By Zoe Folsom
Usually, when people think about those that work for a university, they think of the faculty and perhaps a few high-level administrative staff. Faculty certainly play a vital role in providing the education for which students come to college, but outside of the spotlight hundreds of individuals work across a variety of departments to ensure that the whole university functions smoothly. At Northern Michigan University, there are over double the number of staff as faculty. These staff serve in a diverse array of positions, from dining to grounds to payroll, and quite a few of them are NMU alumni. Those alumni who go on to work for the university serve as yet another example of the interconnectedness between Northern and the surrounding community.
Many of those who chose to share their story about working for NMU as an alumni are born-and-raised Yoopers, for whom Northern provided that infamously-elusive opportunity to find the perfect job for them right at home in the U.P. The old adage that Yoopers grow up wanting nothing more than to leave the U.P. and spend their whole adult lives wishing they could come back rings true for many, but some never feel that itch to leave. The lucky of those wishing to stay around convert their jobs as student employees to full-time gigs. For example, Perry Laing (who first came to Northern as a student at John D. Pierce School in kindergarten) became involved with WNMU-TV as a student employee during his last three semesters at Northern, and when he decided that using his teaching degree wouldn’t best suit him, he applied to a full-time job with that department and beat out over 100 other candidates to get the job. Because of the experience he’d garnered working with them as a student, he had a competitive edge over the other candidates. Other Yoopers worked other jobs before landing back at Northern, like Dan Hakala, who worked for the grounds department and drove buses for the school for years. Though his eventual career wasn’t in the same field as his degree, he loved driving buses and having the opportunity to meet so many students and coaches and show them around the country.
Sometimes, the desire to move back to Marquette is so strong they move before they’ve even found their Northern job: such was the case with Russell Ault, who grew tired of the lower peninsula and moved back to Marquette only to serendipitously land a job as a graphic artist for the Learning Resources department at NMU shortly after. With an alumni wife, and 5 Northern degrees between his children and their spouses, it isn’t entirely a cliché if he (like many of the Northern employees interviewed for this article) said that working there just “felt like family.” He had worked odd jobs before coming up to Northern, and many of those who find their way back have also worked elsewhere before finding their way back. Whether at a high-level accounting firm in Green Bay, as a resident director for colleges all over the country, or helping USA Today create their first ever website, Northern alumni have made the conscious choice to leave entirely respectable positions elsewhere in favor of Marquette and NMU.
In addition to once again feeling like part of the Northern family, working as a staff member at Northern can 
provide valuable opportunities to interact with, mentor, and help students. In some departments, like the Dean of Student’s Office where Kash Dhanapal works, working closely with students to ensure their success and steer them in the right direction is the bulk of the job. Dhanapal said he feels “empowered…[to] help students assert their rights.” He also has the opportunity to help students persevere and succeed to obtain their degrees, a mission to be proud of. Other vital university jobs, like that of principal secretaries in academic departments (such as Samantha Marier, who works in the department of Languages, Literatures, and International Studies as well as for the Honors College), help facilitate classroom experiences by answering faculty and student questions and making sure everything stays organized. Outside of those departments that inherently focus on student needs, many departments employ students in addition to their full-time staff, and those students require training and mentorship. For employees like Perry Laing, this can come full circle: over the course of his career, he wound up directing some of Public Eye News (NMU’s news-production student organization), allowing him to serve as a mentor to those students who might become the next generation of media producers, just as he was when he attended Northern.
The incredible diversity of staff positions at NMU means that those who take them represent a wide variety of interests and career paths, some of which students might not even think about. We all appreciate the safe and snow-free sidewalks during the winter, but seldom think of the grounds crew clocking in at 4 am to make that possible. We appreciate when a department works quickly to help us receive advising or necessary paperwork, but seldom think of the secretarial staff oiling the gears of each department to make those interactions possible. NMU’s staff is full of indispensable people whose jobs might not be very well-known: for example, although she worked for years as a director of marketing and communications for the university, Cindy Paavola now serves as Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives. Essentially, when something comes up that doesn’t fall under anyone’s specific job description (say, for example, a pandemic), it’s her job to help the president (and university on the whole) navigate it. The diversity of opportunities for staff at Northern means that lots of different people with differing skillsets have the opportunity to work together. Still, NMU coworkers can always relate over the unique setting of life in the U.P.
The same Northern community that helps to forge lifelong friendships during the college years makes for friendly colleagues, and many staff members mentioned their colleagues as one of the best parts of the job. Before arriving back at Northern, some of them worked in highly corporate environments, or much bigger cities, and having a tight-knit group at work makes a huge difference in their job satisfaction. Sometimes, colleagues are even former college friends, as is the case with payroll and HRIS professional Lindsey Butorac and her friend Kelly (who she’s known since they were 3 years old) that also works for Northern. Employees also cite a love for the greater Marquette community and the more relaxed pace of the U.P. lifestyle, as well as all of the wonderful outdoor recreation opportunities that the area has to offer.
Although not always at the forefront of the picture when one thinks about a university, Northern couldn’t operate without its staff. Lindsey Butorac compared her position as a payroll director to that of a campus mom: “nobody knows what we do until we don’t do it,” she said. This quote could apply to hundreds of the dedicated Northern staff who ensure that the whole university experience runs smoothly for everybody involved. And for those serving as staff who earned their degree(s) from Northern, the work is just a bit more rewarding than it already was.