Carol Schrage (1944-2021)

Carol worked at the University of Iowa for 38 years – most of them in Communication Studies – and she was the Administrative Assistant from the time I arrived in 1994 until her retirement in 2006.  After she retired, we got together regularly for lunch – lunch was Carol’s thing – to laugh and talk and try to keep up with all of the grad students who had come through the department over the years. Carol kept in touch with everyone. When she was still working in Comm Studies, her office was a refuge for graduate students and faculty who needed to laugh or vent or just feel at home. Carol’s office was memorable not just because of all the cards and gifts she had accumulated over the years, but because her office was near-freezing at all times…I wore a heavy sweater and expected precipitation.

Carol was a take-charge person who spoke her mind, knew what she wanted, and worked hard to make a department with hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students run the way she thought it should. There’s no better word to describe her than “grounded” – calm and confident and comfortable with who she was. Carol enjoyed the typical pursuits of life in Iowa City like shopping, dinner parties and football games, but she also had an extraordinary appreciation for different perspectives and ways of life. People from all over the world, people with diverse points of view, people with totally different life experiences from Carol were the people she wanted to hang out with. Fortunately for her (and us), the University of Iowa – and the Comm Studies Department in particular – brought them to her doorstep. Once she retired, Carol indulged her love of difference as she traveled from India to Peru to the Arctic and everywhere in between.

Carol was a great listener, a student of the world, and a young soul.

She coined the phrase “crazy like a CAMBUS driver.”

In her office she had a small cardboard sign with yellow lettering that said “Cool Carol” – I imagined that it was a gift from students from years ago…After all this time, it still fits. 

– Joy Hayes

October 12, 2021

Link to Carol Schrage’s obituary: lensingfuneral.com/obituaries/Carol-A-Schrage?obId=22557351#/obituaryInfo

Link to donate in Carol’s memory: givetoiowa.org/Schrage