Submitted photo. Southwest Minnesota State University professor of Arts and Humanities Pat Brace is retiring from education after 37 years.

MARSHALL — After over three decades of teaching and influencing students in the world of art and humanities, Southwest Minnesota State University professor Pat Brace is retiring after 37 years with a decorated career.

“I have so many different interests to pursue … I was getting to the age where I kind of wanted time for myself,” Brace said. “At some time, you got to just step back and say, ‘I’ve done what I wanted to do with my teaching, and I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it.'”

Brace first came to Marshall in 1988 at 27 years old to pursue her first full-time job out of college, where she holds a bachelors degree from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and a masters and doctorate from Ohio University. She’s originally from Meadville, Pa.

“At first it was really hard, because I literally did not know a soul here except for the people that interviewed me,” Brace said. “But, everybody was so welcoming, and I really enjoyed that about the people here in Minnesota. They found out what you liked, and they helped you get access to it and have fun.”

Brace also noted that Marshall reminded her a bit of home being a smaller college town in a rural area, which brought her comfort in her transition.

Through her time here, Brace said she’s had a house on a farm in Minneota, lived in Ghent, had a farm site between Marshall and Tracy, and has also lived directly in Marshall.

When it first came to seeking employment out of college, Brace didn’t have a set place of where she wanted to end up, but rather who was offering her a perfect role that fit all her specialties.

“When you want to be an art professor, you apply everywhere you can, because there aren’t a lot of jobs for art professors necessarily … I applied to I think 64 to 68 different schools all over the country, even Hawaii, and I got four interviews out of that,” Brace said. “I actually had an offer at a school in West Virginia, then I got the call to come for this interview … The way this job was described, it was really everything I wanted to do.”

Along with having a background in art, Brace also has specialties in music history, theater, rhetorical studies, anthropology, Spanish and speech through her bachelors, masters and PhD degrees. Nearly all of which she was able to pursue in her career at SMSU.

“I did lots of different things, and what I was hired for here was to teach art,” Brace said. “They [SMSU] also have a masters in speech, so I taught speech too, and then [helped] to develop the humanities classes … It hit all my buttons of all the things that I could do and wanted to teach.”

Upon making the move from the east coast to southwest Minnesota, Brace quickly met other fellow new hirees, which turned into a close-knit group of friends that referred to themselves as the ‘lunch bunch’ crew.

“It became a really close, almost family group, and they were the people you could count on,” Brace said. “They were the kind of people that I would work all day, teaching and grading and prepping and all that, and then starting at 6 p.m. after [work], I would work from 6 p.m. until midnight writing my paper [for her PhD dissertation]. They would bring me dinner, they would do my laundry, they would walk my dogs for me. They were a family.”

During her time at SMSU, Brace taught a range of courses, and specifically mentioned that travel with the Global Studies program with her students are some of her favorite memories.

“We had so many wonderful moments where the students had to do a research project and a presentation about one of the places that we were going to go on the trip, and when we got there, they were supposed to explain the place to us,” Brace said. “The tour guides always like to ask you questions … And our students always knew the answers … Just to see them apply what we taught them was really exciting, and I loved the team-teaching too, because you learn a lot from your fellow teachers and how they approach things.”

Brace said they’ve been able to take students to numerous places in Europe as well as domestic travel, and was able to go on nearly 10 trips.

In her office decorated with art, history and travel textbooks along with artistic posters and photos of friends and family, Brace said she will use her retirement time to finish up projects, continue traveling and see her family in Pennsylvania more often.

“I can’t thank my friends enough for the way they’ve supported me, and my family too,” Brace said. “The administration has always been very supportive … SMSU really is very family oriented.”

When it comes to advice she hopes her former students hang on to, it’s the idea of expressing oneself in a multitude of ways.

“When I first came here, I was so busy with finishing my dissertation, being in a new place, teaching and adjusting that I ignored making my own art. I started to almost feel panicky that I wasn’t doing anything creative,” Brace said. “I joined the choir and did music things, did some summer theater play and got my creativity juices back again … You can do other stuff, you don’t just have to do work. The more creativity I had, the better my teaching was … Find something that you love to do.”