Alumni Feature: Allyssa Baumbach
A graduate of both the undergraduate and graduate Sociology programs at the University of North Dakota (UND), I was not always interested in Sociology. More specifically, I had not heard much of anything about Sociology until I saw a course title on a list of electives that piqued my interest. The course was taught by Dr. Krista Lynn Minnotte, the professor whose passion for the discipline was so infectious that I added Sociology as a major. From there, I have continued my education and held a variety of professional roles that require me to call upon sociological perspectives on a regular basis.
During my undergraduate career, I worked for an organization that supports people with physical and cognitive disabilities. At the time I had planned to pursue graduate education in counseling but never found that path. In 2011, my mother suffered an aneurysm rupture (a type of internal brain injury). Following my mother’s trauma, I returned to UND to work at the Center for Rural Health (CRH) where I helped connect survivors of brain injury and their families to resources in North Dakota.
In both roles, I saw first-hand how important it is to have access to resources. I felt very lucky that my mother not only survived but thrived and attributed at least some of that success to my family’s circumstances. At the same time, I was working with individuals whose quality of life looked very different based on the availability of family support, housing, transportation, and financial security. The combination of my work, my mother’s injury, and other life events triggered deeper questions about social forces and differences in human experiences. This ultimately led me to pursue a graduate degree in Sociology.
Since I completed my graduate degree in 2016, I have held many roles at UND and completed a PhD. My work has increasingly centered on education data, through positions as a data manager, teaching assistant professor, and my current role as Senior Specialist of Assessment & Analytics. In these roles, I have drawn upon my sociological background to analyze data within the context of complex and evolving societal factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, artificial intelligence, shifting workforce dynamics, and growing social divisions.
Looking ahead, I will return to teaching part-time in fall of 2026 and I am eager to help students discover and apply their sociological imagination.
