There’s no place like home for UW-Whitewater professor
Released: August 18, 2003
Some kids growing up in small towns welcome any opportunity to leave for the “big city” in search of bigger and better things. But that was never the case for Whitewater native Sue Wildermuth, whose past and future connected when she landed a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Growing up in Whitewater was a very positive experience,” said Wildermuth. “I guess you could say that over the years I learned to appreciate the benefits of living in a small town. There were a lot more opportunities for recognition and community involvement.”
Wildermuth has especially fond memories of the university as a child, and later on, as a young adult.
“For as long as I can remember, there was always a very strong link between the Whitewater middle school and high school and the university itself,” recalled Wildermuth. “Almost all of the school plays and musical performances were held on the UW-Whitewater campus in what at the time was the Hyer Hall auditorium.”
“Which just goes to show how much the university has changed over the past 20 years,” added Wildermuth.
Wildermuth also remembers taking swimming lessons from UW-Whitewater students at the Williams Center pool. “The five of us Wildermuth siblings used to come at least once a week to take lessons,” she said. “I always thought it was so neat to come to the university and take lessons from UW-Whitewater students.”
With Wildermuth’s strong affection for Whitewater and the university, it would seem like an obvious decision for her to attend UW-Whitewater. However, that was only part of her reasoning for enrolling in the university in the fall of 1991.
“My father died when I was 13 years old, and with five of us, it just wasn’t economically feasible for us to attend a private college or an out-of-state university,” said Wildermuth. In the end, all but one of her five siblings attended UW-Whitewater, with her younger sister, Jenny, attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Attending UW-Whitewater was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made,” Wildermuth said. “My undergraduate college experience was more than just about going to class. I really felt like I made a connection with my professors.”
And it is the “connection” that Wildermuth felt that she believes is one of the university’s strongest selling points, making her decision to return to Whitewater in the fall of 2000 as an assistant professor of communication an easy one.
“I was in the last year of my Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and had completed everything but my dissertation,” said Wildermuth. “My advisor at the time had recommended that I begin applying for potential teaching positions. The communication department here at UW-Whitewater happened to have an opening and I decided to apply as an exception or an ‘A.B.D.,’ ‘all but dissertation.’”
To Wildermuth’s surprise, she was hired, but with the contingency that she complete her Ph.D. within one year. She began teaching at UW-Whitewater in the fall of 2000 and completed her Ph.D. in January 2001.
“Getting hired by the university really turned out to be a fortunate situation for me,” said Wildermuth. “My co-workers have been very nurturing and the administration has really provided me with a great deal of support.”
And so, the fairytale story of Sue Wildermuth ends…or so it would seem. However, the story doesn’t end there, because this little girl from a small town is in the process of conducting some big-time research.
“My two primary areas of interest in the field of communication deal with interpersonal and intercultural communication,” stated Wildermuth. “As far as interpersonal communication is concerned, I’m most interested in studying the effects that various media channels have on communication, specifically romantic relationships on the Internet.”
From her research, Wildermuth has found that people who “date” on the Internet feel stigmatized by the general public. “Many of these people feel, for example, that they are characterized as lacking social skills because they have turned to the Internet to find a romantic ‘partner,’” said Wildermuth.
Wildermuth also found that approximately 30 percent of her research subjects had at some point been involved in an extramarital affair online. “Many of these people engage in an affair because they consider it an ‘easy’ way to cheat on their current partner,” she stated.
Wildermuth’s other area of interest, intercultural communication, deals with the effectiveness of intercultural education and training.
Recent studies suggest that classroom-based cross-cultural communication courses do not make a significant difference in how students view other cultures, said Wildermuth. “In my current research on study abroad programs, I hope to counter that perception by documenting how classroom experiences, combined with experiential learning opportunities such as peer partnerships, service-learning or short-term study abroad programs positively impact students’ world view.”
Wildermuth’s research will take place within her current cross-cultural communication course. She has created a partnership with a class of Russian cross-cultural communication students. Her students, together with the Russian students, will spend the fall 2003 semester working collaboratively on class projects.
Back on a more personal level, Wildermuth couldn’t be more than pleased with her current situation.
“I’m only in my third year of teaching here at UW-Whitewater and I’m already teaching graduate-level courses,” said Wildermuth. “I’m being given the opportunity to adapt my research on interpersonal and intercultural communication to the classroom, and that’s something I’m really excited about.”
- Melissa DiMotto ,dimottom@uww.edu
