Lara Paxton probably wouldn't be the first person to run away from the circus in pursuit of a college education and a second career.
The aerial acrobat just might, however, be the first to put lessons learned in the field of public health to good use while soaring through the air with the greatest of ease.
At Commencement on Dec. 18 at the RiverCenter in Davenport, Paxton will earn a St. Ambrose University Master of Public Health degree.
While pursuing her degree in the midst of a pandemic, Paxton identified multiple ways to apply her newly honed interest in a career in the health sciences – "a making-the-world-better kind of thing"– with her former high-flying passion for the circus.
"The circus is just something I carry with me," she explained. "I always thought no matter what field I go into there would always be a circus element - even if I'm just teaching a circus-skills class on the side or creating an all-encompassing program. There are a lot of things that just seem to apply, no matter where I go from here."
Paxton was drawn to the circus by chance after returning to Seattle in the mid-1990s following a three-year stay in Fairfield, Iowa. In 1998, she teamed with other circus lovers to form Circus Contraption, a small traveling professional troupe.
"It started as this real small punky, funky kind of troupe," she said. "I did aerial work, we had a juggler and a live band, and did comedy skits and a lot of performance art, things with puppets. By the end of our 11-year history, we were doing three-month runs in Seattle and touring Portugal."
Paxton later formed an all-woman troupe and toured Europe again over the course of a few years before deciding to buckle down at home and finish her work toward the Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology degree she'd started years earlier at the University of Washington. "I really wanted a change of perspective and to look toward more service-oriented work," she said.
Paxton returned to Iowa in the summer of 2020 after finding the SAU MPH. In the course of her studies, she discovered public health services to the community can manifest in many different ways.
"A lot of mental health issues come back to a lack of joy and connection and social support," she said, noting the loss of such things was a cost of the pandemic. "So, that's something I have toyed with: starting some kind of after-school program working with kids who might be more vulnerable or underserved. The dream would be to offer them a circus class, a meal, some tutoring, and a check up with a volunteer nurse."
As Paxton ponders the future, that nurse could well be her. She's considering pursuing a second bachelor's degree, this one in Nursing, in hopes of leaning harder into her desire to care and serve.
Additonally, she will address the future with an MPH-driven understanding that small interventions can begin to solve overwhelmingly large challenges.
"We can make programs that will have a positive effect," she said. "That's how I apply the circus stuff. Leaving the arts, I was down on it, thinking this career is cool, but it's trivial. But what I learned in the program - especially pertaining to mental health, community, connections, physical activity and, I guess just joy - makes me look more kindly on my circus career. The arts are actually more important than I thought."
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