It’s been decades since he graduated from Rend Lake College, but that hasn’t stopped Jim Mounier from giving back to education.  The 1972 RLC graduate is now the Senior Vice President at Merrill Lynch in Rockford, and has been named the Rend Lake College Foundation Alumnus of the Year for 2014.  He will be awarded the honor during the Foundation Annual Dinner on December 4^th.  Mounier, a native of Linton, Indiana, relocated to Southern Illinois his senior year of high school.  After graduating from Mount Vernon Township High School in 1970, he decided to attend RLC with a focus in mathematics.  With that degree, Mounier has worked his way up at Merrill Lynch to help well-off families with their finances.  Now living in Caledonia, a small village northeast of Rockford, Mounier and his wife Carole regularly give back to a number of communities, including Illinois State University, where Mounier graduated in 1974.  While at RLC, Mounier said there were several instructors and classes that stood out.  More recently, Mounier published his first book, titled “The 50 Question You Need to Ask – To Achieve the Financial Advisor Relationship You Deserve.”  The idea for the book came from a question his wife asked about managing their life in his absence.  Mounier began putting together a list of who to contact and all the things she would need, and it turned into a book.  He finished it in 2004, and was self-published in 2006.  In addition to the Alumnus of the Year award, several other awards and honors will be highlighted at the Foundation Annual Dinner.  For more information, contact the Foundation at 618-437-5321, extensions 1214 or 1324.