Bob Merzweiler ’76, P’4

“I went to visit Wittenberg over a weekend, more or less thinking I would just have fun. I wandered into the admission office and received a very warm welcome. It was clear right away that at Wittenberg I would be treated as a person, not as a number.

Another draw was the business program. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. I could sense Wittenberg would give me the knowledge and skills to get there.

I had a lot of great professors, especially in business, and I developed friendships with some of them. Wayne Maurer and Dave Vrooman would stop by our fraternity parties to chat. In my senior year I would play handball with my accounting professor and advisor, Mike Sheffey.

In my mind, what you do socially in college, in terms of getting to know and get along with a lot of different people, is extremely important. Not only did I enjoy being in a fraternity, but I am certain it helped me in the business world, especially in terms of learning to collaborate with others.

In today’s world, you have to be a lifetime learner. A liberal arts education builds those critical thinking skills and the ability to learn new things. We took biology, geology, English, philosophy, psychology. One of my favorite classes was logic; it was a way of doing math with words. To this day, that class shapes my thought processes.

‘Having Light, we pass it on to others’ — I like to think that I carry those words with me. It’s about being concerned and considerate, helping other people have the opportunities that you have had, so they can pass on that light as well.”