PPSA General Meeting and Elections: May 31

The  Penn Professional Staff Assembly (PPSA) annual meeting and elections with featured speaker Provost Ron Daniels will be Wednesday, May 31 at noon in Bodek Lounge of Houston Hall. All monthly paid staff are automatically members of PPSA and are encouraged to attend, participate and vote. For more information on PPSA go to www.upenn.edu/ppsa.

PPSA is pleased to present the following slate of candidates for 2006-2007 board positions. (See www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v52/n33/ ppsacand.html for more details about the nominees.)

Chair-Elect:  Choose One

• Dr. Suzanne Bellan (Business Services) She has worked at Penn for eight years, currently as Associate Director of the PennCard Center in the Business Services Division. Before that, she was the General Manager of Penn Student Agencies for the Division of University Life.

• Omar Mitchell (Wharton) He has been with the University for 12 years and has been active in employee organizations much of this time. He is currently an active member of the (PPSA) serving on the Community Relations Committee. Omar has also served as the Chair of WPSA.

Vice Chair-Elect:  Choose One

(Note—if the proposed new by-laws are passed, this position will serve for one year as Vice-Chair-Elect and the second year as Member-at-Large.)

• Monica Jones (Affirmative Action) She has been with the University for almost four years at the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs as a Staff Assistant.

• John J. McGarry (Facilities and Real Estate Services) He has been at the Department of Real Estate for over nine years as Director of Real Estate Brokerage, following 20 years of institutional real estate experience at other universities and in the private sector. 

• Joanne Murray (Nursing) She has worked at Penn for 10 years and is an Associate Director for Academic Affairs at the School of Nursing. She specializes in the doctoral student population.

Member-at-Large: Choose Three

• Linda Brown (Wharton) She is the Associate Director of The Pension Research Council and Boettner Center at The Wharton School. She manages multiple accounts, including federal and non-federal sponsored programs, gifts, endowments and interdepartmental and interschool budgets.

• Karen Chance (Development and Alumni Relations)  She is Associate Director for the Global Alumni Network based in the New York Regional Office in the Office of Alumni Relations, where she manages alumni associations in the Northeast region, Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America.

• Pamela Edwards (VPUL—PennCAP) Since 2001 she has been Assistant Director of PennCAP and Coordinator of the Pre-Freshman Program. 

• Ken Grcich (College House and Academic Services) He graduated from Penn’s School of Social Work (currently Social Policy and Practice) in 2000.  He returned to Penn as the House Dean of Hamilton College House in July of 2005. 

• Judy Jackson (Medical School) She has worked at Penn in the School of Medicine for nearly 20 years. She started out as an Administrative Assistant in the Department of Anatomy.  In 1988, she joined the Biomedical Graduate Studies (BGS) as a Graduate Group Coordinator and has since held several positions within the central BGS office. 

• Julie Lyzinski (VPUL) She began at Penn in October of 2005 as the Intervention Specialist for the First Step program. She came to Penn from Chicago where she had been working as a Clinical Team Leader for a psychosocial rehabilitation agency targeting young adults struggling with mental illness. 

• Dana Matkevich (Housing and Conference Services) Her current position is in the Department of Housing and Conference Services as the Coordinator of Communications and Assessment.