Schulte an ace on court, in classroom
Jillian Schulte ’19 is having the time of her life playing volleyball at an elite level, but she knows her future lies in the classroom.
Her list of academic honors makes an arc from the court to the classroom. As a double major in medical anthropology and ethnic studies, she’s a straight-A student. She was named CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) First Team Academic All-American. She was also the 2017 Midwest Conference Elite 20 Award recipient for volleyball—awarded to the player with the highest GPA on a MWC tournament team—for the second consecutive year.
As for purely athletic awards, Schulte is the 2017 MWC Volleyball Player of the Year, First Team all-conference, First Team All-Midwest Region, and received honorable mention as an all-American.
Schulte says she came to Cornell from Naperville, Illinois, mainly because of the block plan and her desire to travel and study abroad—something she’s achieving through both athletics and academics. “I took an anthropology course in the Bahamas, and this summer the volleyball team is heading to Nicaragua,” she says. “Next year I’m going to Nepal with a medical anthropology course.”
She’s also taken advantage of Cornell’s Alternative Spring Break. In 2017 she went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to help build housing. This year she’s leading a group to South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Reservation on a similar project.
During the summer of 2017 she stayed on campus as part of the Cornell Summer Research Institute, working on a project tracking LGBTQ+ homeless youth.
Schulte keeps her schedule packed. She’s a content tutor for some of the courses she’s taken, and she coaches a few high school and middle school volleyball players, teaching them setting technique and other skills. In true Cornellian style she found time to squeeze in a summer internship at a rehabilitation center to learn how health care facilities operate.
She intends to pursue a doctorate in medical anthropology, which draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand the factors that influence health and well-being.
“My adviser, Misha Quill, has been wonderful,” Schulte says. “I’ve sent her thousands of emails asking millions of questions, and she’s responded to every one of them.”
As she heads into her senior year, Schulte looks forward to deciding on a doctoral program and leading the Ram volleyball team to its seventh consecutive conference championship and another berth in the NCAA tournament.
“I love Cornell’s campus and the sense of community here,” she says. “And I’ve fallen in love with Iowa.”
