MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO — When Robbyn Wacker sees international students on her university’s campus, trying to navigate an unfamiliar college campus for the first time, she can relate.
Wacker is a first-generation college student whose own parents never finished high school.
Her grandparents were German immigrants who fled Russia to avoid persecution by the Bolsheviks. They settled near Greeley, Colo., where her mom grew up working in the beet fields and quit high school in the Great Depression.
“They made sure I had all the things they didn’t have, just in terms of experiences,” Wacker said. “But it was that support and then that value of education, that education was important.”
It paid off for Wacker, who took over as president of St. Cloud State University in July. She will be officially inaugurated Monday as the university’s first permanent president since the death of Earl Potter in a car crash in June 2016.
Read more: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/10/15/new-st-cloud-state-president-brings-love-of-learning-to-job
