BACHELOR DEGREE REQUIREMENTS

JOHN HOEVEN was sworn in as the state’s 31st Governor in December 2000 and began working to build North Dakota’s future by focusing on six pillars of growth: education, economic development, agriculture, energy, technology and quality of life.

Under his leadership, North Dakota has expanded and diversified its economy, adding thousands of new jobs and growing its targeted industry sectors, including value-added agriculture, advanced manufacturing, energy development, technology-based business and tourism. During his term, North Dakota’s personal income growth has outpaced the national average. Today, North Dakota continues to grow its economy.

Because of Hoeven’s stewardship, the state ended the last fiscal biennium with a strong reserve for North Dakota’s future. In fact, under the governor’s leadership, the State of North Dakota cut property and income taxes by more than half a billion dollars in the last four years, while continuing to fund priorities like education, health care, law enforcement and other critical areas. His current budget focuses on investments that will continue to stimulate the state’s economy, as well as enhanced support for education, economic development and North Dakota families.

In his third term, Hoeven remains committed to enhancing the state’s business climate, reducing taxes and promoting a higher standard of living and a better quality of life for all North Dakotans. Building on previous initiatives, he has advanced new incentives for economic development, renewable energy, and research and development, as well as additional investments in education, including increases for teacher compensation, education equity and adequacy, and expanded funding for Centers of Excellence, an initiative that combines education and economic development to create higher-paying jobs and new business opportunities for North Dakota citizens.

Hoeven continues to promote EmpowerND, the state’s first multi-resource energy policy, which he initiated in 2002 as part of North Dakota’s comprehensive economic development strategic plan. EmpowerND has deployed a wide range of incentives for each energy sector, both renewable and traditional, as well as a conservation component. Through EmpowerND, Hoeven has worked to advance energy resources like lignite coal, oil and gas, while at the same time promoting renewable resources, such as wind, ethanol and biodiesel.

Protecting North Dakota’s citizens and communities has been an important focus of many of Hoeven’s policies and initiatives, including the introduction of new laws to strengthen the state’s violent and sexual offender statutes, and the expansion of North Dakota’s efforts to combat substance abuse, while helping young people involved with drugs through rehabilitative programs such as North Dakota’s Drug Courts.

Hoeven chairs the Governors’ Biofuels Coalition and serves on the Executive Committee of the National Governors Association. He previously served as chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, the Midwestern Governors Association, and the National Governors Association’s Health and Human Services Committee and Natural Resources Committee.

Born in Bismarck, North Dakota, Hoeven earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1979 and a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern University in 1981. He served as executive vice president of First Western Bank in Minot from 1986 to 1993, and from 1993 to 2000, served as president and CEO of the Bank of North Dakota, during which time the bank’s assets grew from $900 million to $1.6 billion.

Hoeven and his wife Mical (Mikey) have two children, Marcela and Jack.

Will A. Gunn was sworn in as the General Counsel for the Department of Veterans Affairs on May 26, 2009. As the Department’s top lawyer, Mr. Gunn oversees approximately 450 attorneys within the Office of the General Counsel, which provides proactive legal advice and representation to the Department concerning all aspects of its program and management responsibilities. The General Counsel supervises over 700 employees in Washington, D.C., and in field locations across the United States.

Mr. Gunn is a retired Air Force colonel, having served as a military lawyer in the Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps. In 1990, he was selected as a White House Fellow and served in the Executive Office of the President in the Office of Cabinet Affairs. In 2003, Mr. Gunn was named the first-ever Chief Defense Counsel in the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions. Mr. Gunn built a defense team and supervised all defense activities for detainees selected for trial before military commissions—the first proceedings of their kind to be conducted by the United States in over 60 years. Mr. Gunn won acclaim for his principled leadership and commitment to ensuring that detainees received effective representation. In doing so, he set the tone so that the military lawyers under his leadership were able to vigorously defend their clients. These efforts radically changed public perceptions about military lawyers and raised international attention on the Guantanamo prison camp.

In 2005, Mr. Gunn retired from the military and was named President and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington where he led one of the largest affiliates of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. In 2008, he founded the Gunn Law Firm to provide representation to military members and veterans in a range of administrative matters.

A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mr. Gunn graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with military honors in 1980. He is a 1986 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and while at Harvard, he was elected President of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the nation’s oldest student run legal services organization. Mr. Gunn also has a Masters of Laws degree in Environmental Law from the George Washington University School of Law and a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Mr. Gunn has served as chairman of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk and has served on the boards of Christian Service Charities and the Air Force Academy Way of Life Alumni Group. He has held leadership positions in a host of other bar association and community organizations and has also received numerous awards and honors including the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau’s Outstanding Alumni Award, a Human Rights Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the American Bar Association’s Outstanding Career Military Lawyer Award. In 2002, he was elected to the National Bar Association’s Military Law Section Hall of Fame.

Mr. Gunn is also a licensed minister. He and his wife, Dawn, live in Northern Virginia.