DANA ATHLETICS

Company Gives Graduate an Expedited Future

As regional vice president for Expeditors, Rick Rostan ’79 deals with some famous names. Companies like Motorola, The Gap, Nordstroms, Kohls, Logitech and Cisco Systems rely on Expeditors to move their products around the world.

“Any major retailer — we’re doing business with them,” Rostan said.

Expeditors, a public company with 180 offices around the world and $2.62 billion in business in 2003, works with both its customers and transportation companies to ensure goods get the best treatment possible during shipping in our globalized economy.

Careers at Expeditors are full of high-pressure situations, complex customer relations and a lot of quick thinking. It takes just the right sort of person to succeed at the company. They must know how to work as a team, handle the strain and have a great personality. None of which you can tell by reading a job applicant’s résumé.

But for the last two decades Rostan and Expeditors have known exactly where to go to find the candidates they are looking for: the Dana College football team.

“In the beginning I would go back (to Dana) each year,” Rostan said. “I would go back to the football coaches because they know these guys pretty well.”

The results have been good both for Dana and Expeditors. Rostan began a chain of Dana alumni at Expeditors (see box, below right), and although he no longer personally returns to Dana every year, his Expeditors alumni colleagues continue his tradition of hiring Dana graduates.

Vice President for Institutional Advancement Mike Jones ’71 said successful alumni, like Rostan and his colleagues, who choose to hire from Dana give the college one of the best gifts possible.

“We’d love to have more alumni think of Dana first when looking to hire,” Jones said.

In his view, the college benefits by getting its graduates into good jobs, but alumni reap just as much from the situation.

“Our people have been able to see these students on a daily basis,” he said. “They can match up attributes and abilities to the company and job.”

Dana’s faculty, coaches and staff know the students so well and care so much, the chances of getting a recommendation that’s off-the-mark are virtually zero.

“I think it’s very rare to have someone recommend someone just for the sake of recommending someone,” Jones said. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to make the best match possible.”

That’s why Expeditors keeps coming back to Dana’s football team, said Tim Barber ’82, executive vice president for global sales for Expeditors. Barber, who got his start in the industry with help from Rostan, said Expeditors hires a lot of student athletes because of their mental toughness, experience working on a team and ability to work together under pressure.

“ ‘Hire for attitude’ is our motto at Expeditors,” he said.

Barber said he believes Dana’s personal environment and caring community, along with a great educational foundation, contribute to the development of students. He knows, because it happened to him.

“I was going through a rough personal time while at Dana,” he said. “But there was always someone to help you through. I really grew as a person while I was there. I’ve got to believe that the percentage of graduates out of Dana have a good career path ahead of them.”

Dana’s global outlook is also especially good for businesses like Expeditors, who deal with business outside the United States every day. With Dana’s liberal arts tradition, graduates have an appreciation for languages and cultures not found at every school.

Expeditors doesn’t limit itself to new graduates, either. Barber said he encourages all Dana alumni to take a look at Expeditors.

“We’re always looking for good people,” he said.

The Expeditors alumni have been very generous to Dana in other ways, as well. Their monetary gifts have enabled Dana to start an Expeditors Scholarship, with preference given to student athletes, especially those who choose football. They have also chosen to sponsor a classroom inside the new Gardner-Hawks Center, Dana’s new state-of-the-art athletic facility.

As to why the Expeditors alumni are so generous to Dana College, Rostan said it all goes back to the experiences they had as students.

“I think all the guys would say the same thing,” he said. “You try not to forget where you came from. Obviously, giving the money doesn’t give as much gratification as hiring someone and watching them do well. But we help in any way we can. We just want to continue to do that.”