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Eliot S. Elfner, Ph.D. |
[My Classes] [My Vita] [SNC Homepage]
After 43 years as a full time faculty member for St. Norbert College, I retired in May, 2014, and was awarded the illustrious title of Emeritus Professor of Business Administration. In August of 2014, I became an adjunct instructor. I taught one section of the Internship Seminar each semester in the 2014-15 academic year and continue to teach that course each fall semester thereafter. Doing the arithmetic I like to say it adds up to 94 semesters (as of fall, 2021) under contract with St. Norbert College. I am using the following books in my Internship Seminar course: Van Remortel, Steve, Stop the Vanilla in your career and life: Start Loving what you do to live the life you want, (Platform Publishing), 2021; and Wooden, John & Don Yaeger, A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring, (New York: Bloomsbury USA) 2009.
During six past summers (2008, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2018 and 2019) my wife Bonnie and I participated in the College sponsored Norbertine Heritage Tours visiting and interacting with the conferes at many Norbertine Abbeys in Europe, located in the Czech Republic (Prague), Slovakia. Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Italy.
In my retirement, I am engaged in some serious mind-candy recreational reading, including the Janet Evanovich, James Patterson and Carl Hiaasen mysteries, and some other older and some more recent mysteries. I have also been reading some more serious books recommended by a Spirituality Group in which I participate regularly. Included, but not comprehensive are the following: Martin, James, S. J., Becoming Who You Are, by (Mahwah, N.J.: HiddenSpring imprinted by Paulist Press) 2006; Ellsberg, Robert, Modern Spiritual Masters: Writings on Contemplation and Compassion, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books) 2008; Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Neuman to Joseph Ratzinger (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press), 2010; and Kelly, Matthew, The Rhythm of Life, (New York: Fireside) 2004.
The most impressive reading I have done recently is the book on the life of St. Norbert by Tom Kunkel, the immediate past president of St. Norbert College. Norbert of Xanten lived in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and he was an early and headstrong Church reformer. He was also a nobleman, a courtier, a priest, an ascetic, an itinerant preacher, an archbishop, a defender of papal authority and of the sacrament of the Eucharist, a legendary peacemaker and an exemplar of the apostolic way of life. In addition, in the remote woods of northeast France, Norbert would found one of the great clerical orders of the Church—one that has endured, despite wars, plagues, famines, the Protestant Reformation, Napoleonic suppression, Nazism, fascism, communism and Church politics, through nine long centuries to our present time. Put another way, Norbert led one of the most remarkable lives of saints before or since. Still, few American Catholics know St. Norbert or the order he established in Prémontré and is still active and relevant 900 years later. This lack of familiarity owes primarily to the fact that for most of their history the Norbertines operated almost exclusively in Europe and have had a much smaller footprint in North America than their Jesuit, Benedictine, Franciscan or Dominican counterparts. Beyond that, most of what has been written about Norbert over the years has come from Europe, in languages only infrequently rendered into English. And even when they were, his story was seldom told in a contemporary way. This short and very readable biography supplies that lack. The bibliographic reference to the book is below.
Professional Interests: Quality improvement and the improvement of student learning in higher education, Value/Supply Chain Management, retired as a Member of Faith Technologies, Inc. Board of Directors, and a past member for twenty years of Titletown Brewing Co. Board of Directors in Green Bay, WI. Currently I am a member of the Board of Trustees for also Bellin College in Green Bay and was appointed Chair of the Academic Committee. I was also appointed recently to the Investment Committee for Bellin Health Systems, Inc. WI. I also serve on the Investment Advisory Committee for the St. Francis Xavior Fund for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. Additional I participate as a Mediator for the Green Bay Mediation Center. I also serve on several other volunteer committees.
During my 43 years (86 semesters) as a full timer at St. Norbert I served as the Social Science Division Chair (now designated as the Associate Dean of Social Sciences) from January 1996 through Summer 2003, and as the Interim Associate Dean for Social Sciences for the 2011-12 academic year. I am a past Associate of Institutional Effectiveness Associates, a former consulting organization specializing in the assessment and improvement of student learning processes. I spent the fall, 2003 semester on a sabbatical as a visiting scholar at the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management, working with the Executive Director, Dr. John R. Nevin. I then returned to the classroom until I retired in 2014.
My wife and I have been married since July 18, 1964. We have three sons, all out of college, married and independent, who have provided me with nine grandchildren (three each)! Son Eric has his MBA from Marquette University and is the Director of Information Systems at C. G. Schmidt, Inc. a large general contractor in Milwaukee. Son Jon has a Masters Degree in Teaching from Dominican University in River Forest, IL and a Masters degree in American History from DePaul University in Chicago and is an American History faculty member at Homewood-Flossmor High School. He also pursues as an avocation a career in music and currently has three bands; Staff Infection, Not my Dad’s Band and The Randolph Street Blues Band. Son Chris is a Vice-President of Accountable Care Strategy at Bellin Memorial Hospital in Green Bay, WI. My wife, Bonnie (aka Pamela) retired as a supervisor of sophomore block education students in their five-week placement as student teachers for St. Norbert on a part time basis for over thirty-five years. She and I enjoy traveling, family at the cottage, entertainment at the Meyer and Weidner Theaters in Green Bay, Music Theater at St. Norbert, and occasional city hits.
Golf, racquetball and wrestling with the grandkids keep me healthy and relaxed.
Favorite Quotes
To the question of what is the "bliss" of Golf, John Updike writes "The imensities of space, beside which even polo and baseball are constricted pastimes, must be part of it. To see one's ball gallop 200 and more yards down the fairway, or see it fly clear across an entire copse of maples in full autumn flair, is to join one's soul with the vastness that, contemplated from another angle, intimidates the spirit and makes one feel small. As it moves through the adventures of a golf match, the human body, like Alice's in Wonderland, experiences an intoxicating relativity -- huge in relation to the ball, tiny in relation to the course, exactly matched to that of the other players." (Updike, John, Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf Alfred A. Knopf)
"The American Dream need not forever be denied."
Barbara Jordan - Keynote Speech at 1976 Democratic National Convention
The person responsible for this page is:
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Dr. Eliot Elfner |
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(920) 403-3233 |
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Emeritus Professor of Business Administration |
E-Mail: | eliot.elfner@snc.edu |
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St. Norbert College, COFRIN 329 |
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100 Grant Street, De Pere, WI USA 54115-2099 |
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[St. Norbert College homepage] [Top of document] This page last modified on April 24, 2021 |
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