Wednesday, January 15, 2025
CVTC alumna excited to be 'home'
Emily Keeler, 28, of Spring Valley, found herself at CVTC after a stint at a university. As a CVTC alumna, she came back as a member of the Alumni Board and just recently as an employee.
Colleagues at Chippewa Valley Technical College love nothing more than to see students graduate and walk off into their careers with businesses throughout west-central Wisconsin.
But the excitement is two-fold when those students graduate and return to CVTC for a career.
Once Emily Keeler experienced CVTC as a student, she knew the atmosphere was perfect for a career.
Keeler, 28, a marketing program alumna, is the college’s Development and Grants Officer based in River Falls, but she also travels to Eau Claire once a week.
However, her educational journey wasn’t always as clear as her determination to work for CVTC.
She graduated from Ashland High School in 2014 and started UW-Eau Claire as a psychology major. Quickly, she realized the major was “too heavy” for her. She changed her major to undeclared and it left her feeling lost.
“By second semester sophomore year I kind of started a downward spiral,” she said. “My grades were dropping. My mental health was dropping. I was not in a good place, but I didn’t want to go home because if I did, I felt like I was accepting defeat.”
With her parents’ support, she started looking at other options, which included CVTC. She had been considering a major in communications. At CVTC, the marketing program was comparable, and Keeler decided she was going to make the move.
She knew she had made the right decision when, on the first day of class, now-retired CVTC marketing instructor Ric Messner remembered her name and hometown from meeting her during a tour of the college two months prior.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I belong here,’ ” she said. “I texted my mom right away and I told her my instructor remembered me. It felt different. Everyone told me about CVTC – that you matter here. So, literally, day one, that was proven to me.”
Keeler finished three semesters in the marketing program and determined she would finish some general education courses at CVTC her fourth semester and transfer to UW-River Falls to get a bachelor’s degree in marketing and communications. She did summer and winter courses and was finished with her bachelor’s degree in just over one year.
“While I loved my freshman year, I was like, dang, why didn’t I do this to begin with?” she reflected. “This was not the journey I planned, but I was so glad to complete what I started.”
And there was always a part of her that knew she would come back, she said.
She thought she would work in the industry for a few years and come back as an instructor, but then she connected with the Foundation team at CVTC and became a member of the Alumni Board. When the Development Grants Officer position became available, she was interested.
“I’m quite literally giving back to exactly what helped transform my journey, so it’s been amazing,” she said. “I came in day one and I was like, ‘Honey, I’m home!’ ”
In Her Own Words
"I think there was part of me that, because I am the alumni population, I'm so close to that fresh out of college age, that the idea of raising money for scholarships for students my age, if not a little bit younger, was a little daunting at first. I wondered, am I capable of this position? Do I understand what that role means? And I think it has ended up being a strength. I'm fresh out. I remember what it what it feels like. I remember being at the scholarship ceremony and so it kind of ended up helping me more than I had expected. I'm fresh out of that experience. It wasn't that long ago, but it's been fun to look at my Facebook memories showing my first day of my second semester, and I'm like, Oh honey, you don't even know you'll be back, baby."
