Faculty Profile: Dr. Sonya Sheffert
Dr. Sonya Sheffert was a tenured member of the psychology faculty at Central Michigan University when she got a fundraising call from her undergraduate alma mater, the University of Alaska Anchorage.
“It got me thinking that I should donate. Without a few faculty there really paying attention to me and taking me under their wing, I never would have made it through college,” the assistant professor of psychology says.
What she didn’t realize at the time is that the call would also be a catalyst for her to apply for a position at Alma College.
“When I started at CMU, I had more time to work closely undergraduates, and I realized I missed that,” she says. “It was a very hard decision to even fill out the application, but I figured it was a win-win situation — even if Alma never looked at my application, simply writing a teaching statement would force me to clarify my values and reinvigorate my teaching.”
But Alma did look at her application, and when she came to campus, she says she really enjoyed both her future colleagues and the chance to interact with other faculty. She also was excited about working so closely with students.
“I used to have such a problem getting students to speak up — the other day, I couldn’t get them to stop talking so I could lecture,” she says. “These are really special students, and I feel truly privileged to see them in and out of class.”
Sheffert earned her undergraduate degree in psychology in 1989 and went to work at a marketing research firm for a year.
“I kept in contact with my professors, and one day, my former advisor said to me, ‘You know, I’m disappointed you didn’t go to graduate school — I always saw you as a college professor,’” she says. “That was what had been in my heart all along.”
She looked at graduate school and earned her doctorate at the University of Connecticut in 1995. Not only had she never boarded a plane before she went to graduate school, but her husband stayed in Alaska to work.
After graduate school, she accepted a post-doc research position at Indiana University, working in a speech laboratory and a cognitive science laboratory. Her research interests include memory and language, spoken processing, voice and facial recognition and developmental psychology.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, two children and two dogs.
“I just like to watch what my kids do,” she says. “I’m fascinated and excited to see what kind of people they will become.”
