Her many achievements at Lakeland did not go unnoticed. The native of Prairie du Sac, Wis., received a whopping five teaching job offers before choosing to teach mathematics to sixth- and seventh-graders at Oostburg Middle School.
“It was overwhelming to have those options and it was a difficult decision,” she says. “But I’ve grown to love this area, and I think this is the best fit. I have a view of Lake Michigan from my apartment in Sheboygan. Every morning, I get to see the sun rise over the lake. How cool is that?”
Thrune is excited about becoming a full-time teacher, and looks forward to beginning in the fall.
“I have fallen in love with middle school-aged kids, and I really like math,” she says. “I truly, truly, truly want kids to like math and have fun doing math. It’s not as hard as people make it out to be.”
As her time at Lakeland wound down, Thrune’s impressive resume represented a well-rounded small-college experience. She was on the Dean’s List every year, was a winner of both the Outstanding Student in Mathematics and the Outstanding Student in Spanish awards and was a member of the Spanish National Honor Society. She played four years on the women’s basketball team (she was a captain for two) and served the college as a resident assistant, admissions ambassador, math tutor and Spanish teaching assistant. She studied abroad in Colombia and China and fell in love with traveling.
More recently, she just completed her student teaching at Kohler Middle School and coached Kohler High School’s JV2 girls’ basketball team.
After spending the summer at home, she’ll return to Sheboygan County to launch her teaching career, keeping Lakeland close to her heart.
“Lakeland did so much for me and I will always be grateful,” she says. “I arrived at Lakeland a quiet person but soon became myself. It was important for me to know everybody at Lakeland, to be able to put a face with every name. And everyone knew who I was, too, which made me feel like I belonged. The professors were unbelievably supportive. At a big school, I would have felt lost.”