Campus Connection

UWL senior, medievalist transforms childhood fascination into career path

UW-La Crosse senior Melissa Troutt’s love of history started with fiction. But it is becoming a reality. Like most kids, Troutt’s six-year-old self was fascinated with Disney princesses, their flowing gowns and quaint villages. She wondered, even then, when and where they were living. But, unlike most kids, she started researching it. Her questions led her to her first glimpse of medieval history, an interest she carried on throughout high school. She became an avid fiction reader — interested in anything set in the Middle Ages. “It was princesses or hobbits … depending on where I was in life,” she recalls. In high school, she learned as much as she could about medieval times, and she set a goal to become a professor and one day share her love of medieval history with others. But a semester after starting at Madison Area Technical College, Troutt had to drop out when her father was deployed to Afghanistan. Her mother would need help with caring for siblings at home. Troutt didn’t return to college until several years later. This time she enrolled at UW-La Crosse, commuting an hour from Tomah each day while maintaining full and part-time work, depending on the season.

Childhood lessons revisited

Troutt, who earned average grades in high school, didn’t expect to excel at college. But she relied on something she learned as a kid — in addition to the medieval history. Growing up, her father trained soldiers at Ft. McCoy and her mother took care of the kids at home. They both worked hard and often. From age 16, Troutt began working too, babysitting and bagging groceries. Into her teens and college years, she worked multiple jobs from managing a water park to serving as a bank teller. Her work ethic transferred to classes where she has maintained a 4.0 G.P.A. and has been named to the dean’s list every semester while continuing to be a bank teller. Troutt has been “blown away” by the mentorship she has received from professors who meet with her regularly, offering constructive criticism and encouragement. UWL Associate Professor Rebekah Fowler, a medieval English literature scholar, and Troutt developed an independent study, “Medieval Women: Pre- and Post-Modern,” allowing Troutt to merge her love of medieval history and literature. Troutt later presented her final research from that course at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Troutt has the capacity for nuanced analytical thinking that makes her an excellent candidate for graduate school, says Fowler. “Engaging deeply with materials she finds interesting is a passion of hers, and I wanted to encourage her to continue to cultivate that passion and to keep digging deeply,” says Fowler. Fowler has also benefited from the relationship as she aims to teach a full-class version of the independent study in the near future. Despite her busy life as a student, researcher and bank teller, Troutt still appreciates a good Disney movie. “It crushes your childhood a bit when you begin to understand some of the complex things going on in movies like ‘Beauty in the Beast,’” she adds, noting the story’s earliest version dates back to before the French Revolution, serving as a window into a period of political upheaval in France. But as she has grown older, Troutt has become more interested in the reality than the fiction. And she is also well on her way to making her own story come true.