Hailey Schmidt +Alecia Juelfs

by: Gunner Gould

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” An athlete in middle school, Alecia Juelfs ended up sustaining an injury that required back surgery. She started getting involved with the arts soon after and eventually started to find the “same thrill and satisfaction” that she did in athletics. After she finished performing in middle school, Alecia was heavily involved with her high school’s theater and speech programs before coming to USF where she was involved in almost every production during her time at the school. Alecia graduated from USF in 2017 with a double major in communication studies and theater and is currently the assistant professor of theater as well as the theater program director at USF. While being in the program before definitely helped her as a professor because she knows how it operates, it helped her in many other ways too. It helped teach her to problem solve, but also have a sense of being able to always learn something new, and never quite becoming an “expert” at it. While she feels she still struggles with some things, she doesn’t lose her mind over not knowing the answer because the answer will always come, whether that’s in the form of someone else helping out or figuring it out on her own.

Hailey and Alecia are two very important parts of USF Theatre department and they make it a great experience. Hailey gets more people involved with the program, and Alecia makes sure students are getting the same things out of the program that they both did.

“All the World’s a Stage”. Despite already being involved with choral music, when Hailey Schmidt was a junior at the University of Sioux Falls (USF), she decided that her new year’s resolution was going to be to “say yes more”, as she wanted to do more nearing the end of her college experience. So when a friend of hers asked her if she was going to audition for that spring’s production of Bye Bye Birdie, she said she was. Hailey is the current visual and performing arts recruiter with heavy ties to USF’s theater department. Hailey graduated from USF in 2017 with a major in Media Studies and a minor in Art. She said USF’s theater taught her a lot of soft skills that are hard to teach and need to be gained through experience, things such as showing empathy, public speaking, thinking from others’ perspectives, and helping to relate to people. These help her greatly in her job, as most of her job in admissions is relating and connecting with people, which involves helping people logistically through different processes and earning their trust. Hailey herself says that she tries to get people to take on theater majors or minors along with other disciplines, to help them gain skills. Hailey is also involved with the Good Night Theatre Collective, a local performance group here in Sioux Falls that’s currently in its 7th season. Hailey has helped out at Good Night since their 4th season and currently helps out as both a performer and an experience manager. She says a lot of the skills she utilizes in admissions are “incredibly transferable”. When Good Night performs at the Washington Pavilion, Hailey is usually the first person from the group that audience members see. A lot of the skills she uses as an admissions counselor, such as remembering information people tell her and connecting with people she might not have known before.