Dr. Ken
Schroeder-1965 LaHarpe Grad, Mayo Clinic Dr./Consultant
The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Dr. Ken
Schroeder-1965 LaHarpe Grad, Mayo Clinic Dr./Consultant
This is the eleventh in a series about doctors in the medical field who graduated in The Quill area schools.
It is about Dr. Kenneth Schroeder, son of Wayne and Opal Schroeder of La Harpe.
Kenneth W. Schroeder, MD
Dr. Kenneth Schroeder was born July 9th, 1947 to Wayne and Opal (Cortelyou) Schroeder of rural La Harpe.
Ken grew up on a farm and began grammar school in a one-room country school at Elm Grove Grade School until he was moved into La Harpe Grade School in 8th grade.
He spent his summers by helping his folks in raising livestock and growing corn and soybeans.
He was active in 4-H showing cattle at the Hancock County 4-H Fair, which he said was "a fun-thing to do."
He played a little golf on the La Harpe course but didn't pursue it later although many of his colleagues enjoy golf.
At LaHarpe High he enjoyed many activities including football, track, band, and student council where he served as vice president.
Don Corey, math teacher, and Dorothy Dean were teachers who made an impression on Ken.
Following graduation in 1965 from LHS, Ken left La Harpe and enrolled in Hope College in Holland, Michigan thinking he was going to become an Engineer.
But he soon found he didn't like that and began to pursue other avenues that dealt with life science interacting with people.
"The college gave us a lot of exposure to medicine and had a very active premedical club where we could find out about the different fields of medicine.
"We would go visit the hospital and see what a doctor did. Doctors would come in and talk to us about what they did. Most of us didn't have any idea what they did."
Attending a college that gives you "exposure to a lot of different things is very important in finding a career," Ken said, "as well as the tools that are needed to train for it."
At Hope College, Ken rotated to different areas. He liked using his hands to do things - procedural things, so when he was exposed to clinical gastroenterology and endoscopy he said, it was easy for him to decide.
Ken graduated with a B.A. from Hope College in 1969 and entered Medical School at University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and received his M.D..
He received his Ph.D., in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois, Chicago and did his Medical training and Residency in Internal Medicine then his Fellowship in Gastroenterology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
During Ken's Internship in 1978, he married a Grand Rapids, MN native, Dawn Ellen (Beers) Schroeder who had received her RN degree at St. Mary's College.
The following year, in 1979 he began his work as a consultant in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Dept. of Internal Medicine, at the world famous Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation, Rochester, MN.
His practice is "clinical gastroenterology, with focus on inflammatory bowel disease and gastrointestinal endoscopy."
"It can be diagnostic, but they do more and more therapy with procedures, too."
Dr. Schroeder doesn't do surgical procedures, but makes diagnostic decisions that help direct the surgical management of the patient.
Mayo Clinic is ranked by U.S.News & World Report magazine as #2 in America's Best Hospitals according to 17 separate specialties. It has two main hospitals in Rochester and clinics in Scottsdale, AZ and Jacksonville, FL with 2,708 doctors and scientists (around 1600 in Rochester).
"It's a fun place to work," Dr. Schroeder says.
"We see patients and have colleagues from all over the world. "Intellectually, it is very stimulating."
"There is the depth and breath of experience for almost anything that comes along."
There are a lot of advancements, too. There is a procedure where a patient swallows a capsule that has a miniature camera inside it.
"I actually can trace what is going on inside a patient's intestine. The camera transmits everything to a little box clipped on a belt outside the patient. It can transmit 50,000 images over 5 to 6 hours."
Dr. Schroeder says, "I have been lucky to have had an emphasis placed on quality education by my family and the LaHarpe school system beginning in my earliest years at Elm Grove School.
"I hope others will continue to have similar opportunities."
"In a one-room school, there is a lot of individualized attention that the teacher gave students. And there's the stimulus of hearing the older classes meet.
"We could interact with all ages without the discipline problems. Younger ones always learn and older ones taught and helped with the young ones.
Dr. Schroeder said his family always expected them to go to college and three out of four of them had taken advanced training.
His sister Ann Hoekstra is a counselor in Waterloo, Iowa and her husband a family physician.
His brother Gary lives near Blandinsville and La Harpe and farms, and Brian is a banker/farmer from Minier. (on the other side of Peoria).
When he has time off, Dr. Schroeder enjoys backpacking and "boundary waters canoe area wilderness canoe camping."
He and his wife have two college age children.
Jason Kenneth Schroeder, nears graduation at Hope College, Holland, MI with a Sociology major.
Marissa Dawn Schroeder is a Sophomore at the University of San Diego in California focusing on environmental studies.
Neither want to pursue medicine, but that's all right, he says, as long as they find their way.