2005 Tribute to Retiring Faculty
As the spring semester comes to a close the School of Business bids
farewell to three dedicated faculty members. The School of Business
sincerely thanks Steve Thrasher, Tom Sepic and Bill Yager for their
service to PLU and dedication students.
Steve Thrasher
Steve Thrasher’s approach to teaching has been to demand high standards
from students and return the same high performance to them. He requires
his students to apply the business concepts they learn in class to
business cases, business simulation games, exams and internships. For
example, students in his marketing management capstone course this
semester competed as start-up computer manufacturers of hybrid vehicles
in a business game over 12 weeks. Their final exam required them to
apply the lessons they had learned.
His course responsibilities have included Introduction to Business,
Marketing Principles, Developing New Products and Services, Consumer
Behavior, Sales Management, Electronic Marketing and others. He has
served both as a member and chair of numerous committees in the School
of Business, as well as in the university. In addition, he represented
the School of Business for over 10 years in the downtown Tacoma Rotary
Club.
Steve and his wife, Jena, will be leaving their home in the North End
of Tacoma, where they have lived since 1977, to relocate for retirement
in Sun Valley, Idaho. They plan to build a home there starting next
summer.
Steve and Jena, a 1992 MBA graduate, will not be leaving PLU
completely. Both will assist Diane Harney, in the Department of
Communication Arts in guiding a group of university students in
Australia over J-term, 2006.
Thom Sepic
It takes many words to describe Thom Sepic, and the record he has built
since he joined the School of Business twenty-five years ago in
1979: Leadership…Energy…Enthusiasm… Confidence…Caring…
Teamwork…Quality…Service to PLU…and again leadership.
Thom was asked to chair PLU’s Centennial celebration, and served most
impressively in this one-of-a-kind leadership role. He deferred
(actually lost) a sabbatical by serving in this capacity.
He has shown leadership for more than 25 years in curriculum, teaching,
and working with students. Thom created a first-in-the-Northwest
course on total quality 20 years ago, which placed students in the
field for massive numbers of hours, working intensively with companies
on projects to help improve their effectiveness. Students were
overwhelmed at first, very grateful afterward—and some were employed by
their project organizations. Twenty years ago, Thom was
instrumental in establishing the first nationally chartered student
chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management at PLU—still an
active student club.
One of the lasting marks Thom will leave on PLU is his cutting-edge
leadership in developing one of the first electronic digital student
portfolios in the country. He received national publicity for
accomplishing what others were merely talking about. For Thom the
EDP is a vehicle for students to document and demonstrate what he is
truly passionate about: the development of their own personal
competencies related to leadership, teamwork, critical thinking,
communications, and management of change. His thinking and energy
related to student competencies has helped the School of Business to
change its pedagogical focus—to keep students first, and help them
develop the abilities that will serve them well throughout their
careers.
Thom is the perfect model for a caring, student-centered teacher,
passionate about student learning, willing to give much time and energy
to meeting with students outside of class, in groups and individually,
providing personalized feedback and coaching about students’
performance—and for organizing his life around service and care.
Bill Yager
When Bill Yager joined the School of Business seventeen years ago, in
1987, he brought a unique set of perspectives that have blessed us ever
since. His twelve years at IBM, and his MBA from Harvard Business
School, are surely two formative experiences that have enabled him
always to see a larger context than most of the rest of us, to consider
with greater clarity the kind of future we seek as we attempt to
improve what we do. In many conversations and meetings over the
years, Bill has been virtually the only one to see the bigger picture
clearly, and to remind us of the need to focus on end results first—so
that we can perform the day to day bits and pieces of business
education more purposefully.
Bill also brought a global perspective, at just the right time.
His interests in global strategy, global technology transfer, and
qualitative research on companies engaged internationally added breadth
and depth to our international business program. His
collaboration in studying management practices in Chinese-foreign
cooperative ventures led to a wealth of classroom examples, and great
memories from trips to China.
His skill with the Harvard case method has given an entire generation
of students rich analytic tools for seeing, acting and synthesizing and
drawing upon the many things they have learned in his business
courses. His dedication to advising, and to providing one-on-one
guidance to hundreds of students, has helped make their PLU experience
personal, memorable, and for some, life-changing.
Bill is now turning his talents, his wisdom, his vision—and his
considerable energy and enthusiasm to a new venture begun several years
ago on his sabbatical in Central America: micro enterprise
development in Nicaragua. He will continue to teach, but from now
on he will be teaching the economically disadvantaged in Nicaragua how
to start and run small businesses. Bill speaks of this as the
“third wave” of his career— truly a benchmark for the life of
leadership, caring, and service beyond self that PLU is all about.
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Goodbyes
 The School of Business also bids farewell to Surjit
Chhabra who is leaving to pursue real estate endeavors. Surjit
was a professor of marketing at PLU for the past four years and will be
fondly remembered for his real-world marketing expertise. Surjit
was also the faculty advisor for the Young Entrepreneurs club.
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