Looking around campus, it is not difficult to find faculty and staff members who are also Eastern graduates.

Vicki Woodard, Eastern’s coordinator of public information, says the university does not keep track of specific numbers.

But the alumni are contributing in a number of ways.

Catherine Gall, who received her bachelor’s degree from Eastern in 1997 and her master’s in 1999, is an instructor with the university’s English department.

She has always maintained ties with Eastern.

“I’ve kept in touch with various students and professors over the years,” she said. “I never left the area.”

Her time as a student at Eastern has made it easier to work for the university.

“I always loved the English department here at Eastern as a student,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier to be teaching here now.”

In the biology department, Steven Malehorn has come and gone and then come back again.

Return

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He was a freshman in 1975 at Eastern and left to finish his associate’s degree at Lake Land College. He returned to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1991 and then earned a master’s degree in environmental biology at Eastern in 1993.

He is now the manager of the H.F. Thut Greenhouse.

“As a graduate assistant, I was responsible for helping in the greenhouse,” he said. “I interviewed for the position and I was a natural fit because I had worked for them.”

Malehorn didn’t start off on the right foot after leaving Eastern.

“The economy was in the dumps,” he said. “There were no jobs or money.”

That led to Malehorn working for WEIU-TV in 1995 on a part-time basis.

When he came back to Eastern in 1998, he benefited from the faculty knowing him and his familiarity with the campus, he said.

The school can benefit from hiring people who are comfortable on the campus.

But Gall sees the benefits of returning and teaching at the school students graduated from.

“It’s nice to be alongside those who I admired and respected when I was a student.”