NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE
WHITE PINE PRESS
A Helping Word
Sydney Boettcher
Staff Writer
College isn’t easy. Coursework piles up, you fall behind, and it feels like a hopeless situation, even if it isn’t.
However, it’s the pressure you put on yourself that can really kill your momentum. Even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, sometimes all you really need to get back on track is a few words of encouragement.
A few weeks ago, NMC Student Success did just that with their aptly named words of encouragement campaign. They put up flyers all over campus with a QR code to a Google Form. The Google Form asked students for their favorite motivational quote, as well as a few other things, like studying music or book recommendations.
The campaign was a group effort, created in a brainstorming session by the Advising Office staff around the start of the semester. “We talked about the challenges of coming back [to] classes after holiday break, and that many students would be graduating Spring 2026,” said Tallula Morrison, an office manager for Student Success. “During Fall 2025 finals, we kept receiving feedback from students on how heavy things felt, [and] we knew this was a way we could share little pick-me-up moments.”
What started as a few “pick-me-up moments” posted to some corkboards around the school became a campus-wide source of motivation. Morrison acknowledged the small start of the campaign, but remained firm in her belief in its value. “[W]e know that sometimes the most impactful things take the longest time to germinate and grow… This isn’t a short-term campaign for us. Encouragement lies at the heart of what we do…”
Morrison said that they reached many students and, “probably more than we’re aware of–that’s the beauty of ripples, they keep expanding outward.”
After receiving motivational messages through the Google Form, Student Success posts the messages to social media. Using pictures from around campus as backgrounds, the messages are typed into blocky, white text boxes.
“Challenges are opportunities,” one of the posts said, with a photo of the sun peaking through the windows of the NMC library. Over a photo of the Tanis Building, another post read “This is tough, but so am I.”
The campaign has been part of a much larger project called Fail Forward Week, which spanned from Feb. 11–18. “The words of encouragement was a piece of the toolbox… encouraging others and recognizing the impact of how we talk to ourselves.”
Fail Forward Week, which aimed to help students reframe failure, included a Lunch & Learn with Student Life on Feb. 12, Student Success coaching on Feb. 16, and a Student Success Fair on Feb. 17. Attending these events would get you a “certificate of failure.” Throughout the week, students could write on the “fail boards” posted on each campus.
Student Success also used social media to share testimonials from students and staff. A testimonial by communications instructor Janet Lively read, “I seriously thought about dropping out,” when she had trouble in her math courses during her first semester at MSU. “Instead, I hired a math tutor and got a C- in the second semester. Success!”
Morrison said that the campaign has sparked valuable conversations between peers. She says she’s seen “Staff and students, sharing stories of things that build us up or tear us down, and how it has impacted our forward momentum.”
Morrison and the rest of the Student Success faculty are always looking for ways to connect with students here at NMC, and they’re taking requests. Students can send ideas they have in an email to the Advising Office.
It’s the little things that really matter. It can be a penny on the sidewalk, a smile from someone across the sidewalk, or a hand to help you up when you fall down. And sometimes, it’s a few pick-me-up moments on a corkboard.
Michele Coffill
Grand Valley State University
Serving Community Becomes Full-Circle Moment for GVSU Student
Now as a graduate student at Grand Valley State University, Kristen LaPan has carried over the value of serving the community from her days as a student leader at Northwestern Michigan College.
LaPan serves as the vice president of GVSU’s Richard Paul Clodfelder (RPC) Student Society, the service-focused student organization for the Physician Assistant Studies program that volunteers with Traverse City nonprofit organizations during food and clothing drives.
For RPC, LaPan works with fellow student leaders to coordinate and participate in volunteer efforts, including serving meals at the Central United Methodist Church community breakfast and volunteering at the Great Lakes Children’s Museum.
Before beginning the master’s program at GVSU, LaPan was president of the Pre-Physician Assistant Society at NMC, where she led student volunteer efforts with local nonprofits, such as the Father Fred Foundation and the Goodwill Inn. Those two organizations had once supported her family during difficult times.
LaPan said her family experienced periods of poverty and homelessness when she was younger. “There were times when we stayed at the Goodwill Inn and relied on food pantries and community clinics,” she said. “Those local resources made a huge difference for my family and they inspired my goal of becoming a physician assistant who serves this same community.
”The opportunity to give back to her hometown community in Traverse City has been one of LaPan’s favorite parts of studying at Grand Valley’s Traverse City campus, now located in the Beckett Building on NMC’s Front Street Campus. She values the close-knit connections and local service opportunities that both NMC and GVSU have provided.
It was her drive to help people that led LaPan to begin working at Munson Healthcare as a nurse assistant when she was 18. “I just fell in love with health care and the careers that were available,” she said.
LaPan enrolled at Northwestern Michigan College and took classes as she could afford them. In 2023, she earned a bachelor’s degree in allied health sciences from GVSU. She continues to work at Munson, now as an emergency department technician.
“My advisors at NMC and GVSU were all very supportive of me enrolling in classes as I could afford them, yet keeping me on track to graduate,” she said. “When I decided on physician assistant studies at Grand Valley, my NMC advisor knew exactly what classes I would need.
”Grand Valley opened its satellite PAS program in Traverse City in 2015 to educate students who would receive training at Northern Michigan hospitals and health care organizations and then want to work in the area after graduating.
LaPan is among the more than 70% of GVSU students who plan to stay and work in Northern Michigan.
“We’ve learned a lot about rural health care. And I want to give back to the area that has helped me so much,” she said.
