Vandyck earned her Ph.D. from Cardinal Stritch University in 2019 with a dissertation on uncommon black names in the classroom.
While she was teaching elementary school in Atlanta, she studied for a masters degree at Georgia Southern, then returned to Beloit with her young son from her first marriage.
A co-worker had complained that her upcoming class would do poorly, based on the list of students with mostly "black-sounding" names.
[5][6] Having previously worked as a teacher, Vandyck currently directs a program for first-generation, disabled and low-income students at Beloit College, in addition to owning a Performance Coaching Agency.
[2][6] In the fall of 2019, Vandyck sponsored the Marijuana Pepsi Scholarship for first-generation African-American students at UW–Whitewater.