It’s all about the students and building community
In the Toner Student Center hangs a plaque engraved with many names. The plaque recognizes those employees who have worked for more than 25 (and up to 50!) years in service to Saint Mary’s and its students.
The typeface will have to continue getting smaller to fit the hundreds of employees listed there each time it is updated.
These are the names of those who have been invested in Saint Mary’s, and particularly in its students, alumni, and its future. We talked with just three of those each currently employed for more than 25 years about their stories and why they continue to be invested.
They came for different reasons.
For Jeff Wieczorek, academic computer support technician, it was the dreaded Y2K issue 26 years ago. “Remember when the world was concerned that computers would stop working at the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31, 1999? Part of the reason I was hired was that they needed people to go around updating the BIOS of every computer and server on campus. I was hired in June of 1999, and we had six months to make sure we were as ready as possible,” he said. “It was a great way to learn the layout of the campus — visiting every classroom, office, maintenance closet, and hidden tunnel on campus. After an uneventful A combined 75+ years of service to Saint Mary’s It’s all about the students and building community New Year’s Eve, they started looking for ways to get rid of me on Jan. 1, but I bamboozled my boss with wit and charm to keep me onboard.”
He was fortunate that while playing in the band Shadow Dancer, his future boss came to one of his gigs and mentioned Saint Mary’s needed more IT staff for the Y2K issue. “I was working in the IT Department of Benchmark at the time, and thought it would be fun to give campus life a try. I was just starting married life, and when I found out my kids could get free tuition, that sealed the deal,” he said. “I was able to lord that perk over my kids in lieu of allowance: one yard mowing equaled one semester of biology. One sidewalk shoveling equaled one semester of Business and Communications with Dean Beckman. And that’s no joke, my daughter had Dean for several classes!”
Dean Beckman, chair of the Business and Communication Department and associate professor, started shortly after Wieczorek in 2001, as an adjunct instructor, and he was full time by August, largely because of being in the right place at the right time and building great relationships.
Beckman had been working in news and sports for the local radio station in Winona and became an acquaintance of Saint Mary’s professor Dr. Steve Schild’s after completing his graduate studies. Beckman once offered to be a graduate speaker in one of Dr. Schild’s classes. When a sudden vacancy occurred, Dr. Schild began searching for a replacement, and Beckman was at the top of his list to teach one of the courses: Intro to Mass Communication — which to this day is one of Beckman’s favorite courses to teach. At Schild’s suggestion and encouragement, he later applied for and was hired for the full-time job.
Nicole Witt Gerdes B’98, associate director of admissions for recruitment marketing, came to Saint Mary’s 26 years ago in September 1999 to work in admissions, only a year after graduating. Ironically, back when she was looking at colleges, she was one of those prospective students who didn’t have “local” Saint Mary’s on her radar.
“I was from Winona and wanted to move away, but my mom’s health wasn’t good, so I decided I didn’t want to be that far away, so I followed my best friend to Saint Mary’s and absolutely fell in love with it. I loved criminal justice. Dr. Matt Vetter was an amazing adviser as were all the professors in the department, like Valerie Edwards Robeson. It really made me love being a student,” she said.
After graduating, a position opened up in the admission office. She interviewed with the legendary Anthony M. Piscitiello, AFSC B’69, M’82 and discovered the position would require extensive travel. With her mother’s need for care, she knew that position wouldn’t work, so Piscitiello pointed out another position that would be a better fit — essentially the one she is currently in. “The title just changes, but really the job has stayed the same,” she said with a smile.
The reasons why they stay are similar. It largely has to do with the people, particularly the students.
“I think two reasons primarily: I think it would be the number of incredible colleagues that we’ve had over the years,” Beckman explains. “When I think back to colleagues like Dr. Marilyn Frost who was my dean and was a tremendous mentor for me. I owe her a lot for my success, same for Dr. Steve Schild, but then others who maybe I didn’t work as closely with but embraced me when I was just starting, like Dr. Gary Diomandes and Brother Stephen Rusyn, FSC, and Brother Tom Houde, FSC, a dear friend of mine. They made it feel like home.
Second, the students. Hands down, we have the best students, the best alumni. I stay in touch with some, even some I only taught once or twice. In what other job can you have that impact and end reward? I don’t think there are those kind of jobs. It’s the best job in the world. Where else would they tolerate my jokes?”
Gerdes responds with two words. “The people.”
“All along the way, I’ve worked with really fabulous people, not just in admissions but other departments on campus. Tony Piscitiello really made me want to stay here and help Saint Mary’s become everything that it could. I have loved working with the students. It keeps you young; it makes you feel young to be around them, even though conversations come about that make me realize I’m actually extremely old. A lot of us who have been here a long time retire from here.” Gerdes said she just received a wedding invitation from two student workers who met in the office. “That was exciting to get my ‘save the date.’ I’ll try my best to get to Chicago for it.”
Beckman adds, “We’ve had a couple of people who met in my classes who have gotten married and started a family. Those are fun stories. It’s increasingly easy to stay in touch now. I’ve been blessed with personal social media, it’s so much easier to stay in contact. It’s humbling (when they reach back). I was the one giving them work, but they still want to stay in contact. It’s very rewarding. It’s what I love about the job. It tells me that the work I put in meant something to them. It was worth it and was worth the time and the effort.”
And in addition to “the people,” Wieczorek adds, “the atmosphere” to his answer. “When you can wake up and look forward to going to work, that’s pretty ideal,” he said. “I’ve had several great bosses over the years, and they’ve all been very accommodating to life events. There’s a level of flexibility in this job that other employers don’t offer.”
It helps if you love what you do.
For Gerdes, it’s the variety in her days: overseeing the marketing materials and edits, the mailings, getting counselors ready for the road, overseeing the student workers, doing the admission counselor schedules, invoicing, college fair sign-ups, budgets, and ordering supplies. “There’s never a dull moment. I never sit here and have nothing to do,” she said.
Beckman adds that seeing where students go is incredibly rewarding.
“What I enjoy the most is meeting up with alumni and seeing what they are doing with their lives today,” he said. “As much as I enjoy teaching and the other responsibilities that come with the job, it’s seeing the success they have and the families that they raise — that to me is the most rewarding and enjoyable part of the job, and fortunately I get to do that often, and they allow me into their lives after they graduate.”
And Wieczorek enjoys playing with technology.
“There was a lot of discovery in the early days,” he said. “ ‘Jeff, we need to figure out how to use a webcam for lab use; go down to Kmart and pick one up.’ There were also unexpected crises that really bonded the IT team together, for example, the year that the worms took over move-in weekend. There was a time when most computers didn’t have McAfee or Norton, because computer viruses hadn’t yet made an impact on the average internet user. A couple students arrived on campus with their infected 15 lb. CPU Towers, and the minute they plugged them into the network, a virus started to spread to all the other computers in the dorm, and eventually into other resident halls. The IT staff had to fabricate a virus cleaning CD-ROM, and we spent all day and night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday visiting each and every student room on campus. Some of us even slept in our offices. It was unexpected chaos, but all of us pulling together like that bonded us in ways that a normal, uneventful work day could never do.”
In the end, the work they all do makes a huge difference on the student experience, and they are each honored to do it because they believe Saint Mary’s students deserve it.
Beckman said, “I would describe our students and alumni as some of the friendliest, most genuine and caring people you’ll ever meet. They truly want to be educated to the best of our ability so they can have career success but they also truly want to have a professional and friendly professional relationship and let you into their lives. I don’t think a lot of other schools are like that.
They want us to get to know them. There is a vulnerability that comes with that. I think that means a lot. It’s also a responsibility that we carry as well.
“I think what makes Saint Mary’s special is that we allow every student to be who they are in faith and to be true to themselves in all aspects of life. The faith-based component is incredibly important. I think the other thing is the faculty and staff live out what we say as far as caring for them and wanting to know what happens in their lives after graduation. At so many colleges the relationships stop after the transaction ends. Here it is a lifelong transaction. If you’re going to work here, or if you come to school here, that’s what you should want.
“I’m invested because that’s what the students deserve and should expect from us,” he said. “When they agree to come here, we make a promise to them that we are going to do everything in our power to help prepare them for their careers and also to lead ethical lives of service leadership. As a father of college-aged students, I expect their university to take as good care of them as I would of them. I just think we owe it to them; that’s the promise we make when we recruit them.”
Wieczorek said he’s invested “Because we’re loaded to the hilt with friendly people. You make lifelong friends that you want to visit outside of work hours. We’ve got a good thing going here. It’s nice to see students and staff alike appreciate the opportunity that Saint Mary’s offers.”
Gerdes describes our students as “genuine and funny.” “I love listening to their stories,” she said. “I think that Saint Mary’s does a really good job teaching students to be good people and go out and be good people in the community. When my seniors graduate I get very teary-eyed but I know they’re going to do great things.
“I’m invested because of the people and the students. I’m invested because I don’t know what else I would want to do. I feel like I do this well. I feel like the people around me appreciate me. It’s hard to stop loving something you’ve done for so long. I don’t know what else I could see myself doing. It’s in my blood. This is where I spend the majority of my time. I stay because I love Saint Mary’s; I believe in it.”
