Decades of Service by Anita Cirulis
Award-winning student supporters Patti Thayer and Dick Van Holland retire
Patti Thayer
In farewell remarks at an end-of-the-year banquet, Patti Thayer joked she was giving her high-heeled boots and perfume to a colleague so everyone in Van Peursem Hall would continue to hear Thayer coming and smell her going.
With her retirement in May after 25 years at Northwestern, they will miss more than those familiar sounds and scents. Thayer departs having left an indelible mark on the college as its director of academic support.
From a Writing Center with five student tutors each working four hours a week, Thayer developed a department that includes a staff of two professional assistants and 135 student tutors. Academic support is now provided not only for writing, but for courses across the curriculum, and special tutoring sessions are available for accounting, computer science, math, Spanish and the sciences.
In addition to the peer tutoring program, Thayer was responsible for advising at-risk students, accommodating students with learning disabilities, managing the academic alert program, and conducting learning skills seminars and workshops. During the fall semester, more than 800 students used her department’s services, and her staff had more than 5,000 hours of student contact.
“She’s had an amazing impact,” says Dr. Scott Monsma, a professor in the sociology department. “Students loved her.”
Thayer’s passion for helping students succeed led her to teach college learning and study skills—as well as organize Northwestern’s first summer orientation—when she was originally part of the English department. In 1984, her last year on the faculty, she was awarded the Northwestern Teaching Excellence Award.
Five years later, she returned to Northwestern to direct the Writing Center, and in 1994, was given responsibility for all academic support services. She succeeded so well in that role that she was awarded Northwestern’s Staff Recognition for Inspirational Service Award in 2006, making her the only person to have won both honors.
“It was all about student learning and student success,” Thayer says of her work at Northwestern. “I signed many e-mails, ‘It matters to me that you do well.’ I truly believed every student who came to Northwestern had the ability to succeed, and I cared deeply about them.”
Dick Van Holland
For nearly 30 years, Dr. Dick Van Holland ended each semester the same way: by writing a personal note to every student, telling them what he appreciated about them and thanking them for being in his class.
It’s a tradition the accounting professor practiced even when he had more than 100 students.
“It would take hours,” he says, “but it was worth it. I hear from former students who tell me they still have them after all these years.”
This spring, Van Holland wrote his final note. After 48 years of teaching—29 at Northwestern—he is retiring.
Teaching was Van Holland’s career goal since he was a boy. “I remember as a kid I would pretend I was correcting papers,” he says. “Then, the more checkmarks I could give, the better. Now it’s just the opposite.”
His interest in accounting sparked by a high school teacher in Rock Valley, he earned degrees in business from Northwestern Junior College and Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. He then taught business for nearly two decades at Canton (S.D.) High School and earned a doctorate from the University of South Dakota.
“My dream was always to teach in a Christian college, and Northwestern was always my first choice,” he says. Hired by NWC in 1979 to direct the office management program, he eventually moved into teaching accounting and also supervised the college’s business education students.
Van Holland’s gift for teaching made him a finalist for the Northwestern Teaching Excellence Award six times and won him the honor twice, in 1988 and 1995. He also won a national academic advising award.
“He was my adviser for getting classes set up, and he is awesome at that,” says John Top, a business education major who graduated in May. “If students have a major in mind, he’ll plan out their entire four years while giving them input. Anyone coming after him will have big shoes to fill.” 