Alumnus changes career paths to broaden his impact on others

While he started out in the business world, St. Cloud State University alumnus Drew Bunkers said working in education is his true calling.

Now a high school principal, he initially earned his degree in marketing from SCSU in 2005 before working for the Kimberly-Clark Corporation as an account executive and then Daktronics doing sales and marketing, respectively. About five years into his career, Bunkers said he decided to go back to school to get his master’s degree in business and marketing education with the hopes of further pursuing a career in education. He took his first teaching job in southwest Minnesota while pursuing an additional master’s degree in educational administration. Bunkers then moved to South Dakota and taught business classes at a high school while coaching football and running the Distributive Education Clubs of America program. He then took a high school principal position in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, where he’s been for about seven years. Bunkers will start the school year off in the fall in a new district as principal of Solon High School in Solon, Iowa.

For Bunkers, having more of an impact on others has been a driving force behind his change in career paths.

“I always loved the business world; I loved that side of things. Education was always kind of right there with it when I was deciding on a major,” he said. “So when I was able to go teach business education, I kind of got the best of both worlds. What really drew me to that is really the impact you can have on just so many kids.”

Bunkers wanted to keep that momentum going, and realized he could broaden his impact through different roles in education.

“I could only impact those who were in my classroom or those I had a direct impact on each day when I was teaching,” he said. “As an administrator, I get to oversee kind of the entire student body, work with all the teachers. I get to have an impact, even if it's not directly with some students, every day — an indirect one through different policies that we do, just the way we treat everybody, the culture that we have in the school and that we create.”

Bunkers said his favorite part of the job is always his interactions with students and collaborating with colleagues to improves students’ educational experiences. It’s important to him that students know there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to their education.

“I want to make sure I’m bringing my best positive attitude so that I’m helping kids every single day, so they can understand their worth, know their value and be able to to see the abilities they have,” he said. “A lot of the time that means even telling them something like, ‘I understand you might not be great at math, and that's OK, because everybody's got unique talents and unique abilities, and maybe yours isn't in the classroom. Maybe it’s driving a big tractor, maybe you want to be a farmer and you can't display that talent in the school building. But someday you'll get to, so don't compare yourselves to other people here in the classroom.’”

While his career path may have changed over the years, Bunkers said his background in business helped him get to where he is today.

“Although I'm not in the business world right now, I still say that I am. I still have budgets and different things like that. The way that you have relationships with people and communication are a lot of skills that I picked up when I was in college at St. Cloud State through my business degree,” he said. “Just because I'm not in the business world as far as a marketing position or in a sales position, I would argue that I'm selling our school every single day. We have new students who are coming by looking for the town they want to live in; their parents are looking and part of that is coming to the school and seeing if it's a good fit.”

Ultimately, Bunkers said it’s important for everyone to never stop learning — no matter what career field they’re in.

“Continue to learn. Always remain learning to stay open to different ideas and opportunities and career opportunities,” he said. “I ended up, after St. Cloud State, accumulating three graduate degrees. I don't think any of that was wasted time or wasted money. It led me to this place now that I know was the right place for me. Be open to different paths that come your way, even if it's maybe not your original plan.”