Teach and repeat: Boughers make PFW a family tradition

An untraditional student who didn’t graduate from college until her early 40s, Staci Bougher loved bringing her young children to the place where she was earning her degree. Starting when Genevieve was 3 and Ben was 1, they met all of Mom’s professors and enjoyed being on the campus of Purdue University Fort Wayne.

“I wanted them to be comfortable on a big campus and not have the idea of, `I can’t go to a big college because it would be a scary place,’” Bougher said. “My kids are my life, so my professors knew all about them because I would have them interact as often as was reasonable.”

Bougher graduated in 2011 and worked as a family lawyer for a decade before deciding she needed a change. Shortly after, Mike Wolf, chair of PFW’s Department of Political Science, asked if Bougher might be interested in teaching an intro to peace and conflict class. After all, she was very educated, had taken classes from faculty such as Georgia Ulmschneider and James Toole, and was comfortable speaking in front of people.

Bougher also found she loved teaching and making connections with students. Starting last fall, her second year as a limited term lecturer at PFW, Bougher began teaching intro to American government and business law classes, which allowed her to share her legal background.

Ben, now 21, is a commercial diver, saving money for his college expenses, and Genevieve studied at The American University in Paris before earning a master’s degree at Trinity College Dublin. After four years overseas, she came home to reunite with family and friends. Then her mother told her about a teaching opening at PFW—the same intro to peace and conflict course Wolf had proposed.

"I spent a long time away from family, and now I have this opportunity to teach what I am passionate about in a place I've known my whole life," Genevieve said.

After majoring in history and international and comparative politics as an undergrad, Genevieve’s master's thesis was in peace and conflict studies.

Partly because she may be only a few years older than her students, Genevieve said she can easily relate to them. But she also has her mother’s touch in making her students feel comfortable and engaged enough to easily build connections.

“I just used a lot of what I remember from being a student, what I expected from a professor, what I would want to know, and the stylistic choices,” Genevieve said. “It can be very fun at times, though it’s a massive learning curve that I’m still on. It was an exciting opportunity to talk about what I really love and [want] other people know about it. I really, really like teaching, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it.”

From her early visits as a youngster, Genevieve feels comfortable in Kettler Hall and the Liberal Arts Building where she teaches. If she had a problem, she knew whom to ask for help.

“It’s really cool to see how my mom has found such a home here,” Genevieve said. “She loved PFW when she was attending, and now to come teach here is a blessing on my end.  I learn from all my colleagues, but then I get to go and talk to my mom about it. To hear all the passion she has is just infectious.”

As Wolf said, “Not every student can do an internship, so Staci's and Genevieve's vision of how to apply critical thinking through applied classroom experiences expands the students’ successful habits of mind and knowledge. It takes considerable work. The positive evaluations indicate how the students trust their approaches and value them as instructors.”

This fall, Genevieve is adding a class she is developing on gender and the environment.

“It’s just really cool to see who she is becoming,” Bougher said. “To be able to follow her passion and then also share that with other students and maybe ignite something in them—what more could you ask for?”