“Even young, I was very interested in the sciences and how things worked,” said Georgia Southern’s new First Lady. “When I was very young, I was always taking things apart to see how they worked. It would drive my family crazy, my mother especially. But that was always something that was an interest to me. And then when I got into high school, science – biology – was always my favorite class.”

She grew up as the youngest of three siblings in the tiny west-central Missouri town of Centerview. Her parents farmed, but also held “regular” jobs. Her dad was an inspector in a munitions plant. Her mother was a chemist. They were a family that spent a lot of time outdoors – on the farm, trout fishing or water skiing in southern Missouri, and later exhibiting cattle and horses.

As a teen, she participated in track and swimming and was very active in FFA and 4-H. “I was of an age that there weren’t a lot of women’s sports when I was in high school,” said Schalue. “When I was a junior in high school, we got a track team. That was the first women’s sport that we had. It was a hard-fought battle to get any women’s activities. I was pretty good for our track team, but that’s not saying a whole lot. I was also on the swim team, but it was not technically associated with the high school. It was a community swim team, but it was primarily high school students.”

Schalue might not have been the fastest runner, but she was a very quick study. After completing her undergraduate and Master of Science degrees in animal science at the University of Missouri, she earned a doctorate in reproductive physiology/molecular biology at the University of Florida, where she also completed her post-doctoral training in obstetrics and gynecology.

Schalue later developed and directed the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis program at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kan., and served as director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine Laboratories and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Two years later, she assumed the role of director of laboratories at the Heartland Center for Reproductive Medicine, one of two positions she holds today. She is also associate administrator for the American Association of Bioanalysts (AAB) through the association management firm of Birenbaum and Associates. “They manage a number of different associations,” she said, “but the one that I work with the most is the AAB.”

She is certified as a High Complexity Laboratory Director (HCLD) and Embryology Laboratory Director (ELD) by the American Board of Bioanalysis. Schalue has published numerous peer review journal articles and abstracts and is a member of the National Honor Society Sigma Xi.

Schalue believes her upbringing around farm animals and an appreciation of the outdoors helped steer her toward biological research. “With my agricultural background, animal science was the only thing I really knew, so that’s where I started out.” She recalls visiting a lab as an undergrad at the University of Missouri and peering through a microscope at an eight-celled embryo. When she returned later in the day, it had grown into a more complex next-stage form, a blastocyst. “That was just amazing to me, and it pretty much hooked me into what I wanted to do,” Schalue said. “I think from there I just ran with it.”

Outside of work, she and her husband enjoy SCUBA diving, and taking up the sport was something she had wanted to do for years. The couple was at a professional conference on Maui when the opportunity to learn unexpectedly came along. “I said I’m probably never going to get this chance again, so I’m doing it,” said Schalue. “And we just fell in love with it.”

She also enjoys photography – especially underwater photography – and video, college athletics, and counts companion animals and their welfare, community service and the environment as other interests.
“Animal issues are something very important to me,” she said. “Spay and neuter programs are something that I would like to be a champion of in the community. Habitat for Humanity is something else that I find important and I think that would also be very beneficial to the students to be involved in those sorts of programs.

“The environment in general is something that I think is very important and is something I’d like to be involved with, and is also something that we can bring back to the students and give them the opportunity for some community service, not just in this area – but in all of south Georgia,” she said. “I’m more likely to be involved with things that are environmental or outdoor.”

She is emphatic about her personal tastes in music and food: “I like it,” Schalue laughed. “I pretty much like all sorts of music and we enjoy concerts. I had the chance to go to the Russell Union for a while and listen to the students put on their productions. It is amazing, some of the talent that we have on campus.”

As many great recreational and learning experiences as she has had, Schalue said one event stands above all.

At the University of Florida’s Shands research hospital, she helped to set up a program to screen couples whose DNA might prevent them from having healthy children. “The first couple that came though was part of a research project. They went through a lot turmoil through that whole process,” she said. “It was a tough time for them, I know, because they were actually out in the public eye more than most patients in their situation would have liked to have been.

“But, this was a couple who had an X-chromosome-linked hydrocephalis situation they were dealing with and had had three children that had died within moments of birth. They wanted to enter the program to see if they could have healthy children. We gave them two twin healthy girls. And, that is one of the events in my life of which I am most proud. I have a photo of them that I keep on my bookcase.”

In recognizing at least part of her drive to learn, to “know how things work,” Schalue also pays tribute to the nurturing influence of her roots.

“I grew up in a very small community, and you don’t realize what that’s like until you get out,” she said, “I didn’t think that we were a particularly close-knit family until I moved away from home and I realized how close a family and how close a community that I came from.

“And that’s nice. It’s a very good background to be from, I think.”