Choosing Education: Professor Maria Squire '00

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Maria Squire, Ph.D., pointed to the diagram of a pig’s arteries and veins and started naming them. Her students followed along closely.

Thoracic aorta. Superior vena cava. Right subclavian vein.

Squire, in her 14th year as a faculty member at the University of Scranton, teaches students pursuing careers in science or medicine. After completing the diagrams, Squire started the students on the hands-on activity for that day’s advanced anatomy and physiology lab: finding the arteries and veins by dissecting fetal pigs.

Across Northeast Pennsylvania, area schools educate tens of thousands of students each year for jobs in the local workforce and beyond. Those same public and private schools, from small prekindergarten programs to regional universities, provide paychecks to a growing number of employees each year.

As of January, 19,900 people in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming counties worked in the educational services sector, according to the latest state employment data. The number is an increase of 100 jobs from a year ago.

Squire, 41, studied biology and Spanish at the University of Scranton, graduating in 2000. After receiving advanced degrees from State University of New York at Stony Brook, she returned to Scranton to teach.

“I love working with the students,” she said. “The most rewarding part of my job is when I can share my excitement with them and they get it.”

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