{"id":5406,"date":"2025-12-01T18:13:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/?p=5406"},"modified":"2025-12-05T17:52:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T17:52:45","slug":"kathwari-honors-alumna-mikayla-silkman-developed-her-passion-for-teaching-at-wcsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/2025\/12\/01\/kathwari-honors-alumna-mikayla-silkman-developed-her-passion-for-teaching-at-wcsu\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathwari Honors Alumna Mikayla Silkman Developed Her Passion for Teaching at WCSU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>12\/1\/2025<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5459 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-300x240.png\" alt=\"Kathwari Honors Alumna Mikayla Silkman\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-300x240.png 300w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-1024x819.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-768x615.png 768w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-1536x1229.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/Silkman2-1-2048x1639.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">After completing her BA and MFA at WCSU, Mikayla Silkman is now an adjunct professor teaching in<\/span><span data-contrast=\"none\"> the Kathwari Honors Program and the Department of Creative &amp; Professional Writing. During the spring semester, Silkman will serve as Interim Assistant Director of the Honors Program until April.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335557856&quot;:16777215,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Silkman credits her own Honors Program experience with developing her passion for teaching. As an undergraduate, serving as a teaching assistant helped her realize that she wanted to become a professor. Silkman was one of the first Kathwari Honors Graduate Fellows while completing her MFA in Creative &amp; Professional Writing, which helped her hone her teaching craft. \u201cThis hands-on approach to education helped me become more confident in the classroom, pushed me to consider new ways to approach class discussion and assignments, and helped ready me to enter the world as a working professional,\u201d Silkman says. She also appreciated the individualized attention she received from her MFA mentors, who spent \u201cquality one-on-one time with both [her] and [her] writing.\u201d <\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335557856&quot;:16777215,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">The Honors Program also helped Silkman develop her interests outside of the classroom. She enjoyed attending Honors events, volunteering on campus, and making lifelong connections with her peers. These experiences pushed her to keep exploring outside of her comfort zone. Silkman says, \u201cI tried so many new things during my time at WCSU, and all of them led to incredible things. I learned that I love to ski, that I love backpacking and hiking and rock climbing\u2026 and I even met my now-husband in a class at WCSU that someone encouraged me to take as an elective.\u201d While Silkman knows that academic performance is important, she recommends finding balance. \u201cSo many students (especially our hardworking Honors students), base too much of their self-worth and happiness on their grades. One day, your GPA won&#8217;t matter, but you&#8217;ll spend the rest of your life with yourself. Become someone you like spending time with!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335557856&quot;:16777215,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:360}\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5410\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-204x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-204x300.png 204w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-697x1024.png 697w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-768x1128.png 768w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-1046x1536.png 1046w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-1395x2048.png 1395w, https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2025\/12\/silkman2-scaled.png 1744w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>12\/1\/2025 After completing her BA and MFA at WCSU, Mikayla Silkman is now an adjunct professor teaching in the Kathwari Honors Program and the Department of Creative &amp; Professional Writing. During the spring semester, Silkman will serve as Interim Assistant &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":435,"featured_media":5459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}