Lincoln Land welcomes new English professor

Dr. Gillian Bauer was hired in June as an Assistant English Professor at Lincoln Land Community College.

Bauer taught at Loyola University for a year and at UIS for four years.

Bauer spent most of her undergraduate education as a music and english double major, originally planning on becoming a band director.

She played the bjorn, and dedicated much of her time to improving her musical skills.

Between her fourth and fifth year pursuing her bachelor’s degrees, Bauer stopped enjoying playing her instrument.

“I was miserable. I would be playing my horn like seven hours a day some days, and I was very good, but I didn’t like it anymore.”, Bauer said.

She spoke to her mother about changing her major, and decided to shift her focus from music performance to english.

Bauer kept her music major, but dropped the performance aspect of her education.

“The harder music became, the less I liked it and the harder english became, the more I liked it.”, Bauer said.

After earning her bachelor’s degrees in music and english from the University of Southern Mississippi, Bauer took a break from higher education.

She moved to Key West near her parents, and worked as a customer service manager for a year.

After this sabbatical, Bauer decided to move to Chicago.

“I had always wanted to move to Chicago, cause I loved it. I visited when I was in high school…and so I chose graduate school mostly because I wanted to go to Chicago.”, she said.

Bauer researched the best schools in Chicago, and applied to the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

She was accepted to both, and chose Northwestern because they offered a 75 percent scholarship off of tuition for employees of the college.

Bauer expressed that she experienced difficulty when seeking employment at Northwestern.

“It took me nine months of misery to get a job at Northwestern…”, she said.

She worked at Northwestern for three years as an administrative assistant while earning her master’s degree.

Bauer went on to earn her Ph.D. from Loyola while trying to figure out what she wanted to do as a career.

Bauer was familiar with the university because she knew a number of Loyola students and her husband, Jerry Bauer, earned his master’s degree there.

After earning her Ph.D., Bauer found a love for teaching.

She became a teaching assistant in a poetry class, and decided that teaching introductory level courses was what she wanted to do.

Bauer is teaching four courses at Lincoln Land this fall, including three sections of english composition and one section of Introduction to Film Art.

Marlene Emmons, an English professor at Lincoln Land, gave a statement to The Lamp about Bauer.

“She brings great energy to our department, she’s a dynamo.”, Emmons said.

Bauer was born in northwest Indiana, and moved every couple of years while growing up. Her parents and brother live in North Carolina.

She currently lives in Springfield with her husband and their two and a half year old son, Wolfgang.

Meredith Howard can be reached at [email protected]