When Heather Clark ’96 Twomey visited Manchester for a high school journalism camp, she discovered that the beautiful North Manchester campus was a happy place for her.
Nearly 30 years later, it still is.
On the faculty since 2000, Twomey was named the Howard and Myra Brembeck Associate Professor of Business earlier this year. “I feel very honored,” says Twomey about her appointment to the endowed position.
Twomey was a business administration major in the early ’90s when she took an accounting course from Karin Heckman ’85 Nelson, then on the MU faculty. “I remember thinking, ‘This is pretty cool. I think I’d like to do what she does.’” So she asked Nelson what she needed to do to become an accounting professor, too.
“It’s a hard major, but I felt I understood it and I liked the challenge of it,” says Twomey. “I loved Manchester, too, and wanted to come back someday.”
As an accounting major, Twomey learned different skills from different faculty members – how to write, research, conduct herself professionally, learn independently and be comfortable expressing her views. “When they say it takes a village, it really does,” she says.
Twomey says one of the rewards of teaching at her alma mater is that she can watch students grow through the same holistic learning experience that she once had. “I love their young minds and seeing the growth that they have,” she says. The undergraduate experience is “the biggest growth they’ll have in their lives.”
Twomey remains best friends with her college roommate, who lives only three miles away. She recalls going to Russia during January session and having a WBKE radio show. “I loved the fact that I could be involved in whatever I wanted to be involved in.”
Less structured, but equally transformative, were the “long conversations about the meaning of life” that Twomey remembers from her student days. “It’s a time of life that you never forget.”
After graduating, Twomey worked for the accounting firm of Ernst and Young, where she interned as an MU student. She also taught accounting for a year at International Business College until a faculty position opened up at Manchester.
“I love my colleagues,” she says of the College of Business faculty. “You can’t get better colleagues.”
One of those colleagues is Tim Ogden ’87, dean of the Gilbert College of Business. “Heather is an excellent professor who constantly strives to improve her teaching, with outstanding results,” says Ogden. “She is also a wonderful faculty colleague.”
Twomey’s endowed professorship was created by the late Howard and Myra Brembeck, strong supporters of Manchester who also endowed a scholarship fund.
Myra attended Manchester in 1929 and 1930. Howard briefly attended the University of Chicago, but dropped out to help his family during the Great Depression. He went on to found the company now known as Chore-Time Brock International and, through his innovations in livestock feeding and grain storage, helped revolutionize food production.
Brembeck also founded the Fourth Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation headquartered in Goshen, Ind., that seeks solutions to global security threats.
By Melinda Lantz ’81