Social Justice Spotlight

Hettinger appointed to WMU’s Board of Trustees

By Fritz Klug
Western Herald

(Robert Youngs / Western Herald) Cherie Rankin, an instructor at Heartland Community College in Normal, Ill., gave a lecture entitled “Teaching the Concept of Social Class” on Monday in the Fetzer Center’s Putney Auditorium. Rankin’s lecture was the third part of the Social Justice Public Lecture Series.

Western Michigan University recently welcomed a new member to its Board of Trustees.

On Feb. 20, Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed James Hettinger to an eight-year term on WMU’s Board of Trustees.

Born in 1949 in Albion, Mich., Hettinger attended Western Michigan University after graduating high school. He did well in school, partly because he was dependent on good grades to maintain scholarships, and partly because of the war in Vietnam.

“A student’s experience at college is as good as the student makes it,” Hettinger said.

In 1971, he graduated with a degree in political science, followed by a master’s degree two years later.

“I received a great education at Western,” Hettinger said. “It is helpful still today.”

Hettinger then headed south to pursue a doctoral degree in public administration at the University of Missouri. In 1976, he began working for the Mid-Missouri Council of Governments, where he got his first taste of providing economic assistance to small city governments.

In August 1978, Hettinger moved back to Michigan, where he became marketing director of Battle Creek Unlimited. The next year he was named president and CEO (BCU) is a non-profit economic service for Battle Creek and Marshall, Mich. Under Hettinger, BCU revitalized Fort Custer Industrial Park, a once abandoned Military Base that now employs over 9,400 in some 90 companies, 16 being Japanese, four German, one Austrian and one Danish.

“Our niche was to go international before many other counties even thought of it,” Hettinger said.

During his time at BCU, Hettinger received the Economic Developer of the Year Award in 1995 from former Michigan Gov.John Engler, a “Certificate of Designation” from the Counsel General of Japan in Detroit on behalf of the Government of Japan in 2000, and letters of commendation from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

He wrote about his experience working with Japanese investors in a 1994 book “Small Town, Giant Corporation.”

Hettinger

Hettinger also helped build WMU’s College of Aviation campus at W.K. Kellogg Airport in Battle Creek and has served as adjunct professor at WMU. In April 2007, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from the University.

After 31 years at BCU, Hettinger retired in January and now acts as a senior advisor. It was not even a month before members of Granholm’s administration approached him.

“They heard that I was going to retire soon and asked if I would be interested at the Trustee position at Western and I told them I would be proud to be in a position that I can help the great university,” Hettinger said.

Hettinger sees many ways to improve WMU in the next eight years.

“We need to work hard and creativily to keep the cost of higher education down,” he said.

Hettinger points to the Lt. Gov. Don Cherry’s 2004 Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth, which concluded that half of the state population should be college educated in 10 years.

“Today, in the first decade of a new century,” the report reads, “Michigan must transform itself once again to be a leader in an era where knowledge is the key ingredient in economic success.”

Hettinger said he does not think this can be achieved if the cost of tuition is too steep for people living on working wages.

“Given the state of the economy, this will be a real challenge” he said.

Hettinger sees this as the problem for WMU over the next decade.

“Western has to learn how to take their intellectual capital and put it in the commercial marketplace, that rewards both the professor and get a revenue stream into the university,” Hettinger said.

The Board of Trustees votes on propositions from the president. As written in its bylaws, to “provide general supervision of the institution and the control and direction of all expenditures from the institution’s funds.”

Hettinger still has to wait for State senate approval on April 1. He is going to be sworn in at the next meeting of the Board of Trustees on April 24.

“The late Diether Haenicke always said he wanted Western to be the West Michigan University,” Hettinger said. “I always bought into that and will do my darnedest to make it so.”

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=4644

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Mar 10 2009. Filed under Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com