Ranae Buck, an employee with the university since 1988, knows full well the professional importance of going with the tide.
A training coordinator for the Center for Training and Professional Development, Buck’s first job on campus, in the personnel services office, had her answering phones and processing employment cards in an office where the dot-matrix printer was a high-tech answer to prayers.
“Nothing was electronic,” she said. “Everything was about processing paper.”
In just two years she had moved to a similar job in the staff development office, which soon morphed into the training center. Buck stayed, and has navigated every change since.
“My role has changed a lot over the years, as has the department’s name,” she said. In those 26 years, more than her role has changed, with almost all of her duties now completed on a computer screen.
Buck is the unit’s business manager and ensures event details are covered well before an event even begins. It leaves her thinking ahead, as some of the events must be planned a year in advance.
“This job has allowed me to become a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades,” she said. “And the way our office works, if I’m not there, my colleagues will jump right in and get it done. We have a small staff, so it helps us get a lot done.”
The training center provides a range of professional development, coaching and event planning services to the campus and to the community. Fourteen human resources classes are being offered this semester, as well as customized training using specialized curriculum designed in-house to meet a client’s needs.
“We’ll work with the unit and find out what their goals and expectations are,” she said. “We can provide a foundation for the unit so, for example, they are able to work better as a team or run processes more accurately.”
One of Buck’s favorite job responsibilities over the years was helping set up the Biannual Conference for Women, which was discontinued four years ago.
The event, which she worked on for two decades, hosted mostly women leaders from central Illinois and included a star-studded speakers list. Through the event, Buck was able to meet such notables as the late former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, entertainer Naomi Judd and former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien.
“It’s something that just grew over time,” Buck said. “It was an incredible amount of work, but it was very rewarding to be a part of it.”
Work on the conference no doubt led to her 2006 selection as Office Professional of the Year by the Secretariat. She is a former member of the Secretariat board and is a member of the campus Business Managers Group.
When she’s not helping plan events at work, she likes relaxing at home with her family in Flatville, Illinois, near Ogden. She has been married for 23 years and has two daughters, one a surgical technologist, the other attending Parkland College and majoring in the health career field.
“I don’t have that many hobbies, but spending time with my family is very important to me,” she said. “We have a lot of family gatherings at my brother’s pool, and to relax I like sitting on my deck.”
