptly named “The Prophecy.” Her vision of this “daisy field” that she shared with her fellow Sisters, some of whom would eventually travel from New York to Adrian, Mich., has stayed with me during my time here. Even though I did not know very much about Siena Heights at the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mother Augustine was referring to—at least in part—present-day developments.

Up for a Challenge

Fran Parker ’88 Leaves Retirement to Direct UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust

Fran Parker ’88 doesn’t walk away from a challenge—even one as big as creating and then leading a trust that manages the medical benefits of hundreds of thousands of United Auto Workers retirees.

Parker, after “retiring” in 2008 as president and CEO of the Health Alliance Plan (HAP), soon jumped back into the workforce. She was named executive director of the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which manages the benefits of approximately 750,000 retirees of the “Big Three” automakers of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

“(The UAW) came to me to do this because of my background,” said Parker, who has more than 40 years of health care experience. “Taking the membership of three different organizations, Ford, GM and Chrysler, with no infrastructure, you had to create (the trust) from nothing. You knew that come January 1 of 2010, these retirees depended on you.”

When the trust launched in 2010, it became the largest non-governmental purchaser of retiree health care in the U.S. The trust is governed by an 11 person Committee of Directors. All of the retiree health care liabilities were transferred to a new independent Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA). Parker said she is enjoying her latest challenge, and considers it one of her greatest career achievements.

“I kind of divide the day into thirds,” Parker said of her typical day on the job, which usually begins about 7 a.m. and ends around 6 p.m. “A third might be day-to-day running of an organization. Another third (is) trying to keep abreast of regulatory changes. And (then) some time on strategy. I try to interact with staff and others, and I spend time with our insurance carriers and medical providers.”

As a leader, Parker considers herself to be “fact-based” and “data-driven.” However, she said she also values the opinions of others in the decision making process.