A spiritual woman sits in her office with National park posters framed on the wall behind her and a Yellowstone sweater on.

“Yellowstone is my favorite spot in the whole world,” Chris Tee Weixelman, a new assistant professor in the School of Education and Counseling, said. But visiting national parks and living a spiritual life are not Weixelman’s only passions.

She received a bachelor’s degree from University of Northern Colorado majoring in Spanish with a minor in biology. She then received her master’s from Eastern Michigan University in social foundations of education.

Now Weixelman is working on her doctorate at the University of South Dakota in curriculum instruction with emphasis on early childhood and reading instruction.

She has been pursuing more education, even though she already has a full plate providing education for others.

Weixelman has been molding minds for 27 years, teaching all over from Colorado to New Mexico. She is also a National Board Certified Teacher, which is the highest certification you can earn in the United States.

Her first job was in northeast Colorado at a high school, where she taught Spanish, biology and journalism education. Since then she’s taught early childhood, junior high and adults. The only grades she hasn’t taught are fourth and fifth grade.

Weixelman is not necessarily a new face to WSC.

She has been an adjunct professor for the past six years, but this is her first year full time here at Wayne State.

“What is unique about my teaching experience is that in the public schools, I’ve always taught high-risk students,” Weixelman said. “I taught at a school that was in the ‘war-zone’ in Albuquerque where there was lots of drugs and violence and very low-income, high-risk kids.”

Besides the Albuquerque school in the “war-zone,” Weixelman has worked at schools with kids who were the children of migrant workers, taught at a dual language school in Sioux City and even taught on a reservation.

She is a woman who wears many hats, and being a molder of minds is just one of them.

“I taught for a while then did journalism, taught for a while then did computer graphics, and then went back and got my master’s in teaching since then,” Weixelman said.

Weixelman has great pride in what she does. She continues to pass that pride on WSC students.

“I love seeing their growth and I love seeing them develop new ideas and concepts and begin to become teachers,” Weixelman said. “Teaching is awesome. It is such a great profession.”