Veterinarian-turned-professor brings real-world experience to class
By Sarah A. Moser
Just before her junior year at MNU, Jill (Wilkinson ’96) Speicher decided she wanted to become a veterinarian. Jill, an English and Spanish major at the time, crammed in additional chemistry and biology classes to prepare for attending veterinary school. She went on to get her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree at Iowa State University in 2000. Little did she know that one day she would be teaching biology to a new crop of students at MNU.
Journey to MNU
As a child, Jill attended the closest Nazarene church to her home in Aurelia, IA, which was an hour away. She and her brother were the only children in the church. The only people she knew at MNU were members of a traveling PR team who had visited their home in Iowa.
“My first week here before classes started, Welcome Week, felt like one big camp,” says Jill. “There were tons of outdoor activities, getting to know other people. I learned then about the big Nazarene Youth Conference that had taken place over the summer. Kids were talking about that, bonding over it and playing music from artists who were there, and I didn’t even know the conference existed.”
It didn’t take Jill long to find her tribe. “The relationships I made here stand out the most,” says Jill. “Kristi Keeton was my RD, my dorm mom. After growing up without a youth group, I grew a lot here on campus, being around peers, having debates and discussions, attending Sunday morning church, chapel twice a week, and Wednesday nights. It felt good and right to be here in all of it.”
Jill spent three of her years at MNU as an RA, and it was through that role that she met her now-husband, Drew, who was applying to be an RA. After multiple weeks of applications and interviews, the two got to know one another, leading him to ask her out. They dated long-distance while she attended veterinary school, then married in 1998. The couple now have two kids, Hadley (age 18) and Truett (14).
Road back to MNU
With a veterinary degree under her belt, Jill practiced emergency veterinary medicine for 13 years, before leaving to spend more time with her family. Over the next few years, she oversaw the teaching staff at a veterinary technician school, then developed technician training programs for BluePearl Pet Hospital. When that position ended, she found herself searching for a new start that would be interesting, fun, and conducive to family life.
“When I was getting my English degree, I thought it’d be fun to be a professor and interact with students,” she says. “I always loved going to the MNU sporting events and plays and being on campus.” So she looked to see whether MNU had any openings that would fit her qualifications and found an advertisement for a professor in the biology department. “It specifically said, ‘DVMs welcome to apply’”, she says. “I thought, I have my DVM! I can do that!”
In short order, Jill found herself on the faculty at MNU, learning all about the world of higher education. She is now finishing her fifth year at MNU, teaching three courses with labs. She also practices veterinary medicine in the summers and on some Saturdays and serves on the MNU Alumni Council, where she is the faculty representative. Her husband, Andrew, recently served as the Alumni Council president.
“I bring a lot of outside experience, not just working in higher education, to the biology department,” she says. “I’ve seen the way things work in a variety of settings and can bring that experience to the classroom."
Jill’s favorite part of her job at MNU is one-on-one mentoring with students, something that harkens back to her days as an RA. “Students often come in early or stay after labs to chat, and it’s rarely about academics,” she says. “Usually it’s about relationships of all sorts, from roommates to parents to significant others. The conversations are often a little more intense than what I faced in those RA days.”
Jill also enjoys a good relationship with the people in her department. Most days you can find the team eating lunch in the cafeteria together, catching up on life or bouncing ideas off of one another. “We are working to be more proactive in involving each other in our class lectures,” she says. “If we know we are talking about something that someone else has expertise in, we’ll have them pop into class for 15 minutes to share their perspective. It’s fun for us and our students really love it. We enjoy feeding off of one another to make our class even better.”