Alumni Success
After Ron Ryckman (’94) graduated from MNU with a bachelor’s in Business Administration, he made plans to further his education. He was prepared to attend KU to earn a joint graduate degree in Business and Law. Ron had taken all the right classes and filled out all the right paperwork for his journey to KU, but in the summer of 1994, his life changed course.
When his hometown of Mead, Kan., was damaged by a hailstorm the summer following his graduation from MNU, Ron decided to go home and help his neighbors. He roofed houses, found he was good the task and even earned a decent living doing it. He decided to put off going to KU and worked for another roofing company the following winter and eventually took over as its manager. He worked there for about a year before feeling convicted to resign from his position due to his disagreement with his boss’ weak business ethics.
Then in January 1996, Ron took his savings, purchased worker’s comp insurance and started his own roofing business in his townhouse. He and his wife had to forego paying their bills so they could pay their employees, but a mere decade later, Ron’s work has paid off. Since starting his roofing business, his business ventures have branched out into siding, windows, gutters, irrigation and landscaping. From there, Ron entered the real-estate business and now acts as manager and adviser to six different companies that build and sell houses and do landscaping on property all over Kansas City.
Ron says he owes his success to the personal relationships he cultivated and the networking he established for himself at MNU.
“Mark Ford and Mike Gough installed the confidence I needed to achieve my goals,” he said. “MidAmerica has a lot of good people to make contact with. My spiritual and business needs were met.”
Chad Cook (’95) graduated MNU with his bachelor’s in business administration before going on to earn an MBA and JD from the University of Kansas in 2001. Chad was admitted to the Kansas Bar Association and joined Lathrop & Gage the same year and joined the Missouri Bar Association in 2002.
Now a lawyer with Lathrop & Gage, Chad works with clients in corporate and general businesses, develops real estate documents and represents clients in health care transactions. He co-authored Agricultural Cooperatives, which was published in 2006, and is active in his community, serving on the Board of Directors for two prominent organizations and holds membership in several area health lawyer associations.
John Ream (’05) was a double major in Business Administration and Organizational Leadership and is now employed as an Analyst for Deloitte Consulting in Kansas City, Mo. John works with Fortune 500 clients from all industries and while his basic goal of helping businesses solve problems remains the same across each job, his daily tasks vary with the demands of each project. Typically, though, he says many days are spent researching company processes and identifying ways to make those processes easier or more efficient. He might do this by meeting with employees, documenting requirements, creating reports, or any number of related tasks.
With several family members in the business, John grew up around consulting, but it wasn’t until he entered the Business program at MNU that he began to understand the industry. While classes outside his major contributed to his skill base – a general education history class taught him to think analytically – he credits the Business department with shaping his ethics, both personal and professional.
“My Business Ethics class was incredibly valuable to me, but I didn’t completely realize it until I had graduated,” John said. “In any profession you will at some point find yourself at a crossroads to make difficult decisions involving your morals and personal standards. If you’ve already pre-conceived how to handle certain situations, it makes those decisions much easier. It was very beneficial to have a business ethics class that integrated my beliefs.”
John also acknowledges that MNU helped him grow beyond his major.
“Beyond learning about my major, being at MNU gave me a foundation for life skills like faith, relationships, communication and service,” he says. “By attending an institution that combines academic excellence and faith gives students the tools to not only excel in their career, but in many other areas that are important in having a successful and fulfilling life.”
It took Patti Bilka (’06) a while to declare a major in Communications/Business Administration. She tried three other majors, but none fit her quite right. But when she finally decided on Communications/Business Administration, she knew she had made the right choice. She picked her final major because it brought out her strengths and she was even able to pick up a minor in marketing along the way.
Today, Patti is a Junior Research Analyst for the Sunflower Group, a promotional services firm in Overland Park, Kan. Her days are spent creating program results reports for clients, creating questionnaires for data collection, analyzing retail scanner data, running statistical tests, and creating client feedback websites.
She may not always remember how the course content at MNU helped her in her career, but she’ll never forget the support she received.
“I don’t think that it was the content of the business courses that enticed me into my love of learning, but the care and help of the faculty,” she said. ”The professors not only taught the courses, they helped apply them.”
Patti’s co-workers notice a difference.
“I received many compliments when first starting in the corporate world because of my ability to put what I had previously learned into practice,” Patti said. “My company is always asking me to help recruit more MNU graduates because they are so impressed with each one that has come to work here. I owe a lot to the business faculty at MNU for helping me realize my potential.”
