Susan Nisonger Olsen hopes that someday her son says, "My mom did something to make education better." (Sacramento State/Jessica Vernone)

At 19 years old, it was all but impossible for Susan Nisonger Olsen to see a path to a college degree. She had struggled in high school, had more trouble in community college, and learned from a guidance counselor that she was still years away from transferring to a four-year university.

That’s when she tearfully called her mother from a pay phone and said she was going to drop out.

But that, her mom said, "just wasn't an option."

“(My mother) very matter-of-factly told me I needed to work hard and finish what I started," Olsen said. 

She took her mother’s advice, and it has paid off. Now a student in Sacramento State’s Doctorate in Educational Leadership program, she was given the 2017 CSU Trustees' Award for Outstanding Achievement, an honor given annually to just 23 students – one for each California State University campus. It is considered one of Sacramento State's highest student honors.

“I was shocked when I found out,” Olsen said. “I’ve never received anything big like this before, so it felt really good to be given this amazing award. It means so much to me.”

When she finishes her doctorate, the San Jose native will become a CSU grad for the third time. She received her bachelor’s degree in human communication from California State University, Monterey Bay, and her single-subject English teaching credential from San Jose State University. She also holds a master’s degree in education with a specialization in reading and literacy from Capella University in Minneapolis and a reading specialist certificate from the University of California, Davis.

Olsen had served with AmeriCorps between community college and CSU Monterey Bay and knew she wanted a job in which she could work with the community, though she never had seriously considered teaching as a career. But when a recruiting program reached out to her and told her that, thanks to a teacher shortage, she didn’t need experience to work in the classroom as an emergency hire, she decided to give it a try.

“I knew within a few weeks that I had made the right choice,” Olsen said. “I had found reform-minded teachers and a principal who taught me a lot about teaching to high standards and ensuring that every child gets a good education and is encouraged to strive to their highest potential.”

Over her 18-year career as teacher, administrator and educational leader, Olsen has drawn upon her own struggles as a student to do just that. Some of her proudest moments, she says, are when she sees her former students graduating from college, knowing she has had a hand in their success.

“I went to a huge high school, and I felt like I fell through the cracks,” she said. “I work mostly in low-income, urban schools, and like me, most of the students’ parents didn’t graduate from college. I feel like I can be that one person who connects with the students and who can guide them, and that’s really important to me.”

Olsen’s doctoral research focuses on instructional coaches who help high school teachers improve their practices, and how those coaches are themselves trained. Her ultimate goal is to create a teacher residency credential program similar to programs in the medical field.

Research shows that, rather than learning on their own, teachers in training learn better when they work alongside a more experienced and expert teacher, she said. A residency program would be structured to maximize that residency time, for example, by scheduling much of the intensive coursework during the summer and evenings, to allow for more time in the classroom to learn throughout the year.

The road hasn’t always been easy for Olsen – including in 2000, when her son, Quinton, was born and she became a single mother in the middle of her second year of teaching – but she credits the support she has received from her family with helping her get through, just as her mother did on the other end of that phone call all those years ago.

“A huge part of my motivation is that I want to be a good role model to my sons, and I want to show them that you can reach whatever goal you set for yourself,” she said. “There were several years where I was away from Quinton a lot, and I hope one day he will look back and say, ‘My mom did something to make education better.’ ” – Jonathan Morales