Professor lives a busy, successful life and encourages students to do the same
With a grandmother who worked full-time until the age of 92, Sonja Manuel-Dupont said she wants to be just like her.
And she is well on her way.
“Either I’m on or I’m asleep,” she said. “I can’t see doing anything half pace. You only have one time around.”
Manuel-Dupont is an associate professor in communicative disorder, civil and environmental engineering and English.
She grew up in Chicago where her parents sacrificed to give her a “good education,” she said.
“They moved me to a neighborhood where [financially] we didn’t quite fit in,” Manuel-Dupont said. “Just so I could have a good education.”
When she started college at Kansas State University, she wanted to study Spanish, but the advisers were full with other students so they directed her to the linguistic department instead.
“They said it was pretty much the same thing,” Manuel-Dupont said. “My adviser gave me 16 hours of intensive French and three hours of Spanish. I think he knew he was going to get me hooked after that.”
“This guy was wonderful,” she said. “He told me ‘we’re going to take care of you.’ He loaded my entire first year in language and I didn’t even realize there were other areas out there; he had me hooked from the beginning.”
When she received her major in linguistics, she said she was limited on what to do with that degree so she pursued a master’s degree and taught English as a second language to finance her education.
“I always did really well [in school],” she said. “I was academically at the top of my class and graduated college early. I’m a Type A personality, straight down the line, but [nothing] came easy. Everything I did took a lot of work.”
Manuel-Dupont has been teaching at Utah State University for about 20 years. She said she started working here after her husband, Ryan Dupont, accepted a job.
She started teaching engineering students writing because most English professors were uncomfortable teaching engineering students, she said.
“I was always interested in what projects they were doing,” Manuel-Dupont said. “We had a common ground.”
Being active in teaching three departments Manuel-Dupont realizes how busy she is.
“I have a very heavy teaching load,” she said. “I teach four courses a semester, sometimes more.”
Out Reach teaching is another experience she has, in which she drives to Roosevelt and teaches students in the program there.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said. “I love teaching.”
Manuel-Dupont said she enjoys helping students who aren’t academically at the top.
“It’s the ones that don’t have it quite together, yet, or don’t know what they have to offer, those are the ones you’re going to make an impact on,” she said. “I look at each one of the students and think about the lives they’re going to touch.”
She said they know how it feels and chances are they will turn around and do the same thing to help someone else. They’ll be more conscious of it, she said.
“I like working with students at the top of the class, too,” she said. “They are going to be more self-involved.”
Manuel-Dupont lives in Smithfield with her two children and husband. With a busy schedule, Manuel-Dupont still finds time to be active in her children’s lives.
“When I’m at work, I’m 100 percent at work,” she said. “When I’m at home, I’m 100 percent at home. From the minute [me and my husband] get home – to the time the kids go to bed – the focus is on homework or scouting activities or whatever the kids are doing.”
Her family does a lot of activities together, she said, perhaps even more than what most children their age participate in with their families.
“We are involved in animal rescue,” she said. “That’s why we have 52 cats.”
Manuel-Dupont said they also volunteer at PetSmart and do the laundry for their animal rescue program.
Manuel-Dupont also is active in clubs and organizations on campus. The National Student Speech Language Hearing Association is one club she participates in. The club does African-American and Dr. Seuss read-ins, Math Club Tutoring, the Multicultural “Messiah” and seasonal parties for severely handicapped children from the Center for Persons with Disabilities.
She also is active in Society of Women Engineers, which her husband founded. This year its conference is held on March 27 at the Utah Water Research Laboratory. They will have 250 local girl scouts learning, hands on, about engineering and science.
But that’s not all. Manuel-Dupont also is active in the Society of Environmental Engineering Students, tutoring math at a local elementary school, she is the Honors adviser and senior thesis director for the Communications Disorder Department. And on top of that, she is a scout leader.
“We have our children participate in the activities we are in,” she said.
Manuel-Dupont teaches several students each semester and still helps them feel they achieve something.
Jacob Young, Ben Seaman and Tyler Mertlich, all seniors majoring in civil engineering, said they have had nothing but a positive experience being in her class.
“Not all my paper is marked in red ink,” Seaman said. “And she gives us candy when we do our work.”
Young said he is amazed with how much knowledge Manuel-Dupont has.
“She has the broadest range of expertise,” he said. “Not only did she correct the grammar in my papers, she noticed I had science errors, too.”
Young’s sister and brother-in-law also had Manuel-Dupont as a professor. He said they, too, were amazed with how much knowledge she carries.
Mertlich said Manuel-Dupont is encouraging when it came to feedback.
“By far she is the most caring teacher I’ve had,” he said. “It must be how she manages time, you ask her for a favor and she does it willingly.”
Erin Mock, a graduate student in communicative disorders, said Manuel-Dupont is willing to spend time with any one of her students.
“She is so organized,” she said. “She always has great ideas for the department and she is a great teacher.”
Mock said when Manuel-Dupont teaches, it is always something they can use when they graduate. She was one of the first teachers Mock had and it gave her a lot of motivation to stay in the program, she said.
She wishes she could be just like her and other students feel the same way, Mock said.
“She’s so creative, she’s realistic and realizes we all have lives outside of school,” she said. “She is a great role model.”
Manuel-Dupont said she had one student who she tried to show him is full potential.
“He hated me,” she said.
Later he told her she was wrong about engineering, but he became a successful pilot because of her faith in him.
Manuel-Dupont said her daughter is just like her.
“It’s funny, both my children are adopted and when they look at my daughter they are amazed how much we look and act alike,” she said. “I guess somewhere she picked up something from me.”
She said her daughter will most likely be like her grandmother as well.
-srkrebs@cc.usu.edu