Corinne Mantle-Bromley, dean, College of Education, University of Idaho in Moscow

Though she’s now a university dean overseeing a college of education, Corinne Mantle-Bromley didn’t attend college after high school, choosing to travel the world instead. It was while living in Guatemala, learning the art of traditional backstrap weaving – essentially tying herself to a tree to create a loom – she realized her purpose in life.

“I found something I thought I could study in university,” she says. “I really latched on to the idea of helping people understand how big a world is out there and how amazing it is.”

Mantle-Bromley then enrolled in school, and taught Spanish in middle school and high school before eventually earning her doctorate in education from the University of Idaho.

Now in her final school year before retirement, Mantle-Bromley can look back on a long career of educating people of all ages. She will also leave her mark on the University of Idaho, where she’s worked as dean of the college of education for five years, in the form of a brand new, state-of-the-art building for the next generation of teachers.

When Mantle-Bromley arrived at the university, the ceiling of the old education building leaked, bugs infested the rooms, and worst of all, the structure was full of asbestos, meaning any repairs to the building would require costly asbestos abatement, something no one was willing to pay for.

“Within a pretty short period of time, I started saying, ‘This is not OK,’” she says.

With that, Mantle-Bromley had latched onto her next mission, and she was only more determined each time someone told her it was impossible, which happened often. She says she would talk to anybody who would listen, and she made a compelling argument. It only took 15 minutes of speaking with some representatives from the state legislature on a campus tour before they were asking if they should be wearing masks to walk through the building.

“I told them, ‘My students are in here everyday, we have to fix this,’” she says.

That year, the legislature granted the school $2.5 million for the project, enough to pay for the destruction of the old building.

It took similar hustling to convince the university to bond for the building’s construction, which would have rebuilt it with the exact same floor plan. But Mantle-Bromley didn’t stop there. She came up with enough money to commission a redesign of the building in just six months, then spent another year raising money for the furniture.

These days, every time she walks by the construction zone she sees a glimpse of her legacy.

“It’s going to be the highest tech building on campus with the highest tech classrooms,” she says.

Now that the building is almost complete, Mantle-Bromley is ready to retire, but that doesn’t mean she will slow down. Still a hiker and traveler, she’s already hiked through Croatia and Wales and hopes to take more trips around the globe when she has more free time.

She’s also hoping to pick up her loom again and get back to weaving.