Challenge - Spring/Summer 2012 - Tiffin University

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Graduates Challenged: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams and live the life you have imagined! 6 | SPRING / SUMMER 2012 | CHALLENGE Tiffin University celebrated the he worked in the Pentagon as Aide to the opening of the new Heminger Center Chief of the Naval Reserve. He earned a on Saturday, May 5 with more than bachelor’s degree from the University of 3,000 guests on hand to recognize Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA 700 plus graduates, representing both from Harvard University. The speaker is undergraduate and graduate students, also an author and a noted photographer. during its 124th Annual Commencement. His portfolio includes photographs from The Heminger Center, named for unusual locations like Antarctica, Everest, Gary and Jane Heminger, was the site of Papua New Guinea, and at the edge of an historic occasion for the university. Previously, the ceremonies were held in the During his speech, Michel encour- space (aboard a U-2 Spy Plane). Gillmor Student Center, but because of aged the new TU graduates to become TU’s extraordinary growth in recent years, risk-takers, and not to be afraid to fail the new facility with its expanded space along the way. “Fear is the silent enemy Christopher Michel offered the graduates, their families, and of the extraordinary. We live in a world where special guests a day to remember. people, especially the most brilliant among Entrepreneur and investor, Christopher Michel, delivered us, go to remarkable lengths not to fail,” he said. “We’re the keynote address. “I am absolutely thrilled to be here taught to mitigate disappointment by playing by the rules, lowering our expectations, and fitting in, and, the true cost of that today, at this great university in this fabulous new building,” Michel remarked. “It’s a moment I won’t ever forget.” ‘highly reasonable’ approach is nothing short of breathtaking.” Michel’s message to the graduates was what he called Michel used his own background to demonstrate the the secret to great achievement. need for risk-taking and also the need to resist fear of failure. “Confidence and ethics are everything,” he said. “Not Near the end of his enlistment in the Navy, Michel was your resume, not who you know, not where you live – not encouraged by a shipmate to enroll in Harvard Business even your IQ. Sure, those things are important, but what is School. “I was a 29 year old Navy vet from rural Illinois. And more important is having the confidence to passionately pursue our highest calling. Probably no one articulated this idea The vast majority of my class was Ivy League graduates who from the moment I showed up, I knew I was in serious trouble. better than Henry David Thoreau. He encouraged each of us had worked on Wall Street. They had lived and breathed to ‘go confidently in the direction of our dreams – and to live business, and were on campus playing to win. If that wasn’t the life we have imagined.’” bad enough, the school had a forced bell grading curve. My Michel’s business acumen has been widely noted. He is classmates seemed so much smarter and more sophisticated one of three individuals featured in the book by Bill Murphy than me – and they probably were.” entitled The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard But one day, he said, a guest speaker changed his way of Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship (Henry Holt, 2010). was a bearded, shaggy-haired guy whose first words were, thinking, and indeed, his future. “Standing before us that day He currently heads Nautilus Ventures, a seed venture ‘I’m an entrepreneur.’” fund. Prior to Nautilus, he founded Military.com in 1999, The speaker was Dan Bricklin, who had been a student which is an online portal for service members, veterans and in the late 1970s at Harvard. During first-year accounting, their families. In 2007, he created Affinity Labs, which runs a he had an epiphany, imagining a better way to manipulate portfolio of online professional communities. numbers using digital rows and columns on a PC. Prior to his business career, Michel served as a naval “Dan literally created the spreadsheet, the predecessor flight officer in the U.S. Navy. While on active duty, he flew of today’s Excel,” Michel said. “Dan’s product, Visicalc, was as a navigator, tactical coordinator and mission commander one of the most important software applications in the history of personal computing. It was one if the main aboard the P-3C Orion aircraft. Following his operational tour, reasons
people bought PCs in the early 1980s. But unfortunately for Dan and Visicalc, Lotus created a superior product and put him out of business.” Bricklin’s theme for his talk was about the courage to take risks, Michel recalled. It was about taking chances in life. “And, in the fullness of time, that creating something that wouldn’t exist without your vision feeds the soul. Dan might not be the richest person in the world – but he changed the world. For him, it had been about meaning, not money. He had found success even in failure.” By 2001, Michel experienced his own taste of failure. He was the 31-year-old founder of his first company, Military.com, the social networking site for the military community that he described as Facebook meeting the Chicago Tribune for those who served our country. Military.com had grown by that time to nearly 100 employees and raised almost $30 million in capital. “For an all-too brief period, we were dot-com darlings,” Michel said. “I had no idea what I was doing, but my experience at school had given me the confidence to go out there and try. I was flying high for the first six months but then it all fell apart.” When the Internet bubble burst in dramatic fashion, the company wasn’t able to raise more capital. Michel was forced to cut costs, and dramatically so. “We went from a hundred people down to 25. Military.com was losing a million dollars a month. Then things went from bad to worse. One of my board members called and asked me to resign so he could bring in ‘professional management.’ Within a few weeks, the new CEO showed up and basically asked me to stop coming to work. That hurt.” But the professional CEO the board hired didn’t succeed either. “After good advice from a friend, I proposed to the Commencement ClassScene SPRING / SUMMER 2012 | CHALLENGE | 7
Page 1 and 2: TIFFIN UNIVERSITY SPRING / SUMMER 2
Page 3 and 4: t Lisa Williams Editor Dear Alumni
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Page 9 and 10: Christopher Michel’s Five Simple
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Page 18 and 19: President’s Club 2012 Tiffin Univ
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Page 28 and 29: Tent City Participants 28 | SPRING
Page 30 and 31: Student News 30 | SPRING / SUMMER 2
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Page 45 and 46: TU Alums Making a Difference At a C
Page 47 and 48: Greek Life at TU: From Beginning to
Page 49 and 50: SIGMA OMEGA SIGMA STAG LINE ALPHA I
Page 54 and 55: Tell Us About Yourself Kathy Durfli
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InMemoriam 56 | SPRING / SUMMER 201
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second team while sophomore Caitlin
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Junior Blake DeBruyn earned his sec
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Indoor Track & Field Lynzi Daughenb
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coaching first base. Prior to that
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Charitable Gift Earn Income and Hel
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Challenge - Spring/Summer 2012 - Tiffin University

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