SARAH SKILLEN ~
Director of Peer Jacks Mentoring
Sarah Skillen’s office, lit solely by warm lamplight, grow lights for her plants and the light streaming in from the University Union hallway, felt comforting and cozy — a stark comparison to most of the offices surrounding her. Two large, comfortable brown chairs sat adjacent to her desk and computer, a small table between them covered in plants reaching up toward the LED lamps.
This office was a perk of Skillen’s recent promotion to Director of Peer Jacks Mentoring at NAU. After only two years of living in Flagstaff, Skillen quickly climbed the ladder in her positions within Peer Jacks and accepted the Director position this January.
Peer Jacks Mentoring, according to their website, is a program where student employees called Peer Jack Mentors help first-year students build their sense of community at NAU so they can excel in their classes and their college lives.
Skillen said she was first drawn to the job opening with NAU because of the positive impact it could have on student life, and her lifelong passion for academia in general.
“I love higher ed,” Skillen said. “I love working in universities, when we’re constantly adapting to work with different students and their needs.”
All of Skillen’s enthusiasm toward universities stems from her own education. Skillen attended University of Notre Dame in Indiana for her
bachelor’s degree, double-majoring in history and Spanish.
After graduating in 2011, she attended University of Southern California for her master’s and PhD, which were both in comparative studies in literature and culture, with an emphasis in Spanish and Latin American studies.
“I knew I liked school, but college was not really like a choice,” Skillen said. “It was just kind of a given that that would be my next step. No one ever talked to me about what the purpose was, or how to make the most of my college experience. It was always, ‘you’re going to college, because that’s what we do, we go to college.’”
These family expectations, Skillen said, shaped the way she viewed her time in college, but also led to some necessary straying from the path. She said her college experience significantly impacted her identity and self-discovery.
.png)
The traditional, conservative environment she grew up with in her hometown of Pasadena, California told Skillen exactly what should happen in her life.
“The way I was raised was very much step-by-step,” Skillen said. “They said, ‘You’ll meet your husband in college, get married, and have babies right away.”
That’s not the way it worked for Skillen, though. She said that in college, she met many people from different ways of life — ways of life that felt more true to her than what was ingrained in her from childhood.
“I met cool people who challenged the way I had been raised, the assumptions that I had about my place in the world, and about the kind of things I could do with my life,” Skillen said. “It really profoundly altered what I wanted to do with my existence.”
In her college career, Skillen said she went through many phases of this self-discovery that tested and defined what her values were. She even said, at one point, she was actively trying to leave college to join a communist, anarchist Catholic group in Philadelphia.
Skillen explained that in hindsight, she doesn’t understand how quickly those phases came and went, but they contributed to shaping her core principles and beliefs, while showing her what it was she wanted to accomplish in life.
As the Director of Peer Jacks Mentoring, Skillen is directly affecting the lives of first-year students at NAU, trying to give them the sense of purpose and enthusiasm that she didn’t have until well into her higher education. Despite these accomplishments, Skillen feels that her biggest achievement was finishing her PhD, and that moment has defined her own definition of success.
“Everyone’s definition of success has to be personal,” Skillen said. “Mine is being able to support myself doing something that aligns with my values. Something I care about.”
Skillen noted that with her impressive line of degrees, she could be making more money doing something else. However, she said it would be very difficult for her to do anything that conflicted with her values, despite any economic advantage it may provide.
A college education as extensive as Skillen’s did not come cheap — something Skillen said her parents largely sheltered her from. She said she was blissfully unaware of the financial burden her education was putting on her family.
“I paid for college with a combination of scholarships, financial aid and my family, and I had wonderful experiences, but it was financially challenging,” Skillen said. “I’m not generally the kind to believe in regrets, but I wish I’d had a better understanding of what it would cost.”
Despite the costs, Skillen still feels that the experiences she had in college as well as the knowledge she obtained were very much worth it. She said that many of the social connections she made in college are still evolving and developing, and her degrees will always serve as a sense of security in a job market.
However, Skillen also understands the allure of joining the job market right out of high school, and said that she sees why the quicker payouts of trade schools and other non-degree focused options are appealing to many.
“Trades schools might have a bigger immediate return on investment, but over time, having a college degree has a higher return,” Skillen said. “With a degree, you might start out in a lower paying job, but generally, folks with at least an undergraduate degree end up making more money.”
Given Skillen’s active participation in academia ever since she graduated high school, she understandably has immense confidence in the effect that higher education can have on societies as a whole.
“I really believe that having access to the kinds of experiences and perspectives that you get in a university environment creates more informed civil society members,” Skillen said. “I believe in the power that it can have, and it’s something that should be available to everyone.”