BY WENDY SODERBURG
UCLA Today Staff
Twenty-five years ago, Susan Corley got her
first job at UCLA as secretary to several faculty members in
the then-Graduate School of Management.
After a few years, she left UCLA for a job
in Santa Monica with a nonprofit association of graduate management
schools; 13 years later, she returned to UCLA. After two more
years, she left again to pursue an opportunity in Northern California.
But one year later she returned to UCLA — and this time
she’s planning to stay.
“It’s interesting; my career here
has been so spattered,” said Corley, who today serves
as manager of academic planning for The Anderson School. Her
staggering workload includes all of the academic and curriculum
planning for the school’s three M.B.A. programs and doctoral
program, plus overseeing all extracurricular student activities
such as the orientation program, case competitions and the academic
internship program.
“This is absolutely my passion,”
Corley declared. “Working with the students is what energizes
me.”
But as her UCLA colleagues will attest, working
with her fellow staff members is a passion as well. On July
1, Corley will become president of Staff Assembly, a campus
organization dedicated to promoting the interests and welfare
of UCLA’s 17,000 staff members.
Her presidential responsibilities will include
overseeing such activities as the organization’s two big
fund-raisers — the Resource Fair and Casino Night —
and the awards program, through which staff may apply for scholarships
to pay for additional education and training.
Oddly enough, Corley at first rejected the idea of running for
president-elect last year when she was approached by current
president Dave Miller and past president Rosemary Chavoya. Corley
had already served a year as vice president of programs for
the organization — which included running the Learn at
Lunch series — and she was exhausted.
“My first response was that I wasn’t
qualified,” Corley explained. “But I also wanted
to stay involved in Staff Assembly. Finally, after much soul-searching,
I agreed to do it.”
While serving as Staff Assembly president-elect,
Corley learned as much as she could from Dave Miller, whom she
calls “a jewel.” Her goals as president include
getting more people involved in Staff Assembly by creating more
formal committees and possibly adding a third fund-raising event.
Before her involvement in Staff Assembly, Corley
recalled, she was perfectly content with her work and friends
at The Anderson School. She and her supervisor, Senior Associate
Dean Bill Broesamle, get along famously and have worked together
for many years. “By my own choosing, I tended to be somewhat
isolated at Anderson,” Corley said.
“But now I feel like I’m a UCLA
employee, as opposed to just an Anderson School employee,”
she added. “I love my affiliation with Anderson. But through
Staff Assembly, I suddenly felt part of a larger, more powerful
community, and a whole new world has opened up for me.”
