Rice’s new ACT program wraps up first semester to rave reviews

Rice’s new ACT program wraps up first
semester to rave reviews
…………………………………………………………………

BY GREG OKUHARA
Rice News Staff

Universities
are complicated places, and jobs at universities are similarly
complicated. Employees need all the help they can get to
be successful both in their daily work and future careers.

To help make
sure Rice department administrators and coordinators have
all the knowledge they need to do their job, a team of administrators
from across campus has developed the Administrative Career
Training program.

The ACT program
wrapped up its first semester in December and is earning
rave reviews from its participants.

“(Feedback)
has been positive,” said Marie Wehrung, assistant director
of Human Resources and one of the developers of the ACT
program. “Some people had recommendations and things
they would like to see included, but in general, it was
very well received.”

The first half
of the program consisted of what Wehrung described as the
“personal excellence track,” which were classes
designed to help employees develop their personal skills
and overall knowledge of Rice.

Rachel Graham,
an accounting assistant in the School of Social Sciences,
was one of five people who attended all ACT sessions offered
in the fall. Having been here a little more than a year,
Graham said she found the Rice 101 class, which covered
the history of Rice, one of the more helpful in the series.

“The Rice
101 class had a lot of information about Rice I didn’t
know at first,” she said.
Graham also added she enjoyed the two Polishing Your Communication
Skills classes, taught by Rice debate coach and speech communication
lecturer Dan West.

Carl Furra, inventory
payables analyst for IT Services and Telecommunications,
echoed Graham’s comments about West’s class. He
also completed all the fall classes.

“He made
you get up and speak, which is something I’m not very
comfortable with,” Furra said. “But it helps to
do it in a small setting like that to break the ice and
get a little more courage.”

Furra added he
has worked at Rice for 3 1/2 years, but much of the information
covered in the classes helped to fill in some holes in his
working knowledge of the Rice community.

“It’s
good to have a general knowledge of how the other departments
interact and how they work with professors,” he said.
“It gives you more knowledge to build on, and the more
knowledge you have the easier it is to understand the different
things that are going on at Rice.”

Celeste Boudreaux,
compensation analyst for Human Resources, said she was happy
Rice invests time and energy into the continuing development
of its employees.

“I think
one of the benefits of working at an excellent university
is its commitment to the career development of its staff,”
she said. “We got to take advantage of some of Rice’s
own internal talent.”

Julia Amborski,
administrative coordinator for the Cain Project in Engineering
and Professional Communication, and Jim Smolen, senior department
administrator for the Department of Biochemistry and Cell
Biology, were the other two staff members to complete all
the classes.

While the program
is designed for department administrators and coordinators,
Wehrung said it is open to all staff members at Rice.

“This is
not an exclusive club,” she said. “It is aimed
at department coordinators and administrators, but also
is available for anyone who aspires to these positions.
And we’re working our cross-campus team to add to the
program. This is an effort on the part of a lot of people
on campus.”

Anyone interested
learning about the program or in signing up for the classes
can visit the ACT Web site at <http://act.rice.edu>.
The spring set of classes, which will focus on human resources,
financial skills and research and student services, will
start sometime in March, Wehrung said.

Judging by the
effectiveness of the first semester of classes, it seems
Wehrung and company have come close to hitting the target.

“I think
it’s definitely worth (staff members’) time because
there’s a lot to learn,” Graham said. “They
put a lot of work into organizing it. I’m glad I went
through it. I’ll take a lot of what I learned to future
jobs.”