The answers come to Sophie Miller just when she needs them.
Growing up in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Miller harbored dual fascinations with communications and political science – and when she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, her solution was to not choose one over the other: Yes, a double major.
While she earned her bachelor’s degree and contemplated the next step, it was right in front of her. All around her, actually.
Student Affairs.
“It has been the perfect mix between my two undergraduate degrees, which is why I chose this field,” says Miller, now enrolled in NIU’s M.S.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs program.
“Communications is something that’s really, really important to me and something I hold near and dear to my heart,” she adds.
“But I’ve always also been interested in politics, and as we know, colleges and universities and higher education is political. And the demographic that I love working with – and that is super political – is 18 to 24, so the older I got and further in college, I realized that higher education and student affairs really mixed political science and communications perfectly for me, especially at a public institution where students have a little bit more freedom.”
Miller clearly has chosen well.
NASPA, a nationwide professional organization for student affairs administrators in higher education, has named her as its Region IV-East Graduate Student Rising Star for 2025. She will receive her award at the annual conference from Oct. 19 to 21 in Milwaukee.
Rising Star recipients have demonstrated excellence in the classroom, the intent of pursuing careers in student affairs, leadership and innovation in assistantship/internship/cooperative experiences and potential for significant contributions to the profession.
Consider her grateful and humbled.
“This means a lot. I feel like I’ve done a lot of meaningful work here at NIU, both in the classroom and also in my GA position, and to have that recognized by my bosses, the executive director of Housing and Residential Services and my professors in the classroom is kind of indescribable,” says Miller, a Work Request Office graduate assistant in Housing.
“I don’t have family in Illinois – I’m simply at NIU for school, and that is it – so this award, and this year in general, has kind of shown me that I do have a community here,” she adds. “I have people here who really care about me and who genuinely believe in my future as much as I do, and that is more meaningful than any award could be.”
Kelly Wesener Michael says Miller “possesses a deep commitment to her development as an emerging leader with the intention of moving the needle toward more equitable and inclusive systems in higher education.”
“Sophie is exceptional,” says Wesner Michael, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Higher Education who previously served as NIU’s chief Student Affairs officer.
“With the eye of a future leader of higher education, she entered the master’s classroom with a robust understanding of higher education governance, structure and the inherent inequities built into these systems, knowledge and experience far beyond her years,” she adds. “In each and every class, she demonstrates an exceptional grasp of the challenges facing higher education as well as the political acumen needed to create and sustain change.”
Daniel Pedersen, executive director of NIU Housing and Residential Services, salutes Miller as “a rare emerging professional” and “a proven and respected colleague by her fellow staff members and student work crew.”
“Her daily job is service focused surround our residence hall facilities. However, as her work style began to evolve, her focus became an intersection of an outward/service minded response partnered with a focus on belonging and learning,” Pedersen says.
“She has adopted this philosophy in both her supervision style with student employees, as well as our students’ seeking services from our department,” he adds. “Sophie understood the key to providing timely response to students in need that contributed to an exceptional living environment.”
Pedersen is confident in Miller’s talent and future success.
“At the core of Sophie’s professional identity is having a strong awareness of self and understanding how identity shapes the worldview of the students and staff she works with,” he says. “Sophie takes an identity-conscious approach to her work and listens to the experiences of her students to understand how to better provide support. She is not afraid to have tough conversations and seeks to create spaces that provide a sense of belonging.”
That stems from Miller’s rationale of the “traditional” age group of college students.
“It’s such a pivotal point in life,” she says.
“For me, personally, I know how much growth I have done in that time frame,” she adds, “and I’ve witnessed it. I was an RA for years, seeing just how much change happens within an individual when they’re at school. Say they come in at 18: The difference between September and May, and the growth they have as an individual, is remarkable.”
Meanwhile, “I know that I credit a lot of my growth to my mentors and my professors and the people I had supporting me in undergrad. If I could do that for other people – when they’re in such a vulnerable place – to be shaped and to learn about what they love and what they don’t and all of these things, I think I’d be really fulfilled for the rest of my life.”
Eventually, however, the first-generation college student does hope to earn a doctorate and become a professor of student affairs.
But that longtime goal can wait, especially as she plans to gain some hands-on experience in the field after graduation.
Her internship at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston provided a good start.
Working in the Office of Student Life, Miller supported the training of orientation leaders, planned and implemented Welcome Week, innovated research and assessment of program effectiveness and hosted an end-of-the summer banquet to celebrate the team’s success.
“They’re a private and specialized institution,” says Miller, who also might decide to seek a top-level administrative position on a college campus, “so it was really interesting to see how differently they operate for their student demographic compared to a public institution.”
Adding all the pieces so far “reaffirms and validates that I am on the right career path,” she says.
Give some props to Trevor Hanson, manager of Residential Education and Staffing with the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Residence Life Operations.
Hanson is not only a fellow Huskie – he earned NIU’s M.S.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs in 2021 – but also Miller’s brother-in-law.
“When I was applying to grad schools, he knew I wanted to go into higher education and student affairs,” Miller says, “and NIU provided a lot of grad assistantship opportunities for me – I’m first-gen, so it was important to me to get a grad assistantship – so here I am.”
She remembers well those life-changing conversations.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to go into politics right now, and I’m not completely sure what I want to do with my communications degree – and I don’t want to get rid of, you know, everything. I do know that I want to continue going to school. I know that I want to be a professor one day.’ And he goes, ‘Well, what about Higher Ed and Student Affairs?’ So I just kind of picked it. I was like, ‘OK, yeah. Let’s do it.’ ”
Nice.
“I picked the right path,” she says. “This is perfectly melding everything that I needed it to, and I’m going to enjoy a career in this field.”
