Each quarter we will feature a story about our Parchment alumni here.

By Dave Person

Catherine Stuckey’s varied interests of international relations, writing and teaching English as a second language have taken the 1992 Parchment High School graduate to Japan, Spain and Germany, which she has called home for most of the last 27 years.

Currently living in Konstanz, Germany, near the border with Switzerland, Stuckey designs job-specific business English and presentation-skills training for her clients at Autodesk, a multinational software production and services corporation.

She also designs and leads interactive virtual sessions on presentation structures and persuasive speaking, and coaches non-native speakers on presentation delivery, slide design and American business communication norms for Autodesk.

In addition, she is developing a website to assist with effective communication across cultures. The website is for people in German-speaking countries.

“Americans can use it as well for culture,” she says.

Stuckey began teaching English and American business culture for corporate clients such as BASF, John Deere and Siemens in Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, Germany, in 2001.

After high school, she attended Alma College, graduating in 1996 with a degree in international relations and a minor in Spanish, a language focus nurtured by Ruth Moser, her Spanish teacher at Parchment, she says.

While at Alma, Stuckey had the opportunity to participate in a Tandem University for International Study program in Madrid, Spain.

After graduation, she was selected to participate for a year in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, teaching English in schools in Tokyo and working with teachers there to design lesson plans to help students with their English speaking and listening skills.

Stuckey says there were 60,000 applicants for the JET program, but only 3,000 — including her — were accepted to participate.

After her year in Japan, she returned to the States, earning her master's degree in 1998 in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University of Tennessee.

She points out, as an aside, that she was at Tennessee when Peyton Manning, quarterback of the school’s football team and later in the NFL, was a senior there.

In 1999, she moved to Germany, even though she didn’t know the language.

“My first experience with German was from a pretzel vendor,” she says.

The vendor taught her how to order a pretzel in German, and wouldn’t sell it to her until she could do it on her own.

Now she communicates well in both Spanish and German.

Stuckey, 51, who is divorced, took time away from her work from 2011 to 2024, living in Barcelona, Spain, where she raised her son, Logan Kempf, who is now 19 and a university student studying finance and law.

“That allowed me to once again experience Spanish culture and to understand the cultural differences, not only with the United States, but also with Germany,” and during that time, “I became the ‘accidental’ English teacher of my friends,” she wrote in her vita.

While in Spain, Stuckey created a website, which she has since closed down, to help women who had been involved in narcissistic relationships.

“I decided to write a novel about it (narcissistic relationships) instead,” she says.

The novel, about a female serial killer whose victims are narcissists, takes place in Chicago and Berrien Springs, she says. She recently completed it and submitted it for publication.

Stuckey already is a published author, writing, “The Prophecy: The Quest for the Emerald Queen,” a fantasy novel for young adults, which was published in 2003.

She also wrote an article of advice for retirees, entitled, “The Joy of Missing Out,” which was published last fall in VESTED Magazine.

In her spare time, Stuckey enjoys cooking and even boxes on occasion.

“I’m lucky to have the freedom to do whatever I want,” she says.

Stuckey is the daughter of Frank and Diane Stuckey, of Plainwell, Her older brother, Jack Carlsen, of Battle Creek, is also a Parchment grad.

In addition to Moser, Stuckey says she was inspired by Dan DeGraw, her economics teacher in Parchment.

“He saw how my brain worked and he challenged me. He changed my life completely,” she says.

“He was incredibly, incredibly good at his job.”

“It was kind of the golden age of being in high school,” Stuckey says of her time at PHS.

There weren’t many travel teams or other activities that were not school-related, she says. “Everything centered around the school.”

One of her major activities in high school was participating in the Choraliers singing group, which had captivated her when they gave a Christmas concert at her elementary school.

“My entire young life I wanted to be a Choralier,” she says.