Long and Winding Road Continues for NAU Student
By Rochelle Hagel

Peggy Roozing found more than just an education when she found her way to National American University. She also found a job. She found classmates and coworkers who feel like family. Perhaps most important, she found what she wants to do when she grows up. But, more about that later.

The path to a bachelor’s degree was long and winding for Roozing. She “messed around at high school and didn’t take it seriously.” She got married and had her daughter Jewell, whom she stayed home to raise, working summers in the tourist industry. But, she had promised herself she would “do something with her life” by the time she was forty.

“I didn’t even think about it until I was actually there, but my first day of school at WDT was my fortieth birthday,” she said.

As part of completing her associate’s degree, she did part of her internship at the Department of Social Services in the fraud and investigation department. She did the second half of her internship with attorney John Murphy with an eye on full-time employment. She worked with Murphy as a paralegal and office manager for almost two years.

“He applied to be the assistant federal attorney and if he was hired I couldn’t go with him, so I applied at the state’s attorney’s office and clerk of courts.” After a short stint with the clerk of courts, she transferred to the state’s attorney’s office where she spent five years working with juvenile diversion.

It was there that she started seriously thinking about her bachelor’s degree.

“I initially came here with the thought of coming to get my bachelor’s degree as a paralegal,” Roozing said. “But, I decided that paralegal is not for me. It involves a lot of research. I’m more of a people person.” She chose to go pre-law instead.

She chose NAU because Mark Koehn (Legal Studies Coordinator, Rapid City Campus), who she had studied under at WDT, was here and also because it fit into her already busy life.

“It was close to my job and had flexible scheduling,” she said. “I liked the convenience of it.”

About a year into her studies, she was offered the position of administrative assistant to the Campus President and the Student Success Center.

“By then I’d gotten to know the staff and I knew that I really would like to work here. It has a small family-friendly atmosphere,” Roozing said. In the meantime, school, with just a couple of bumps in the road, was going well.

“I got As and Bs all the way through school,” she said. “My goal this time was to graduate cum laude and I actually graduated magna cum laude. I had to prove to myself that I could do it, because I knew I could.”

Roozing attended classes at NAU every quarter for eleven quarters – taking three classes every quarter – to finish her bachelor’s degree. She started with high hopes, but with enough self-awareness to know that she might want to quit someday. She enlisted her husband’s aid right away to get her through that.

“When I came back to school I told him, “if I get to a point where I want to quit, don’t let me.”

Roozing turned out, again, to be a pretty reliable predictor of her future.

“I went home one night practically bawling and I threw myself on the bed and said, ‘I’m tired of this, I can’t do it anymore, I’m quitting school.’” Her husband, though, remembering their earlier conversation, stood firm when her resolve faltered.

“He told me I couldn’t quit, I had told him not to let me.”

In November 2006 it all paid off, Roozing was awarded her bachelor of science in business administration with an emphasis in pre-law. She had also decided, finally, that she would like to teach.

“When I worked at the state’s attorney’s office, I started and taught a class I called ‘Girls Speaking Out’ and I really liked the interaction with the students.

Then about three quarters ago, “Peggy Schlechter (dean of student success) and I were talking about my teaching here at NAU and after I thought about it, I decided I’d really like to do it. That’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to stay at school and teach.”

To teach, though, she will need her master’s degree – so after only about a month’s break between finishing her bachelor’s – she began those classes.

When she’s finishes her master’s, Roozing plans to teach strategies for success, career management, management classes and maybe some law classes.

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