What does a day-in-the-life of being a Director Workforce Education consist of?

A day for me consists of a lot of meetings. I serve on several committees that are working to make school more accessible to students. We work on creating systems that support students. I often meet with representatives from Financial Aid, Enrollment, Admissions, Advising, and Instruction.

I also meet with members of my staff every day and troubleshoot student concerns and issues. This is a good time for us to review policies and procedures and make sure that we’re not making things hard for the students. We’re always trying to reduce barriers to students success and these ongoing conversations are a key to achieving this goal.

One thing that takes up a lot of my time are the emails I get every day. They can be difficult to keep up with. I’m usually able to answer them first thing in the morning and the last thing each evening. I try not to answer them outside of work hours so that I have some separation between work and home.

What advice would you give someone considering this career?

Get as much people management experience as you can. Managing people is a very specialized skill and needs to be practiced. People have a variety of needs and need support and guidance from their managers.

Think about how you’ve been treated by those in authority and think about how you would like to treat people differently. Use that to make yourself a better people manager.

What is a book or movie that has inspired you?

One book that has inspired me is “Managing to Make a Difference” by Larry Sternberg and Kim Turnage. That book really reinforced my management philosophy and helps me stay true to it.

I really believe that people do the jobs they have chosen because they want to make a difference in the world and this book really helped me understand how I can support others in their efforts to do that.

Do you (or your company) offer internships or job shadow opportunities to high school students? If so, how would a student go about applying for one of those?

We don’t offer internships, but we do offer job shadows. If you are interested in doing a job shadow at North Seattle College, let me know at Jeanette.miller@seattlecolleges.edu