Before coming to MUW, her experience was thoroughly Midwestern. She was raised in rural, central Missouri and did all of her graduate work at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana) in women’s history and 20th century U.S. history. When she landed a tenure-track position at an historic women’s college in 2008 just before the bottom dropped out of the academic market, Kempker was amazed at the good fortune. She still believes herself to be extremely lucky in the position at MUW, but in the last six years she has also become aware of a responsibility that she did not initially foresee in accepting the job. In large part, she applied to “Finding Mississippi” to help her students, the university, and the community better understand and tell their story.