[3] Although she lived on the corner of Shawnee Pass and Cherokee Drive and frequently walked with her grandfather through the Native American mounds situated in Vilas Park, the history of her surroundings was never made explicit to her.
[3] She also spent a lot of time as a young girl digging for treasure in her neighbors trash cans or down at the local creek, fascinated by the potential story a discarded item could tell.
[3] She attributes her subsequent career in anthropology to this childhood love for finding things coupled with an environment saturated in Native American history that she desired to learn more about.
[3] At the beginning of her second year things began to fall into place when a TA to one of her lab courses introduced her to Joan Freeman, the Director of Archaeology at the Wisconsin State Historical Society.
[3] Before earning her master's degree, she dropped out for a year to start a free school in Madison with a group of fellow anthropology students and one faculty member.
[4] Other noteworthy accolades from her time as a faculty member include her role as assistant provost which saw her chairing a Commission on Women and penned the Minnesota Plan II.