James ’67 and Dolores Trethewey have established a new endowed professorship in the School of Business and Economics.
With their $1.16 million gift commitment, the couple is underwriting the James and Dolores Trethewey APMP Professorship. The inaugural recipient is Associate Professor Dean Johnson, founding director of the Advanced Portfolio Management Program (APMP).
"Special programs like the APMP are examples of the tremendous role universities play in our society."
The professorship will support the APMP, a hands-on, real-life investment program that Johnson launched in 1998, with the Tretheweys’ backing.
“This is a great and unexpected honor,” Johnson said. “I already owe them so much. Jim and Dee’s support from the first day I proposed the APMP was key to its starting. And, they have also entrusted APMP students with managing their scholarship funds for years.”
Participants in the APMP manage an investment portfolio of approximately $1.3 million in the equity and fixed-income market. Funds are provided by a number of donors through the Michigan Tech Fund, and the revenues go to sponsor student travel and scholarships. Students travel for national investment competitions and, as top finishers, were once invited to open the NASDAQ stock exchange. They also visit the Chicago Mercantile exchange and attend Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
With the stock market down, it has been difficult to raise the necessary funds, and Johnson is thrilled that the Tretheweys have chosen to support the APMP. With their gift, the program will have a permanent source of funding that will carry it through tough economic times.
“It’s very humbling to have somebody recognize my dream and give it such incredible support,” Johnson added. “I’ve just been doing what I thought was the right thing to do: educate students.”
For the Tretheweys, that’s what their gift is all about. “When you pass through the halls of Michigan Tech, you come out with a first-class ticket to anywhere you want to go,” Jim Trethewey said. “The route and the destination are up to the individual. And special programs like the APMP are examples of the tremendous role universities play in our society. We all have an obligation to help them.”
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to nearly 7,500 students from more than 60 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
