As a member of Love Your Melon, Students Defending Students, President of Phi Alpha Delta, and Student Services Ambassador of Housing and Residence Life, Ohio University senior Paige Shoemaker is undoubtedly very involved on campus.
Paige Shoemaker
One of the more challenging aspects of her involvement is her position as President of Phi Alpha Delta. Her responsibilities range from keeping in touch with Athens Country Re-Entry Program to donate the chapters funds to them to overseeing other positions within the organization.
“I’m there to make sure everything gets organized,” said Shoemaker, a Political Science and Sociology-Criminology double major. “The most difficult [responsibility] is managing an organization that has 80-plus members.”
Of all her extracurriculars, Phi Alpha Delta, along with her coursework, has helped Shoemaker to decide to pursue a career in public policy.
“When I talk to new members I always tell them this is here to see if law school is what you want to do,” Shoemaker said. “If you decide that’s not what you want to do that’s fine. Phi Alpha Delta has helped with that. I realized I don’t want to be a lawyer one day; I’d rather go into public policy.”
In addition to Phi Alpha Delta helping shape her passion for policy, Shoemaker’s desire to focus on education policy has mostly stemmed from her classes, in which they discussed issues such as the war on drugs and racial inequality.
“I feel like all of it boils down to education,” Shoemaker said. “If we can fix education, we can fix a lot of other things in our country as well.”
In pursuing this goal, Shoemaker recently sent in her application for Teach for America.
“If I want to get into education policy, it would be good for me to have some sort of background on what goes on in the classroom,” Shoemaker said. “That way if I am trying to push for a certain policy, I can know this is what they actually need or not.”
For now, Shoemaker plans to work for a couple years before pursuing a master’s in public policy. Eventually, Shoemaker would like to run for some sort of position in office.
Shoemaker wasn’t always so focused on education policy. In fact, Shoemaker came into her freshman year at Ohio University as a Forensic Chemistry major before transitioning to Sociology-Criminology. In addition to her two majors, Shoemaker is also in the Certificate for Law, Justice, and Culture program.
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