On the first day of class last spring, Shannon Portillo walked to the front of the room to begin her lecture. From behind her, in the rows of students enrolled in Introduction to Public Administration, she heard giggling.

“Shannon, what are you doing?” asked an incredulous voice.

“I'm teaching,” Portillo replied. “What are you doing?”

Turns out the surprised student and Portillo had been in the same freshman English class in high school.

Such is the life of a 23-year-old graduate teaching assistant—soon to be a 23-year-old assistant professor. Portillo will earn her doctorate in public administration from KU this month and is headed to George Mason University to take a tenure-track position on the faculty of the Administration of Justice Department.

“I've loved my seven years at KU,” said Portillo, who also earned bachelor's degrees in political science and international studies here. “But I'm ready for a ‘big kid’ job.”

In fact, the biggest challenge for Portillo might be figuring out what to do with herself when she isn't holding down three jobs on top of school. Research certainly will take a chunk of that time. She already has received a National Science Foundation grant for her dissertation, “The Face of the State: The Role of Social Status and Official Position in the Mobilization of Authority.”

This summer, she will be working on research into the economic impacts of the Kansas State Fair to help determine how to attract the state's Latino population to the annual event.

Portillo credits her public administration advisers at KU with helping her succeed. Indeed, if John Nalbandian, professor of public administration, hadn't given her an article about public administration, her path would have taken a much different direction. She also describes Chuck Epp, associate professor of public administration, as “hands down, the greatest adviser.” But Portillo's road map began at home, with a stay-at-home father and a mother who earned a master's degree in social welfare before becoming a parent and went on to earn a doctorate in education while her daughter was in high school. Portillo says she was lucky to have such a strong role model in her mother as well as a close relationship with her father, who never stopped encouraging her.

“Schooling is schooling, but education is something more,” Portillo said, recounting one of the lessons she learned from her parents.

Among Portillo's accomplishments while at KU are Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center Woman of Distinction, 2006-’07; University Women's Club Scholarship, 2006-’07; Diversity in Academia Scholar, National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, 2006-’08; Melik scholarship for graduate study, 2005-’06; Faculty Award, Pi Sigma Alpha, Political Science Honors Organization, 2004; Truman Scholar nominees, 2004; Dean's Scholar Program, recognizing outstanding minority students interested in graduate school, 2003-’04.

On top of those honors and all her hard work, Portillo has traveled while in school, studying at Cambridge as an undergraduate as well as visiting Israel as a member of KU Hillel.

And soon she will head off to Fairfax, Va., for that “big kid” job.

“I've always known I wanted to be a professor,” Portillo said. “I could never imagine my life without school.”