Spring semester is the last semester of teaching for longtime communication and journalism and family studies professor Carol Bruess.

Brian Bruess, her husband, was selected as president of St. Norbert’s College in De Pere, Wisconsin, so Professor Bruess will teach her final classes at St. Thomas this spring to join him in Wisconsin. Brian Bruess is currently the executive vice president and chief operating officer of St. Catherine University.

She describes her last semester after 19 years at St. Thomas as “bittersweet,” but she is also looking forward to leading a new life as the president’s wife at the college where she met her husband.

“It was at St. Norbert that both me and my husband decided to go into higher education,” Bruess said about returning to her alma mater.

This semester she is teaching the family and couple communication course and interpersonal communication course. “These courses are really close to my heart,” Bruess said about her final two classes at St. Thomas.

St. Thomas will certainly stick with Bruess, even as she moves on to new adventures. After so much time here, both former and present students have impacted her in ways she won’t forget.

Junior Amanda Post took interpersonal communication with Bruess the spring of 2016 and still goes back to her for wisdom and advice.

“She’s my go-to professor. No matter what questions I have, whether about classes, my future, or even my personal life, Dr. Bruess always take the time to hear me, and she always seeks to help me build my own bridges,” Post said.

Post is not the only student whose life Bruess has touched.

“Whenever I’m feeling down, I look at my ‘happy drawer,’” Bruess said as she opened a filing cabinet full of Christmas cards, birth announcements and thank-you cards from students.

But still, it’s not all sad.

“I’m essentially going home,” she said.

Abby Sliva can be reached at sliv7912@stthomas.edu.