by Kirsten Ellison

Contributing writer




“I think the most interesting thing about me is what I have overcome in life,” said Michael Relitz, a student from Anoka-Ramsey Community College (ARCC).  

After getting involved in alcohol and drugs, Relitz went into rehab and has been sober for over two years and is currently maintaining a 3.9 grade point average in college. Relitz said, “I have learned a lot from my past mistakes and it has made me a better person.” 

At the age of 24, Relitz met his wife Catherine and married her six months later. Shortly after they met, his wife joined the Army and they then spent their first four and a half months where she was stationed, in Campbell, Ken.  His wife was deployed twice during that time and during her second deployment, lasting 15 months, he moved back to Minnesota and then enrolled at ARCC. 

When asked whom his heroes are Relitz responded, “My number one hero is my wife. She is a strong woman who served proudly in the United States Army and became a Sergeant.” Relitz enjoys spending time with his wife.  Their hobbies include camping in the summer, fishing and watching T.V.  He also enjoys playing poker and golfing. 

At one point in his life, Relitz didn’t have any goals, but now he has big dreams and is determined to achieve them. “My biggest dream in life is to start a family with my wife, get a good job and raise my kids to be the best that they can be,” he said.  He also aspires to someday create a television series.  “I have a lot of great ideas that I can hopefully someday bring to life, and bring people out there in T.V. land some enjoyment,” Relitz stated.  

by Rachel Kempen

Contributing writer




Since 2006, Jennifer Liberty-Clark, a proud member of Cambridge’s Anoka-Ramsey Community College (ARCC) psychology department, has been connecting with students on more than just an intellectual level. 

To her, college is more than just shuffling students around, and memorizing certain facts. It is about a time in a student’s life to reinvent, and discover their true selves.

“We are all like onions, with many layers. Peeling them back is finding our true self. I feel like it’s a life process, for sure, but as far as my career goes the onion has been peeled. I have found the inner core, the thing that was written for me to be, and to do long before I was born,” said Liberty-Clark.

However, Liberty-Clark didn’t always know that she’d end up with her career path as an educator. It took her years of peeling back the layers, and a twist in the road to find her purpose in life.




Psychology wasn’t anything new to Liberty-Clark growing up. Her uncle, George Petrangelo, was a psychology professor at St. Cloud University. Although, it wasn’t so much his two master’s degrees and doctorate that impressed her, but his knowledge for people, and how he interacted with them, mentioned Liberty-Clark.

It wasn’t until college as a freshman that Liberty-Clark truly got hooked on psychology, she said. The final push was a general psychology course. By 1991, Liberty-Clark received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in psychology with an emphasis in human resource management.

While working at a bank Liberty-Clark went on to earn her master’s degree in 1995 at St. Cloud University with two focal areas in counseling psychology and vocational rehabilitation. However, has life would have it, by the time she graduated with her degree the State of Minnesota had changed their licensing laws. “Basically, counselors were made obsolete with only a master’s degree, because insurance companies wouldn’t pay for them,” said Liberty-Clark.

“I was very disappointed and so went back to the bank to work while I figured out my route. I ended up working for Dale Carnegie Training in their Minnesota branch selling training/consulting services to fortune 100 and 500 companies. I also began actually training our customers. I did that for 10 years when I took an adjunct position at Century Community College teaching lifespan psychology,” said Liberty-Clark.

Slowly after that she eased her way out of the training and development field and into teaching at ARCC, Liberty-Clark explained.

Since then she has been teaching students about more than just theories of psychology, and the theorists that created them; she has been teaching them to believe in themselves, and embrace education, and how they can be the voice of change in the world. If nothing else, Liberty-Clark hopes to teach students that they are worthy of a college education, of being successful and grabbing happiness as their own. “If they leave my classes seeing ‘the cup half full rather than half empty’, I’ve done my job,” added Liberty-Clark.

by Josh Gloe

Contributing writer




With every bump in the road, pain shot through the leg of a young John Loomis. He had yet again broken his leg, this time in the middle of a Cub Scouts meeting. Although it was one out of many times he had to deal with a broken bone, that did not dull the pain.

Loomis, now 18 years old, and an Anoka-Ramsey Community College student, was born with brittle bones, technically known as osteogenesis imperfecta. The student estimates that he has broken a bone around 50 times in his life. He has undergone much pain, suffering, surgical treatments, and hospital time.

Through such hardship in his life, Loomis’ faith carries him through the good times and the bad, and he has developed a love for music. He explained that he continues to develop his passion in his faith and in his music, and it helps fuel him when times are tough, as well as when life is not as difficult.

Loomis is literally one in a million. Only one out of every million people diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta do not receive it genetically. Loomis is one of the extremely rare cases in that he did not inherit his brittle bones from family members.

Throughout his life, Loomis has had countless surgeries and medical procedures to suffer through, aside from the pain of breaking bones. In one notable case, in January of 2007, he had a major surgery on his back.

“I had extreme scoliosis,” he said, “and I had to have my vertebrae fused together.” After a lengthy amount of time spending all day in his bed for week after week, and after a slow recovery, Loomis’ back is essentially immobile. “Now I can’t bend my back,” he said.

Loomis said he kept track of those last few moments before surgery, because he knew he would be limited after the procedure. In reference to the morning of the surgery, he said, “I got to crack my back for the last time at 7 a.m. that day.”

A couple of years later, in September of 2009, Loomis had an external fixator inserted into his leg through what he described as a very painful surgical process. This was done in hopes of extending the length of one of his legs, as one was shorter than the other.

“I had five osteotomies,” he explained, “and the external fixator was on my femur. I had to daily use screws and bolts to lengthen it.” This was, he explained, yet another severely painful process. Loomis ended up having to stay almost completely immobile in his bed for several more months, until December of 2009.

Not three months later, in March of 2010, Loomis began feeling severe abdominal pain. “At first,” he said, “I thought that I had the flu. Well, after not eating for five days and being in quite a bit of pain - and that’s saying much for me - I told mom that I thought I was going to die one night. She said, ‘Well, I guess we should take you into the emergency room.’”

“Well, they poked and prodded, and finally, after about five hours, found the problem. I had burst my appendix, and it had been burst for three days. The doctor said that I would have died that night if we had not come in.”

Throughout all of this, the suffering, the near death experience, and the reasons to want to give up hope, Loomis has held his head high and grasped a higher power. His religious faith has given him hope and strength to carry on. “It is the most important part of my life,” he said.

By writing and performing music for the Catholic Marian group Schoenstatt (German for “beautiful place”), which is a global organization with several groups located in Minnesota, he combines his spirituality with his love for music.

Loomis has been playing piano for 10 years, cello for eight years, guitar for two years, and the drums for two years.

Throughout his times of hardship and troubles, pain and suffering, music was always a big part of his life. If he couldn’t physically play an instrument, he would be listening to it or singing it from his bed during his times of recovery.

Now on the rebound, Loomis is planning on working towards his Associates in Fine Arts degree in the area of music at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. He plans on using this to further his love of music, God, and the people around him.

by Michel Relitz

Contributing writer




Game on! Anoka-Ramsey Community College student Rachel Kempen is tired of the same old mistakes in video games. That’s why she’s setting her controls for auto-pilot; destination: game design. 

Kempen has given much thought to what career path to choose and has settled on game design. “The reason behind being a game designer is really simple,” said Kempen. “I enjoy games- everything from Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, to World of Warcraft and Doom. Heck, even Tetris can keep me entertained for hours.” 

Kempen spoke about story-lines, graphics, and game play. Beyond her love for the games she sees much room for improvement in the overall design of games. “The way certain areas or encounters are designed, they are just either extremely stupid and you begin to wonder, ‘who the heck thought this was a great idea’, said Kempen, “or other times they are so hard that you find yourself raging at your T.V. or computer.” 

Kempen added that there are times during games when she felt she could do a better job with the design. She said, “I always have these ideas pop into my head about what should have happened, or what they could have done to make an event better.” 

All this and more is what’s driving Kempen towards game design. Looking towards the future Kempen noted that, “It would be amazing to see my own ideas and designs in a popular video game. I could point something out and be like, ‘I designed that’.  Not to mention I’d have a blast having a career in game design.”

by Michael Relitz

Contributing writer




Some teachers obtain their degrees looking toward teaching at universities, yet others prefer state schools and smaller community colleges. Dr. Kate Maurer, member of the Anoka-Ramsey Community College (ARCC) English department, has had the best of both worlds.

Maurer was born in Little Falls, Minn and raised in St. Cloud, Minn where she attended a parochial high school. Maurer grew up believing she could be whatever she wanted to be, thanks to her mother’s praises. 

In her early post-secondary education, Maurer was engaged in scientific studies. She believed that a person always had to study something that was a challenge to them, but she soon became ill and fell behind. 

Maurer recalled, “When I was a sophomore in college I got very sick. I ended up missing about a month of school, and if you miss a month of chemistry and calculus when they are not easy for you to begin with, you will never catch up.” It was at that point in her education that Maurer had an epiphany. She added, “That’s when I realized, ‘wow, I don’t have to take something that’s hard for me.’ I always enjoyed literature and reading, and it never dawned on me that I could study for something that I have an affinity for.” 

Maurer explained that she was drawn to teaching by example. “I had some really good role models -- some professors who I just would do anything for. They were amazing, which made me want to be like them.” 

Maurer went on to obtain her bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota Duluth and followed that with a masters from Marquette University in Milwaukee where she also got her doctorate.  

While at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Maurer worked as a teacher’s assistant (T.A.). She stated, “I was a T.A., which in our field means you run the whole class. It doesn’t mean you help the professor, you are the professor.” She added, “Once I started doing that I really liked it. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to go but I found that I really sort of grew into my personality once I had to be in charge of a classroom, and I really enjoyed it. First it was to pay the bills and it quickly became something I very much enjoyed.”

Maurer has been teaching in one capacity or another since 1989. Before coming to ARCC she taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth for nine years. Maurer stated, “I wanted to come to a teaching-centered school. I had some philosophical differences with the approach of the four-year school.” Those differences were enough to convince her to make the move to the smaller campus of ARCC. 

Comparing ARCC to the University of Minnesota Duluth, Maurer said, “I like that it [ARCC] is very student orientated. To me that doesn’t mean, bend over backwards and do whatever the students want, but it means I’m given the freedom to spend time with you, to help you to get to know you as opposed to,  just ‘get them through, don’t care about them, push them on through.’ We are encouraged to get to know our students individually and spend time with them.” 

Maurer explained that she is happy with her decision to make the move to a smaller school and has no future plans on moving back to a bigger school. She is currently involved in teaching courses at ARCC such as: college writing and critical reading, British literature, introduction to literature, and the art of watching films. She also hopes to one day teach a special topic Shakespeare course.