Olympus Group<\/a> on Milwaukee\u2019s northwest side. Her workplace is filled with sewing machines, designs, patterns, bolts of fabric, molds and almost completed mascots \u2013 a Milwaukee Brewers racing sausage hangs over one workstation.<\/p>\nYes, she agrees, it\u2019s a job that is a lot of fun. \u201cI love working here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacob became interested in theater and costume design while she was a student at the Washington County campus, now part of 51ÁÔÆæ. \u201cI grew up in West Bend, and it was right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two-year campus gave her a chance to take a lot of different classes and explore her interests. \u201cIt gave me time to figure out where I wanted to go. It helped me get my general education classes out of the way so by the time I transferred to UW-La Crosse, I had just two and a half years of pure theater classes.\u201d<\/p>\n
A ‘behind the scenes person’<\/h3>\n
The Washington County campus has a theater, called Theater on the Hill, and she was in there all the time, she recalled. \u201cI actually started volunteering when I was in high school.\u201d After getting to know theater professor Brad Ford, she started out building sets, lights and helping with costumes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI auditioned for one play and found it was not my calling,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI was a purely behind the scenes person.\u201d<\/p>\n
She earned her BS in Theatre Design with emphasis in costumes from UW-La Crosse, then went on to Florida State University, where she earned her MFA in Costume Design.<\/p>\n