Dr. Schroeder has been teaching in the biology department at Millikin University for eight years teaching classes for the biology major as well as non-major classes and upper level classes and the graduate nursing program.

In the past she has taught in the edge program but was on maternity leave this year during the program and wasn’t able to participate in the program. Schroeder has also been the faculty advisor for the sororities Sigma Lambda Gamma (SLG) and Alpha Phi Omega (APO). On top of all these classes taught and sororities advised, Schroeder received tenure in August of 2014.

Recently Schroeder won the Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award. Today I sat down with Dr. Schroeder to ask her a few questions about the award as well as her teaching career here at Millikin.

I asked Schroeder what this award is and she said, “The award recognizes excellence in teaching as well leadership roles done to the university.”

According to Schroeder, “there is an award called the Teaching Excellence Award which is similar to the this award but that award focuses on teaching as for this award focuses both on teaching as well as leadership around campus.”

But before she could win this award or receive tenure at Millikin, Dr. Schroeder had to start teaching at Millikin. I asked Dr. Schroeder if she always wanted to be a professor. According to her she didn’t always want to be a professor because she said she had a fear of public speaking, but when she was in grad school, she got experience with teaching and grew out of her fear of public speaking.

I also asked her how she got to teaching at Millikin and according to her she liked how Millikin had a smaller campus setting which is similar to Eastern Illinois University where she attended undergraduate school and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she attended grad school. She wanted to have the ability to get to know the students, which is something she felt Millikin gave the ability to do.

I also asked Dr. Schroeder how she found out about Millikin, her response was that she “grew up around Chicago and had friends that ended up going to Millikin such as award winning Christian recording artist Matthew West. So when I was looking for a job, I found Millikin.”

Some advice Schroeder has for incoming freshman is, “Don’t be afraid to try new things. Whether its classes or organizations or people you usually wouldn’t usually talk to. If there’s a class that you’re not sure about or an organization that you’re wondering about joining, just don’t be afraid to give it a shot, you may end up enjoying the class or the organization. If there is someone you usually don’t talk to, try and talk with them because you may find out that you have things in common.”