professional lacrosse team, isn’t finished yet when it comes to promoting the Foresters or exploring other new ventures. “College students are my heroes,” he told the Rockford Register-Star. “They have no fears and think they can do anything in the world. That type of attitude motivates me and keeps me pushing myself.” When Stefani enrolled at Monmouth, he already had two major projects in the works—a cell phone company and a Greek life apparel business. Juggling those challenges along with MC’s coursework did not make for a successful first semester, and Stefani called his resulting poor grades “a rude awakening.” He credits his involvement with Sigma Phi Epsilon for helping to restore some discipline and order to his college life, and he also praised MC’s faculty, including Don Capener of the political economy and commerce department. Stefani did impressive work for Capener’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) organization, and their relationship has continued, with Capener inviting Stefani back to speak to his students. “Those types of projects really built up my skill set,” said Stefani who, among other things, helped a local restaurant computerize its books, significantly cutting its costs. After graduating from Monmouth—and rallying from that rough start to bring his grades back to a solid 3.0—Stefani attended graduate school at Western Illinois University. He called the difference between the schools “night and day.” “What’s unique about Monmouth is the hands-on approach of the faculty,” he said. “The faculty always challenges you. I was busy all the time, and not just with course work, but with the fraternity and Student Senate.” “Busy all the time” is an accurate assessment of Stefani’s life today, too. The Foresters’ on-field debut will be the culmination of 30 months of work by Stefani and his Three Strikes Baseball Corporation. He still has his Greek life apparel business, which carries clothing for 18 fraternities and three sororities, and he’s also looking into other projects, including a retail business in Macomb and, perhaps, another sports team. Speaking of other teams, Stefani was just finishing up the details of a partnership with the Rockford IceHogs, the city’s No. 1 pro team, when he was contacted for this story. IceHogs and ice blogs—just one more way that sports promoters Joe Stefani and Aaron Harris are connected.
midwest matters
Longworth features President Ditzler in ‘Midwesterner’ blog
t
hree months after serving as the keynote speaker
for Monmouth College’s groundbreaking forum on the Midwest, Richard C. Longworth included President Mauri Ditzler among seven influential individuals in his blog, “The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest.” In his introduction to a list of “A Few Good People,” Longworth wrote, “The Midwest is still struggling to redefine itself in the age of globalization, but a lot of good people are engaged in that struggle. As a difficult decade ends and a new, perhaps better, one dawns, it’s a good time to salute a few of these good people. They’re among the leaders who are setting the Midwest’s agenda for the future and who will help guide it into that future.” Ditzler, wrote Longworth, “made news this past year by setting up the first Midwest Studies Initiative in the region. Astonishingly, until now, no Midwestern college or university even taught a course on the Midwest. In addition, most small colleges like Monmouth seemed to go out of their way to shun the communities around them and to present themselves as not really Midwestern, but as scholarly outposts in flyover territory. Ditzler, an Indiana native (who) still owns a farm near Crawfordsville, is out to change this. His program will focus on the impact of globalization on the region around Monmouth. With luck, his vision will rub off on other Midwestern colleges.” When Longworth drew up his list, he ended up having many more names than he could initially mention. The seven he did detail are “typical of the good work going on across this region.” “Anyone traveling around the Midwest quickly learns that the region is loaded with people who clearly see the challenges of this new global era and that the old Midwestern way of doing things doesn’t work anymore,” he wrote. “One of our jobs on the site is to put them in touch with each other, to help them leverage their work and ideas into a regional recovery.” Also mentioned was another college president, Rob Denson of Des Moines Area Community College, who was praised for leading a campaign to get Midwestern community colleges to work together, especially in regard to training workers for green economy jobs.
monmouth | spring 2010
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