There are hundreds of educational opportunities available to you at Northern, both in and out of the classroom. I hope you will take advantage of as many as possible. Please try new things. It is in stretching our limits that we grow.

The Northern faculty and staff want you to succeed. You are the reason we are here. Our top priority is to ensure that you enjoy the highest caliber educational experience we can provide. Working together we will help you chart your course. In fact, at Northern we share a pact titled Shared Visions, Shared Expectations, which you will find on the following pages.

Northern’s pledge to be the university of choice in the Midwest for students seeking an outstanding collegiate experience with quality academics and personal attention in a high-tech learning environment is driven by the following principles: priority to student access and success, belief in a learning community, effort in building partnerships, and the commitment to shared governance and shared responsibility.

There are many great things happening at Northern right now. We are enjoying our new Seaborg Science Complex, one of the premier science and mathematics facilities in the Midwest. We have reviewed and revised our liberal studies requirements, the changes which you will find in this bulletin. We have recently upgraded our student services area and will be undergoing further development to enhance our services facility. We have renovated the residence hall dining facilities and created more student gathering spaces across campus. We continue to develop new and innovative student programming and student research opportunities.

We have also successfully implemented our Teaching, Learning and Communication initiative. With all full-time undergraduate students, full-time faculty and many staff using IBM ThinkPads, Northern now is one of the largest public notebook computer universities in the world.

It is important for you to remember, though, that your notebook computer is just the tool being used to introduce you to today’s technology. Real lifelong and independent learning skills come through your willingness and initiative to explore new technology as a means of accessing and using information and as another way to communicate. Being comfortable with ever-changing technology will make you highly marketable in the 21st century workplace and is one of the advantages of the Teaching, Learning and Communication Initiative.

I hope your days at Northern will be among the best of your life. I know the opportunity to have an enriching, life-transforming experience is within your reach.