What area do you work in within the VPFA portfolio?
I work in Finance and Administration Shared Services, which is a mouthful, so FASS for short.
What is your current position, and what are your job responsibilities?
I am an accountant, and my biggest responsibility is to monitor transactions posting to Banner from the Facilities Services asset management system, AiM. I also reconcile the FASS/Facilities Services clearing accounts. I check each day’s posted transactions and make any changes that need to be made and then post the transactions to Banner via Appworx. Then, I upload transactions to clearing accounts and make sure everything has posted where it should. It is a lot of looking at Excel spreadsheets.
What has been your career path; how did you end up in your current position?
It has been a long and winding road to get where I am today. After graduating from high school, I started at the UO majoring in chemistry and was unsure what I wanted to do after graduation. In 1994, I started working as a pharmacy technician at PeaceHealth on the recommendation of my aunt who worked there. I loved the job. After graduating from the UO with a BS in General Science I worked full time as a pharmacy tech for a few years. In 2000, I decided I wanted to go back to school to become a pharmacist and was able to do that when a night shift position opened up in the pharmacy. For nine years I worked full time on night shift as a pharmacy tech and went to school part time. I applied to pharmacy school but that was unfortunately not in the cards. In my last application cycle I took an introductory accounting class and fell in love with it. Upon the advice of my professor for that class I decided to make a huge change and applied to and was admitted to the Lundquist College of Business here at the UO. After four more years of full-time night shift and part-time school I graduated with a BS in Accounting. A year later, I started as an accounting tech in Printing and Mailing Services here at the UO. Then in October 2018, I moved to FASS as an accountant. As I stated, it was a long and winding road but it was so worth it. I love my job here in FASS.
What obstacles have you overcome in your career?
Not having success in my first career field choice but being brave enough to make the change to another profession.
What is your work history and education that enabled you to attain your current position?
My experience includes 25 years as a pharmacy technician—15 of those on night shift—at PeaceHealth, two bachelor’s degrees, a lot of hard work, and a willingness to begin my accounting journey in an entry level position while soaking up the knowledge and skills I needed. All that allowed me to get where I am today. Also, I benefited from mentoring by an amazing supervisor who told me her success was based on professionally developing her staff to succeed in their positions or move on to bigger things.
How has working at UO enabled your professional goals and interests?
Having supervisors that believe in you and encourage participation in conferences and pursuing more education has been amazing. Without that while in Printing and Mailing, I would not have been able to move to my current position in FASS. And the encouragement continues here in FASS.
What do you like about your current position?
I love that I have tasks that I know need to be completed but every day can be different based on new requests that pop up. I love the variety of work I get to do.
What advice do you have for others; what secrets would you share for someone thinking of applying to the UO?
The advice I have is never give up on what you want. If your first choice doesn’t pan out do not be afraid to try something different; you may find something that is really your calling!
Share a little about yourself personally:
Family:
I’ve been married to Dennis Mickelson for almost 25 years. We have two crazy and rambunctious rescue cats named Moon and Sunny. My husband and I are both UO grads. We love attending UO football games and track and field events. We have been lucky enough to attend the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympic Track and Field Trials. We cannot wait to go to our first track event in the new Hayward Field. We also enjoy attending UO Theatre productions. We are members of both the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History on campus. We love being able to support our alma mater in these ways.
- Favorite food: There really are very few foods I won’t at least try once. Good barbecue makes me happy along with a great beer to wash it down. My favorite thing to make is the homemade fudge and Chex Mix that I give out as Christmas gifts. It usually takes me about 10-14 days to get it all made, packaged, and wrapped to be delivered and mailed out for Christmas. Last year I made 13 flavors of fudge and six flavors of Chex Mix: 14 gallon-bags full!
- Best movie you’ve seen: Who can pick one? I love movies! My guilty pleasure movies are the Hallmark Christmas movies; I can watch them all day long any time after Halloween. Plus, I am a voracious reader. I love that I have an hour lunch break that allows me to read during the day.
(November 2020)