What has your life been like since leaving Southeastern? What do you do for a living? And have you married and/or had children?
Since graduating, I taught elementary school in Ponchatoula for nine years. Next, I taught at the SLU Laboratory School for four years. Then I left teaching to coordinate professional development for Louisiana teachers via an NSF-funded program known as the Louisiana Systemic Initiatives Program (LaSIP). We developed PD offerings coordinated through our Baton Rouge office as well as awarded grants to universities across the state where teachers in each region could benefit from PD programs in their area. The next move was to northern Virginia where I had the opportunity to apply the experience I gained at LaSIP to coordinate a similar program nationwide for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). From the start, the workshops were sold-out events.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Dept. of Education changed the rules for how schools could spend the funds they had used to pay teacher tuition and travel funds, so NCTM was forced to end a successful and impactful program. Fortunately for me, the organization wanted to keep me around and I was the editor of Teaching Children Mathematics, an award-winning professional journal for teachers of elementary students. I never thought I would end up using what I learned and the experiences I gained in student publications professionally, but that is exactly what happened. When my Dad saw how much I enjoyed my career as an editor he confessed that at the time he thought I was wasting time (and tuition) taking journalism courses but was delighted how my career path led back to publishing. Now I am retired and back in Louisiana. I live in Hammond, very close to the SLU campus. My life has indeed come full circle.
What do you remember most about your time at Southeastern and working with student publications?
My first assignment for The Lion’s Roar was to attend the weekly student government meetings then write a report for the next issue. Prior to one meeting there were rumors of a pending showdown between some of the members. Now I don’t even remember the issue. I remember that fairly quickly the group went into a closed session and all visitors and press had to exit. It went on for some length of time. I could tell voices were being raised but could not understand what they were arguing about. At one point, a rather dramatic member from the theatre department flung the door open yelling and crying unintelligibly. He was pulled back into the room, and the meeting continued for another hour or so. Once the gavel brought an end to the meeting, I was able to score an exclusive interview with that dramatic member. This will sound odd, but all in all it was a fun night. Typical student government meetings could be rather boring. Obviously, that one was memorable for me.
Give me your back story. How did you wind up at Southeastern and interested in working with student publications?
I grew up in Ponchatoula and served on the student staff of our high school newspaper. Getting involved in SLU student publications was a natural transition. At that time, I did not see journalism as a career path. It was just something I enjoyed.
What would you say is the biggest thing you learned while at Southeastern?
I don’t know that I can distill all I learned at Southeastern down to one thing. I can say it set me on a path and looking back I see how everything worked together to make me the woman that I am.
Southeastern Student Publications Alumni 