Getting to know Dr. Shultz
Dr. Kara Shultz sits at the head of the classroom, teaching her students everything they want to know about communication studies. Her students are making connections about the material to their everyday lives. This is something Dr. Shultz is passionate about, “When I see students making connections they wouldn’t have made before, that is the heart of education.” Dr. Shultz loves to influence her students to engage in learning, especially about topics that interests them.
Dr. Kara Shultz outside the Communications Studies offices.
Dr. Kara Shultz sits at the head of the classroom, teaching her students everything they want to know about communication studies. Her students are making connections about the material to their everyday lives. This is something Dr. Shultz is passionate about, “When I see students making connections they wouldn’t have made before, that is the heart of education.” Dr. Shultz loves to influence her students to engage in learning, especially about topics that interests them.
Dr. Shultz is not just any professor she is Chair of the Communication Studies Department, and actively involved in the university. Surprisingly this has not always been Dr. Shultz’s dream.
She was born and raised in West minster Colorado. Later she attended The University of Northern Colorado for her undergraduate degree, which is similar to Bloomsburg in size. Her degree was not focused on communications, “I intended to be a party planner,” said Dr. Shultz. She got an internship with a party planning company and soon realized she wanted to do something different. She moved on to work in a hotel and realized she did not like it, still wanting to find her passion.
Dr. Shultz took a few communication classes and was very interested in them. Her professor soon recommend that she go back to school for a master’s degree in Communications Studies. Dr. Shultz decided to do just that, she attended The University of Denver and earned her PhD in the Speech communications department.
This achievement of education was huge for Dr. Shultz especially since she was the first person in her immediate family to earn a degree. Growing up she can remember always having the need to analyze everything which is a huge part of communications. She remembers sitting at her dinner table around the age of ten trying to analyze the game Pacman. She is very much a rhetorician, meaning she always wants to understand and analyze the use of language and talking.
A huge influence in Dr. Shultz’s life is her family. “My family always had exchange students,” said Dr. Shultz. She grew up in a multicultural environment. Surrounded by many different people that came from different places had a huge impact on the way she viewed the world. She came from a family that was very open and inviting that could discuss many things.
Something that comes as a shock to most people about Dr. Shultz is she is a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her students all enjoyed getting to know that about her. Something else her students probably did not know about her is how optimistic she is. “My mom always called me a Pollyanna, I tend to believe people are good at heart,” said Dr. Shultz. She could not think of anything particularly fearful of because she tends to look at everything as a positive.
Dr. Shultz’s goal for the future is to watch her kids, Noah and Zachariah, grow up. She wants to see them grow up to be happy and healthy individuals. She already has the job she loves, so in the future she wants to focus on her two sons. Dr. Shultz says, “I just want them to be happy.”
