Katie Williams/Collegian
Kirstin Kiledal and her daughter Sigrid sit in the family room.
She leaves her office each day, puts her books and papers in the trunk and her kids in the back seat.
In the home of Director and Assistant Professor of Speech, Kirstin Kiledal, one is greeted by the smell of freshly ground coffee in the kitchen, the sight of a stretching, inviting couch in the family room and the view of the pool just beyond the patio in the backyard — the pool where she and her son like to swim laps and race one another in the summertime.
Kiledal is most comfortable away from the classroom when she is at home spending her precious time with her family: husband, Erik, son Anders, 11, and daughter Sigrid, 10.
“Dr. K,” as her students affectionately know her, enjoys the family tradition of selecting the perfect pumpkin from the patch every year in the fall. Kiledal and Sigrid enjoy making snowmen in the winter and in the spring the family’s time is filled with riding bikes along the Bawbeese trail.
Some activities the family enjoys year round: violin and ballet lessons, baking cookies and brownies and star gazing with the family telescope.
Whether it be gardening, knitting, or sewing, “I enjoy a chance to just use my hands,” Kiledal said. “I can’t get out the sewing machine without one of the kids wanting to sew.”
She loves to bake desserts with her daughter, such as “mandel kage,” meaning almond cake, which is from Norway, her husband’s country of origin. The family takes part in other various Norwegian traditions such as “Little Christmas Eve,” which is when the tree and decorations are put up December 23rd , and presents are opened on the 24th.
At the dinner table the kids say grace in Norwegian and they have gone back to Norway to visit her husband’s family several times.
“There’s one place I’d like really like to go: up to the most northern parts of Norway to see the midnight sun,” Kiledal said.
Yet those things alone are not what make her and her family unique. It’s the various family traditions as well as the adventurous vacations — snorkeling around coral reefs in Florida and sightseeing in Yellowstone.
Kiledal attended Hillsdale College for her undergraduate work as a biology major, and she planned to go into the medical field. But, imagining the hectic schedule it would have given her, she said, laughing, “I can’t imagine doing that now — I would never be home!”
Whether she is known as a professor, mentor, or “the speech teacher”, her students would likely agree about one thing: she is a giver. A giver of her time, energy and talents to her tasks, whatever they may be.
When Kiledal speaks about her work, it’s clear the feeling is mutual: “It’s not enough to stretch and grow [the students], but we have to stretch and grow ourselves,” Kiledal said. “The day we stop learning from you is the day we stop teaching.”
But at the end of the teaching day, her heart lies with her family. “The three of them,” she said, are what makes home.