Instructor Finds Joy in Watching Students Flourish

When Stacey Durham graduated from Bryant & Stratton College in 1999, she said her instructors inspired her to continue learning and working toward her bachelors.

When she returned to campus as a recruiter for a local company, she had the chance to network and mingle with the same directors and instructors she looked up to as a student. It was a different dynamic than she was used to from her time as a student at Bryant & Stratton. Coming in as an outsider, though one with an intimate knowledge of the school, allowed her to connect with students and staff alike. That interaction caused both students and staff to push her to become an instructor.

It wasn’t something she was keen on, but just like when she was a student, she had be inspired by the Bryant & Stratton community.

“I told them I would try one semester,” she said. “Now, 15 years later I’m still there. I fell in love with it,” she said.

One semester became two, which became three. Now, 15 years later, her tenure has featured countless students coming in and out of the business course she teaches at the Wauwatosa campus. She notes that the relationships she has built with her students as they grow in the class is one of the reasons she’s kept coming back. Whether she knows it or not, she is now the one inspiring Bryant & Stratton students to achieve their goals.

“We have the chance to plant that seed in them that you don’t just stop, you continue to grow yourself professional and economically and educationally. Studying is life-long learning,” she said.

“That’s why I stay, to see the growth in the students,” she said.