Gene Budig considers himself a “champion of community colleges,” which may sound surprising coming from a man who spent 23 years leading three major four-year institutions.

 

But Budig, who is best known for serving as president of Major League Baseball’s American League during the ‘90s, believes community colleges hold the key to America’s future.

 

“The United States is rightfully worried about maintaining global competitiveness,” he said. “That won’t happen without the strength of our two-year institutions. Community colleges are the difference-makers.”

 

Two-year colleges made the difference for Budig, whose father was an auto mechanic in Nebraska.

 

“He was a good person who taught me how to hit a baseball, but did not have an appreciation or an understanding of the value of a college education,” Budig said.

 

After high school, Budig worked as a part-time reporter for a local newspaper whose publisher persuaded him to enroll at McCook Junior College (MJC). (Today, the college is called McCook Community College, a division of Mid-Plains Community College).

“The teachers at MJC were extraordinary,” Budig said. “They took the time and made the effort to encourage me and others to pursue further education at the University of Nebraska (UN) in Lincoln.”

 

After earning three degrees from the University of Nebraska—a bachelor’s in English, a master’s in journalism and a doctorate in education—he served on the faculty at UN and spent three years as chief of staff for Nebraska Gov. Frank Morrison.

 

In 1973, at age 34, Budig became president of Illinois State University. Four years later, he took the same position at West Virginia University, and in 1981 he became chancellor of the University of Kansas (KU). During his various leadership tenures, Budig oversaw the educational programs of more than 520,000 students and the administration of $8.5 billion in public and private educational funds.

 

Regarding his interest in baseball, Budig said he was never much of a baseball player—“I played through high school, but I quickly realized that I had bad eyes, and a slow bat.”—but at KU he became close friends with Ewing Kauffman, then owner of baseball’s Kansas City Royals.

 

“He had a great interest in educational trends, and I had a special love of the game of baseball,” said Budig, who served as a director of the Royals and as a trustee of the Kauffman Foundation, the first major foundation to support entrepreneurial initiatives in education.

 

When the American League needed a new president, Kauffman and Gene Autry, the former cowboy film star and then owner of baseball’s California Angels, backed Budig for the job.

 

Budig took over the American League presidency at a low point in baseball history—just after a work stoppage had forced cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

 

The commissioner of baseball and the presidents of the two league were told by team owners to find new ways to bring the game back. And that’s what they did.

 

Budig remained league president until 2000, when the position was dissolved. He continues to serve as senior advisor to the commissioner.

 

Budig also found time to write numerous articles and three books: A Game of Uncommon Skill, on leading a modern higher education institution; The Inside Pitch, on the economics of baseball; and, coming this spring, Grasping the Ring, which focuses on the nine most interesting public people with whom Budig has  worked, including George Steinbrenner and former Sen. Bob Dole.

Now serving as a distinguished professor and senior presidential advisor for the College Board, Budig recently worked with higher education leaders nationwide to produce “Winning the Skills Race and Strengthening America’s Middle Class: An Action Agenda for Community Colleges.” He also chairs College Ed, a national program funded by the Gates Foundation that aims to boost college attendance.

 

And to keep his love of baseball alive, he partially owns the Charleston River Dogs, a New York Yankees minor league team based near his South Carolina home.

 

Last year, Budig returned to Nebraska to deliver commencement addresses at the two Mid-Plains Community College campuses and established a fund offering a $1,000 honorarium to an outstanding McCook Community College faculty member.

“This, in a small way, is my way of thanking not only MCC but also the faculty from all community colleges,” Budig said. “I hope that this program stirs others who have had the benefits of a community college education to give and give generously. It is payback time.”

 

A colleague once called Dr. Stanley L.K. Flemming “as close to a Renaissance man as exists today,” and it’s easy to understand why.

 

Born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and raised in Washington state, Flemming, who attended Pierce College in Washington, obtained a medical degree, co-founded a community health clinic system that now operates 10 clinics for the medically underserved and served as chief medical officer of the 400-position Northwest Physicians Network.

 

A board-certified family medicine physician with specialties in adolescent medicine, HIV/AIDS-related diseases and aviation medicine, Flemming has taught medicine at the University of Washington, Western University of Health Sciences and the University of Southern California.

 

His long and distinguished military career includes two combat tours of duty and overseas service in Kosovo, Thailand and Kuwait, with promotion to the rank of brigadier general. He currently serves as commanding general of the Northeast Army Reserve Medical Region and 8th Medical Brigade.

 

And then there’s Stan Flemming the politician, a moonlighting career that began with a remedial educational tour of the Washington state capitol.

 

“I knew nothing about politics,” Flemming said. “I couldn’t even have told you the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, the right wing and the left wing.”

 

After a courtesy call to the speaker of the house yielded an invitation to run for office, Flemming upset a longtime Republican incumbent to become the first Native American in the state House of Representatives.

 

A few years later he became founding mayor of the city of University Place, Wash., a momentous start-up project.

 

“We had 120 days to write and enact every law, establish a police department, a public works department—and we did it three days shy of the deadline,” Flemming said.

 

A highlight of Flemming’s career was his near appointment as U.S. Surgeon General during the Clinton administration. The list had narrowed to Flemming and another candidate when, according to Flemming, a White House aide told him the nomination hinged on his answer to one question: Had he ever performed abortions?

 

“I’ve never done one. I’m trained to, but I’ve never performed one,” Flemming said. “So the president selected the other gentleman (Dr. Henry Foster Jr.) because he wanted to make a point with Congress. Well, Congress made the point back because it refused to confirm him (Foster).”

 

Flemming recently relinquished his position at the Northwest Physicians Network and as mayor to take over a startup operation. As president of the Pacific Northwest University of Health Science in Washington, Flemming oversees the formation of a medical school that will train a new generation of primary care osteopathic physicians who live in and work in rural communities. The school will open this year.

 

Flemming said that he didn’t want the job at first, but the recruiting committee persisted and eventually persuaded him.

 

Flemming’s higher education career began at Pierce College, where he enrolled after family finances forced him to forgo his acceptance to Stanford University (California). He attributes his multifarious success to the foundation laid at Pierce, and especially to the intervention of one dogged math professor, John Van Druff.

 

“He would have me come in at six in the morning and tutor me one-on-one,” Flemming said.

 

A Pierce College Distinguished Alumnus, Flemming has served as graduation speaker, emceed Distinguished Alumni banquets and advocated for the college in the legislature and the community.

 

“I’m very serious that, had it not been for the breaks I got at Pierce College I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.

 

Novelist Amy Tan’s Web site attempts to debunk “myths and legends” published about her.

 

No, she has never won a Nobel Prize in Literature, National Book Award or Pulitzer. But her book The Joy Luck Club was a National Book Award finalist, The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Bonesetter’s Daughter were chosen as New York Times Notable Books and she nabbed an Emmy for a PBS animated series based on her children’s book Sagwa: The Chinese Cat.

 

Tan also wants it known that Lou DeMattei is her first and only husband, and that they do not have two children, unless you consider, as she does, that her dogs are her children.

 

But some of the hearsay is true. She was depicted as herself on the animated series “The Simpsons,” and she plays backup in the tongue-in-cheek rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders (whose members include Stephen King and other notable authors) which performs to raise money for literacy programs.

 

Another true tidbit is that Tan received part of her education at a community college, though not for the typical reasons of proximity or penury.

 

“The truth is I fell in love,” Tan said. “I left a small college in Oregon and came down to San José to be with my then-boyfriend, now my husband.”

 

Although Tan spent only a year at San José City College (SJCC) in California, she said she had memorable experiences there.

“I took the only drama class I ever took,” Tan said. “I became the props master for ‘Waiting for Godot,’ which is very good if you want to get your hands wet for theater because there are very few props.”

 

If SJCC can’t really claim it gave birth to the future novelist, at least it can say one class nudged her in the right direction.

“My first I guess what you’d call ethnic-studies kind of literature class was at SJCC,” Tan said. “It was black literature, and there were stories by Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. It was quite an eye-opener, reading other fiction that doesn’t follow those typical themes of disaffected people going off to Spain.”

 

Born in Oakland, Calif., to immigrant parents from China, Tan ultimately obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San José State University and received a linguistic fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

She has published five novels—all of them New York Times bestsellers—a memoir (The Opposite of Fate), two children’s books (The Moon Lady and Sagwa) and numerous magazine articles. Tan also served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club.

 

Tan is currently finishing a libretto for an opera based on The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which the San Francisco Opera will premiere in September. She is also completing a story about China for National Geographic.

 

“I ended up going to a village in one of the poorest provinces in China to stay among rice farmers of the Dong minority,” Tan said. “I went back four times. It was wonderful time spent in the luxury of just gathering details.”

 

She expects many of these details, in various transmogrified forms, will appear in her next novel.

 

Tan said that she will always have fond feelings for community colleges.

 

“I’ve seen what a difference it makes in people’s lives, and I think about those people who wouldn’t be able to go to college if it weren’t for community colleges,” she said.

 

One of those people is Tan’s housekeeper.

 

“‘I’m not a maid, I’m a student. The life I dream is who I am,’” Tan recalled her saying. “Community college allows her to be that person.”

Suzanne Lewis has worked for one employer since the day following her graduation from a four-year college.

 

“As I was finishing my undergrad degree, I had a roommate whose father was a U.S. National Park Service (NPS) ranger, and that’s how I got interested,” Lewis said. “I graduated from undergraduate school on Saturday, and I went to work for the NPS on Sunday.”

 

Fast-forward 30 years and Lewis is now on a top rung at NPS: superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first national park.

 

Although Lewis earned a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in American history from the University of West Florida, her higher education began at Seminole Community College (SCC) in Florida.

 

“I had already been accepted to other four-year institutions, but I decided that SCC was probably a good thing for me at that age,” said Lewis. “Things were simpler and the college was small. I think that built confidence very quickly in how to be a good student and get some real good skills early on.”

 

Lewis spent her first decade with NPS fulfilling various roles at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida and Mississippi—seasonal interpreter, park technician, historian, ranger and assistant to the superintendent. In 1988, NPS sent her on a United Nations mission to teach Haitians how to preserve and conserve their natural resources, and in 1989 she became acting superintendent of the Christiansted National Historic Site and Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 

“This was a very challenging environment to work in because of the vital critical resources and because it’s a U.S. territory,” Lewis said. “It presented a challenge in terms of interfacing with government—trying to protect those resources while at the same time helping the local population survive.”

 

Superintendent positions followed at Chattahoochee River National Park in Atlanta, one the busiest U.S. recreation areas, and at Glacier National Park in northwest Montana. Participating in the NPS Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program put her in line for a superintendent position at the system’s top parks. In 2002, Lewis was named superintendent of Yellowstone.

 

Lewis may have been Yellowstone’s first women superintendent, but it was hardly a new experience at breaking boundaries.

 

"I don’t mean to be flippant, but I’ve been the first female to do most of the stuff I’ve done in my career because the NPS has been a predominantly male organization,” Lewis said, noting that her career shows that NPS is open to change.

 

As superintendent of Yellowstone, Lewis faces a variety of challenges.

 

“Yellowstone is sort of center stage for NPS,” she said. “The park is 2.2 million acres—the size of Connecticut—and the largest intact ecosystem left in the Lower 48 (states). So whether it’s wildlife, tourism or development issues or development of land adjacent to the boundary, it all makes for an very challenging environment to work in.”

 

Over the course of her career, Lewis has garnered a number of prestigious awards: 1994 National Parks and Conservation Service Manager of the Year for Partnerships, 1997 Girl Scouts of America Woman of Distinction, 2004 U.S. Department of the Interior Bronze Executive Leadership Award and the National Women’s History Project Women’s History Month Honoree in 2007.

 

Lewis, who also received the SCC Distinguished Alumni Award and delivered the college’s 2005 commencement address, said she believes the need for community colleges will only grow as students look for reasonably priced higher education options. Two-year colleges also respond quickly to the changing skills needed in the workforce, she noted.

 

Ruiz Foods, Inc., may not ring a bell, but you probably know its products.

 

Its El Monterey brand Mexican dishes—enchiladas, tamales and quesadillas, to name a few—fill frozen food aisles at Costco, Sam’s Club and other stoeres. About 80 percent of retail supermarkets and convenience stores nationwide offer its ready-to-go Tornados tortilla wraps.

 

In fact, the Dinuba, Calif.-based firm is the largest U.S. producer of frozen Mexican food and the second-largest U.S. Hispanic-owned manufacturing company.

 

It all started 44 years ago when Fred Ruiz, fresh out of the College of the Sequoias (California), and his father, Louis, began preparing and freezing Mexican dishes in the family kitchen.

 

“Frozen foods was in its infancy,” said Fred Ruiz, the company’s chairman and CEO. “There was Green Giant, with frozen peas, corn and stuff like that, and Swanson’s TV dinners.”

 

With equipment and utensils from his mother’s kitchen and an old, discarded stove, the father-son team used his mother’s recipes to prepare frozen bean-and-cheese enchiladas for local grocers.

 

“We did nothing special, but we did have a good understanding of what Mexican food was supposed to taste like,” Ruiz said.

But in a few years the frozen enchilada business hit a wall. Ruiz contemplated going back to college, but his father insisted that they just needed to “work smarter” and analyze the marketplace.

 

“This was the beginning of the convenience wave driven primarily by women in the workforce,” Ruiz said. “So we came out with tamales. We gave mom-and-pop convenience stores these little crock pots that had just come out and sold them the tamales. It was an instant success. It got us over the hump and our business really started to take off.”

 

Today, the privately owned company produces some 240 products and employs 2,500 people at two plants in California’s Central Valley and another in Denison, Texas.

 

In 1983 Louis and Fred Ruiz received the U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year award at a White House ceremony. Among other honors, Fred Ruiz was named the Latin American Business Club’s Man of the Year in 1989.

 

Louis Ruiz died last year, but Ruiz Foods appears likely to remain in the family: Fred Ruiz’s son Bryce is currently president and his daughter Kimberly Ruiz Beck is vice chair.

 

Ruiz hasn’t forgotten his debt to the College of the Sequoias, where he was elected to the college hall of fame, served for 10 years on the board for the college’s foundation, sponsored scholarships and continues to participate in mentoring projects. 

 

 “Without my community college education, I don’t think I’d have been as successful in helping build this company with my dad,” Ruiz said.​