I graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1972 with a BA degree is Social Studies. I received a Masters Degree in 1988 from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in Social Science. In 1993 I was chosen as a Nebraska Economics’ Fellow and participated in a three-year economics project sponsored by the National Math and Science Foundation.
I was awarded a Masters Degree in Economics in 1996 from the University of Nebraska. That same year I was chosen as an Ak-Sar-Ben Leadership Teacher from the State of Nebraska. In 1996 I also attended the National Geographic Washington D.C. Summer Institute.
My leadership work is done in conjunction with the Renaissance Project, a Kimball program funded by the Kellogg Foundation. I serve as Youth Leadership coordinator and also am a member of the KEY (Kimball Empowering Youth) Leadership team for Kimball Public Schools.
During the last school term I wrote and was awarded four grants for leadership activities; a Character Counts Grant to purchase curriculum materials for our school, a $24,000 U.S. West Grant for technology equipment to develop Project LEAD (Leadership Exchange and Dialogue) with a school in Silver Springs, Maryland, $1,000 Sheila Graff Award for the development of our school’s BEST leadership curriculum, and a $1,500 Grant from Learn and Serve America towards development of service learning in our elementary schools.
I live in Kimball, Nebraska with my husband Pat who teaches math and computer science. We have two children, Coley, a graduate student in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University at Bloomington, and Rebeca, a sophomore majoring in Spanish and Psychology at Middlebury, Vermont.