Although Juan Chambers, an assistant in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, is relatively new to the UI’s Urbana campus, she’s not a stranger to education. Chambers, who has been at the UI for about two years, had worked as an office manager for the St. Louis public schools and as an administrative assistant with a cable TV company before her husband’s job brought them to Champaign.
Tell me about your career here at the university.
I started as Extra Help in the same position and department that I’m in now in September 2005.
My husband is a minister in the Church of God in Christ denomination, and he was asked to come here to work with a church that was in conflict. For the first three or four years, I commuted between here and St. Louis, where I worked as an administrative assistant to the vice president of a cable TV corporation.
We didn’t think his assignment was going to be permanent, but here we are, eight years later.
Do you enjoy being a minister’s wife? That must be challenging at times.
Very challenging. Frustrating. Sometimes discouraging. Very sacrificial. But never a dull moment. There’s always something. You’re held at a higher standard that’s unfair, because you’re a person too, with the same problems everyone else has.
But I grew up like that; my dad was a minister, and my brother is a minister. My sister and I never wanted to marry ministers because we saw what our mom went through.
Tell me about your job here.
I’m the assistant for the associate vice chancellors for research, Melanie Loots and Jennifer Eardley. Dr. Loots is the conflict-of-interest officer for the campus, and Dr. Eardley takes care of the translational initiatives research.
I have a wide range of duties. One of the main ones is reporting the non-university activities on campus. The campus is mandated by state law for employees to fully disclose their non-university activities. That process starts at the end of September and goes through November. My part starts around July or August.
What does your work with that entail?
First of all, we have to make sure the forms are posted to the Web. We have to get the mass mailing out. This year, I think we mailed out more than 7,700. I gather all that information and send it out. Then when we get them back I have to make sure that everybody fills out the form. They’re stamped when they come back in. I have to maintain the office files on those; we keep three or four years’ worth in the office. I field questions from people who can’t remember what they put down the year before or people who have questions because their circumstances have changed.
It’s not a hard process, but it’s a lot of steps, a lot of coordination and deadlines, and you have to stay on top of things.
What other responsibilities you have?
Scheduling for Dr. Loots, Dr. Eardley and Lauren Stokes, the business manager. I coordinate their travel arrangements, field phone calls and prepare correspondence, and maintain the databases for conflict of interest, critical research initiatives and translational research.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
The diversity. I like being able to do different things. It calls on my knowledge of different types of software, from Excel spreadsheets to PowerPoint presentations to Microsoft Access. I get a chance to use all those different things because our office is so diverse in what we do.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Learning the campus and the university system, the levels of hierarchy. I’m still learning that and the protocol. The university is kind of an organism unto itself, so you have to learn how to do things. I’ve never been civil service either, so that’s been a new experience too.
What do you like to do when you’re not at work?
I’m an avid TV watcher. My favorite this season is “Grey’s Anatomy.” We have a lot of church activities to attend. Aside from that, my husband and I just like to get out and experience people, just drive someplace and find a flea market or something. I’m a pretty avid reader also. I read religious motivational type books, authors such as Bishop Vashti McKenzie.
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