Returning Adult Student Awards: Balancing learning with family, work, service

“Throughout my years in the workforce, I’ve tried to use my job to help others,” says Magda Kmiecik, one of two students who recently received UW–Madison’s Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Award.

Kmiecik, who graduates this spring, will enter the master of science in social work program in the fall as a second-year graduate student. She originally enrolled at UW–Madison in the late 1960s considering a major in journalism, but her intense involvement in the anti-war movement and other issues took a toll on her studies. After leaving school, she took a job as a clerk with an affiliate of the Firstar Corp. and in the next 25 years rose to vice president and senior equity trader with Firstar’s investment management firm.

“Business was not my first choice for a career, but finance is interesting because you have to keep learning and have to keep up with national and international events,” Kmiecek says. “And as my responsibilities grew I came to influence policies that encouraged diversity and family responsibilities.”

Throughout her years in finance and while she and her husband were raising their daughter, Anneka, Kmiecik never lost sight of completing her degree. She enrolled in UW-Green Bay’s Extended Degree Program in the mid-’80s, but the demands of work and family meant she had to put her education aside again after three semesters.

Finally in 2003, when her position was eliminated in a corporate merger, Kmiecek had an opportunity to reassess both her professional and personal goals. She re-enrolled at UW–Madison as a social work major, with the goal of working with low-income and minority populations in Madison. Her course work for the past two years has included service-learning placements at the Salvation Army Family Homeless Shelter and the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice, and she’s currently a student social worker in the Third Street Program at the downtown YWCA.

“I’ve learned so much from the people I’ve met in these placements and from seeing the obstacles they face every day,” Kmiecik says. “Now I’m hoping to work with Dane County Social Services so I can see the system from the perspective of people on the ‘inside.'”

Maya Acker, the other recipient of this year’s award, will graduate in August with a bachelor’s degree in education and hopes to teach science in middle or high school.

“Teaching science appeals to me because it has so many connections to the choices students make in their day to day lives, and because it’s a constantly changing field where you have to keep educating yourself if you’re going to teach others,” Acker says.

Acker dropped out of college at 19, became a certified child-care provider at 24 and returned to college at 26. For the past six years she has attended UW–Madison full time while also running her child-care business and raising her sons Haden, 12, and Cassidy, 8.

In addition to her course work in education, Acker has tutored in a number of settings: at Madison West High School with cognitively disabled students, at Verona Area High School with students in danger of failing or dropping out, and at Madison’s Toki Middle School with minority eighth-graders needing extra help in math.

Currently she’s an assistant in the Homework and Learning Program (HeLP) at Glacier Creek Middle School in the Middleton-Cross Plains District. As if that weren’t enough, she also has been a tour guide at UW–Madison’s Geology Museum and a member of the advisory board for the Child Care Tuition Assistance Program.

She’s also active in Haden and Cassidy’s lives, serving as a regular parent volunteer in some of Cassidy’s classes, assistant coach for Cassidy’s soccer team and team manager of Haden’s baseball team – which her husband, Troy, coaches.

“One of the wonderful things about teaching is getting to spend summer and winter breaks with my family,” Acker says. “We moved around a lot when I was growing up, which really helps me appreciate this kind of stability.”

Established in 1981, the Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Awards honor the increasing numbers of non-traditional students who return to UW–Madison to complete their undergraduate degrees while juggling the commitments and responsibilities of work and family.

These awards, as well as the Nancy W. Denney Memorial Scholarship, Single-Parent Scholarships, and other financial awards for non-traditional students, are sponsored by UW–Madison’s Dean of Students Office, Adult and Student Services Center in the Division of Continuing Studies, the American Association of University Women-Madison branch, the University League and numerous private donors.