Northern Michigan University alumnus and former Wildcat football player Jim Mansfield has found retirement fulfillment in his role as a volunteer blood courier in Spokane, Wash. The 84-year-old loves to drive and it shows. Mansfield has logged more than 256,000 road miles delivering life-saving blood to rural hospitals over two decades of volunteer service.

Northern Michigan University social work students recently had a rare opportunity to participate alongside faculty members and community clinicians in a full-day Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk (AMSR) training on campus. One of the students used her AMSR handbook earlier this week to identify the level of risk for one of her teenage clients at her field placement location.

Northern Michigan University undergraduate students are participating in cutting-edge chemistry research with Professor Yu "Leo" Liu, who is among 14 faculty members nationwide recently awarded two-year summer research grants from Organic Synthesis Inc. His project advances “green chemistry” by eliminating the use of metal-based catalysts. Instead of organic solvents, it carries the catalytic reactions in a more environmentally friendly solvent: water.

Marcus Robyns began his collegiate studies as a secondary education social studies major at the University of Oregon, yet he felt a personal sense of dissonance while pursuing that field. While organizing an undergraduate history club, he discovered there was a university archive and arranged a tour. When the archivist showed him a menagerie of old artifacts representative of the school's history, he said, “You work with all this stuff? Are there jobs in this field?” 

Northern Michigan University Alumni Relations will continue its Northern Now digital event series with a family-friendly book reading with author, TikTok influencer and alumnus Mylan Murphy '12, '14. He will begin by reading his motivational children's book, It Only Takes 1, which tells his story of becoming an entrepreneur at the young age of 13. Murphy will also answer questions about being a TikTok influencer, building his Motivated by Mylan brand, and how to overcome challenges along the way.