She was born and raised in Salem, VA and received her BA from Roanoke College with a major in Psychology and a minor in Biology and Chemistry.  Although both parents had been educators at one time, she always had an interest in biomedical research and in animals.  She received her MA in Experimental Psychology at Hollins College, specializing in the comparative and physiological areas and doing both human and animal research.  She then taught at Emory and Henry and Guilford Colleges until the Ph.D. program in Psychology was developed at UNCG, where she enrolled as one of their first Ph.D. students.  There, she specialized in physiological psychology, working with Dr. Russell Harter and Dr. Robert Eason, doing evoked potential research with spoken syllables.  Upon completion of her Ph.D., she accepted a research position at Brenau College in Gainesville, GA, devising tests to assess Learning Disabilities in preschool children using evoked potentials and other methods.

Although licensed as a Practicing Psychologist in North Carolina, she accepted the challenge of developing the experimental program for the Psychology Department at North Carolina A & T State University in 1972.  Here she received a NSF Equipment Grant to build and furnish student experimental psychology laboratories and an animal colony room.  Working with the architect, she designed human and animal research areas in Gibbs Hall and opened the first small animal colony facility on campus.  She then was funded by a Minority Faculty Development Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of NIH, working at Bowman Gray School of Medicine to learn new surgical and research techniques to investigate the causes of hypertension using animal models.  She was and is now funded by the Minority Biomedical Research Support Division of NIGMS of NIH to continue to investigate hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats and related strains.  She also is examining the usefulness of the Wistar-Kyoto Hyperactive Rat as a potential animal model of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in humans.

Dr. Schumacher has mentored both high school and college students in her lab, and followed their careers as they completed graduate studies and became educators, researchers, and counselors.   She has published articles and presented numerous papers and workshops on her research, on the development of new methodologies and equipment for use with animals, on teaching physiological psychology, on grant writing, and on preparing for and getting into graduate school.  She currently enjoys a combination of research and teaching at A & T, while mentoring several students in her research lab.

Dr. Schumacher worked her way through college and graduate school as a horse trainer and riding instructor.  She and her husband enjoy their Irish Setters, gardening, boating, and swimming.