Alumni Spotlight

Alumni Association celebrates addition of Black Alumni and Friends chapter





The Northwest Alumni Association on Feb. 25 commemorated the addition of its 21st chapter, the Black Alumni and Friends Chapter, with a social gathering and halftime recognition at the Bearcat men’s basketball game.

About 30 Northwest alumni and friends attended the event where Alumni Association Board President Linda Nichols Place ’72 and Bob Machovsky ’15, director of alumni relations and annual giving, presented the chapter with a banner. Otealet Newman ’75 serves as the chapter’s president, Kelvin Parker Sr. ’76 is vice president and Marcus Mack ’77 is secretary.

Machovsky praised the new chapter’s members for their commitment to Northwest.

“We expect great things from this group,” Machovsky said. “We look forward to them engaging with our other chapters, with our students and our faculty and staff. Recruiting students to the University also is one of our main goals as the Alumni Association. We mentor, we connect and we promote, and those three pillars are going to help drive our actions.”

The addition of the chapter furthers Northwest’s strategic goal of enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion. During the last year, Northwest has implemented a new structure to broaden diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the campus for students and employees as well as its community. The University created the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and welcomed Dr. Juanita Simmons in August as its first vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We’ve got a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative that we’ve focused on for a long time as a University, but we’ve taken it to a different level with our new vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, Dr. Juanita Simmons,” Northwest President Dr. John Jasinski said. “As she reminds me, it’s not just her work. It’s her team’s work, and it’s all of our work. We know we’ve got more work to do, but we are going.”

Additional Northwest Alumni Association chapters are chartered in regions covering Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa as well as in the states and cities of Arizona, California, Chicago, Colorado, Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Washington, D.C. The Alumni Association boasts one international chapter in Japan, and the Black Alumni and Friends Chapter joins the Band Alumni and Gridiron chapters as specialty groups.

For more information about getting involved with the Black Alumni and Friends Chapter, contact the Northwest Alumni Association at 660.562.1248 or alumni@nwmissouri.edu. For a complete listing of Northwest Alumni Association chapters visit www.nwmissouri.edu/alumni/chapters/.