Have you met Karen, Receptionist and Administrative Secretary in Education Policy Studies? Spend the next 2 minutes getting to know her a little better.
Where is your favourite place on campus?
Oh there are lots. I like going into SUB. SUB has the bookstore. It has a very good eatery and a doctor’s office when I need it. There’s just a lot of activity — the Farmer’s market there on Thursdays — I love that. And the interaction between not just faculty, but staff and students. I enjoy the people interacting — they let their guard down, they become human again.
Tablet or paper?
Paper.
Name something you’ve brought to the office from home?
I have a teenage daughter. She brings herself from home to me. So I’m constantly juggling her life and school and whatnot. So that’s what I bring from home.
And anything you’ve taken home from work.
My email. Everything that I do or a good chunk of what I do is online. So I have this terrible habit of checking out my email — my personal email — at home and then I go right on to work email.
What is the one thing you can’t live without?
Music.
If you won airfare to anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Italy. Naples. I wanted to be a volcanologist when I graduated. Ended up partying too much, missed the boat and went a different path. But I love volcanoes and my favourite volcano is Mt Vesuvius. I want to go there before I die; it’s on my bucket list, number one.
You can invite anyone — alive or dead, real or fictional — to dinner. Who would it be?
David Bowie.
If you could switch jobs with someone else on campus for a week, what would you do?
One of the Bee-Clean ladies. They work their keisters off and I don’t think they’re appreciated as much as they should be. I don’t think people really appreciate how much they do and they are wonderful people. And I would like to do their job just to see what they do. It would probably take me a week to recover.
What does “uplifting the whole people” mean to you?
Everybody working together as a team to get students where they want to be.
If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?
Hatred. Get rid of it.
What 3 words best describe your U of A experience?
Wonderful people… even though that’s not three words.
About Karen Kutyn
A seven year veteran of the U of A, Karen started out at the Faculty of Medicine. A year and a half later she joined the Department of Education Policy Studies. Karen describes her current position of Administrative Secretary as a constantly “morphing” role. She started out as a basic receptionist but since then the role has expanded from managing infrastructure to timetabling, registering students and managing journals.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.