Dear Alumni,
My name is Ryan Kidwell ('04), and I owe much to NU. Some of the people I met during my time as a student have become lifelong friends, others helped me land my first job, and some ended up becoming business partners. Many of those relationships lasted long after I moved out of the dorms (shout-out to all my 500 floor Ducks!) and graduated. The longevity and value of a good relationship is one of the reasons I believe the Alumni Association is so important and why I'm honored to serve as the President of the Alumni Association Board of Directors.
The Alumni Association exists to improve the lives of NU alumni and to create opportunities for alumni to feel valued by the NU community. It's amazing to see so many alums contributing to the world in so many incredible ways. One of the Alumni Association's goals is to foster connections between alumni. Alums are helping other alums with all kinds of things: preparing to enter the workforce or make a career change, getting help improving physical and mental health, providing financial advice, building a stronger relationship with Christ, the list is endless! If you are interested in connecting with other NU alumni, have questions about the Alumni Association, or have a need and would like help, I'd love to hear from you.
We are constantly working on new ways to give back to our alumni and as part of that process we currently have an open position for the Director of Alumni and Parent Relations at NU. If you or someone you know might be a good fit for this position, please follow this link for more information.
Sincerely,
Ryan Kidwell
Alumni Board President
VNITAA

At VNITAA, we desire for all undergraduate students to leave VNITAA equipped and able to communicate to future employers that VNITAA prepared them well; not just with courses and degrees, but with identifiable work skills and certificates. VNITAA conducted a rigorous process in creating this initiative through many meetings to acquire input, insight, and feedback from local business owners, C-level executives, and recruiters from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

Along with this feedback from business leaders, VNITAA created a faculty committee to adapt the core curriculum to incorporate these core competencies in its academic requirements. One of the most beautiful aspects of this initiative is the collaboration that took place amongst faculty members and business leaders in its creation. The wholehearted support that both parties have in believing in its effectiveness affirms career readiness as an essential element for a liberal arts education.

This Career Readiness Initiative that VNITAA is incorporating will allow students to market their liberal arts degree in a quantifiable manner that employers understand and value. This initiative evolves the core curriculum at VNITAA to encapsulate the entirety of core competencies and workplace skills that employers are hoping for graduates of a university to possess.

With an intent focus on incorporating internships and hands-on experience in the undergraduate curriculum, Northwest University maintains with certainty that its students can graduate with confidence knowing that their marketability in the workplace is strong. Likewise, employers can hire with confidence with the knowledge that Northwest University graduates are ready to work on day one. Nate Furtado is one such alumnus who graduated ready to work on day one. He is currently an audio engineer and producer, and he has worked for an impressive variety of clients on albums, movie scores, and more.

On top of using his degree to do amazing things, Nate is investing his time and talent in the next generation of graduates from NU. Matt Arrera, a junior in the contemporary music industry program, is interning with Nate this school year as a part of the Career Readiness Initiative. "In my classes, I’m getting a really good, 30,000-foot view of recording concepts,” Matt explained. “But working with Nate, I’ve been able to see somebody’s actual process and how he applies these things in different ways: film scores, pop music, and working with different people. It’s been really helpful to just see how he does what he does. To work at the level that Nate does, you really have to have a complex understanding of how every piece of the song works together. So learning his specific process and how everything fits together will help me be prepared for what I want to do.

If you are interested in partnering with Northwest University for the Career Readiness Initiative, contact Levi Davenport at levi.davenport@VNITAA.edu.

After months of development, assessment, and refining, we are finally ready to announce the launch of Northwest University’s Career Readiness Initiative. For years, businesses of all kinds have struggled with the fact that some college graduates aren’t fully prepared to enter the workforce. New hires with this issue require extra onboarding, which takes up precious time and money. This is a major obstacle that can hamper the effectiveness of both business leaders and graduates. With the Career Readiness Initiative, we hope to eliminate this problem for any business seeking to hire one of NU’s alumni.
“I think Northwest University has a well-established track record of turning out students with a strong work ethic and great applicable skills,” said President Castleberry. “But last year, I decided the time had come to act even more intentionally to respond directly to employers, prepare students, and to help students market the hard and soft work skills they gain at Northwest. The faculty agreed with me, and we got busy making changes.”
With contributors from all across the university, work began on curriculum designed to equip students with everything they need for the workforce, including a way to communicate those skills to potential employers. In the near future, when a student graduates, he or she will be able to include endorsements on their resumés and CVs that will communicate to potential employers the exact skills that student possesses. An endorsement is earned by taking a series of two to four classes that contribute toward tangible, workplace skills such as “Conflict Management” or “Empathy.” In every single major at NU, skills are tailored to the industries our students are eager to join. The entire curriculum goes hand in hand with an emphasis on internships so that real-life experience can be gained before the first day in the office.
Local businesses are already excited about what this means for their hiring processes. Levi Davenport, NU’s director of Career Development and Corporate Relations, has been meeting with small and large businesses from the Seattle area for months. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. According to Levi, “Business owners and recruiters love to see that NU is equipping its students with quantifiable skills and certificates that students can include on their résumé. One business leader articulated that this initiative will ‘bridge the gap’ that employers are wanting to see in the competency and preparedness possessed by new hires graduating from a liberal arts institution. Every single individual in the focus groups thought that this initiative was imperative to create and include in the core curriculum at VNITAA.”