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The Online Magazine for Alumni and Friends of Siena Heights University
Editor’s Note: This is a regular Reflections article series, and this issue features longtime Siena Heights faculty member and Dean of the College for Professional Studies Deb Carter, who is retiring in September 2015 after more than 33 years at SHU. Reflections recently sat down with Deb to reflect on her time at Siena Heights.
How did you get your start at Siena Heights?
“Well, it’s an interesting story. I was a teacher of hearing-impaired children in Berrien County, and I had young children (at home). I was working part-time because of my little kids, and administratively they decided to only go with full-time people. I had enough seniority that I could bump somebody, and I just didn’t feel that I could that. So I resigned from my position not knowing where I was going to go or what was going to happen next. This was May of 1982. In the summertime, a friend of mine called me and said she saw a very small ad in our local newspaper … and it was advertising Siena Heights College needs a part-time person to oversee a new degree program for adult students. I hate to admit this because I’ve spent 33 years of my life here now, but I had never heard of Siena Heights College. I had no college experience. No higher ed experience. All my experience was K through 12 teaching hearing impaired kids. … My friend talked me into calling the number, and I got David James, who was the director of Admissions at the time, and I said I was interested in looking at this. (He said) ‘Can you send your resume?’ … So I mailed it. And then a couple of weeks went by, and I got a call, and David said, ‘Our dean is coming out to your area, and he is going to be interviewing candidates.’ … So I met Norm Bukwaz, who was the dean of Admissions and off-campus programs, and we had a conversation. And my curiosity was, ‘what on earth could you see in my background?’ I don’t know that I would have looked at me, because I didn’t have higher ed experience. … (But) I was called and offered the job, and it fit my criteria because I had little kids and (I) worked part-time. And I was hired at, believe it or not, 10 hours a week, roughly two evenings a week. … To this day, I’m grateful for that strange little happenstance … that was I was able to connect with a place that I love dearly.”
This year Siena Heights celebrates the 40th anni-
versary of offering adult
degree-completion pro-
grams. From its humble beginnings in Southfield at a former elementary school (left), the pro-
gram now boasts more than 60 percent of all SHU graduates each year. The ultra-successful Bachelor of Applied Science degree graduated its first students (below) in the late 1970s and has made degree-completion a reality for students from all age groups and backgrounds, furthering the Siena Heights Mission in the process.
Concept of Educating Working Adults Turns into the College for Professional Studies
First CPS grads in the late 1970s.
As the 1960s were known as a time for social experimentation in America, the 1970s had Siena Heights experiencing its own period of educational “counterculture.”
In 1970, then Siena Heights College had named its first lay president, Dr. Hugh Thompson, and was transitioning from all-female student body to a coeducational one. If that evolution wasn’t difficult enough, Thompson brought more of a business and career-focused educational approach to campus, ruffling feathers of some liberal arts-focused faculty and staff of the time.
Thompson’s vision included starting
associate’s degree programs that had a fingerprint more like a two-year technical college, not a private, Catholic, four-year institution. Yet some of these
programs not only survived, but grew and evolved. Soon, the unique Bachelor of Applied Science degree was born.
That degree became the “seed” that allowed Siena Heights to plant campuses around Michigan. First, in Southfield, then spreading to places like Benton Harbor, Battle Creek and Monroe.
Steven West ’79 Uses His Experience to Help Others Succeed in Business
Steven West ’79 has learned by doing.
And for more than a decade, he has used his experience to help others start, manage and grow their own successful businesses.
West, co-founding partner of the San Francisco-based Emerging Company Partners LLC, has been a CEO, COO and board member at numerous high-growth, global businesses, from manufacturing to enterprise software companies. In fact, he was the CEO of Hitachi Data Systems for three years, and currently serves on the boards of billion dollar companies such as Cisco Systems and Autodesk. He has also started, built and sold companies. Now, he is guiding others on a similar path.
With more than 30 years of business experience in the technology field, he said his specialty is advising CEOs and executives of small start-up companies ($100 million or less).
“It’s a lot of mentoring,” West said of his work. “You have to have experience and be willing to work with people who don’t necessarily know what’s going on.”
Most of his days consist of travel (he operates out of what he calls a “virtual office”) and talking to people, either on the phone or in person at their business location. He said a good CEO is not born, but made.
“You really have to learn to interact with people. Listen to what they say. Pay attention,” he said of the common qualities of an effective business leader. “Those are things you get with real operating experience. It takes time and skill. It’s not something you’re born with.
