Stephen Twenge

Honorary Membership (2009)
North Lake College

Stephen Twenge participated in TACRAO in a variety of ways through the years:  serving on committees such as management, historical, legislative, local arrangement and audit, having the monograph "Academic Fraud and Misrepresentation" posted on the TACRAO website as a Hot Topic for several years and making seven professional program presentations on a variety of subjects at TACRAO annual meetings.

In addition to TACRAO, Steve was active in AACRAO though committee activities, making twenty four professional program presentations, as well as serving as the Publicity Chair for the 1992 Dallas AACRAO annual meeting.

He served as Director of Admissionsand Registration at North Lake College, part of the Dallas County Community College District, in Irving, Texas from 1978 to 2009. During his tenure, North Lake College grew from 2,500 students to over 10,000 students. Holding a Bachelors and Masters degree from St. Cloud State University (Minnesota), he learned the Admission and Registrar profession during his eight years at Winona State University.  Prior to that, he taught high school history and social studies at a high school in Minnesota.

In 2009, Steve moved to San Diego, California with his wife of 42 years, JoAnn, to be closer to his daughter's family. Their daughter, Jean, is a professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and the author of the book Generation Me-Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled and More Miserable Than Ever Before and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic-Living in the Age of Entitlement.  Their son, Daniel, resides in New York City and works at Morgan Stanly Investment Bank.

Sustaining himself through those years of Admission andRegistration management with employee turnover, administrative re-direction, changing Texas and Federal regulations, computer software re-configurations, and different registration systems has been the camaraderie of other Admission and Registrar professionals,  a cadre of dedicated employees,  personal  faith, a sense of humor as well as being guided by a few pieces of wisdom such as the advice from the late US Illinois Senator Everet Dirkson who stated, "I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times." Or psychologist Henry James' insight: "The deepest principle of human nature is the desire to be appreciated".  And finally, trying to remember to use the ultimate solution problem solver "When all else fails, read the directions."

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