Celebrating Our Favorite Operations Specialist
School of Professional & Continuing Education (SPCE)
If you have called or emailed SPCE any time in the last ten years, you’ve probably interacted with Mona Hepner. Mona has served as SPCE’s administrative assistant and then Operations Support Specialist since 2014, but she’s been at JMU significantly longer than that. Mona was originally hired in Student Accounting as a Fiscal Technician in 1979, and she loves to tell the story that she was the first JMU employee to have a computer! Some of the forms that JMU still uses today are ones that Mona originally created in the 1980s, and she was recognized in a national magazine for her computer storage tips.
Mona is a constant smiling presence in our office – she is always ready to listen, solve problems, untangle complicated regulations, and provide a wealth of institutional knowledge. She loves puzzles, good food, dogs, and her family; her son Colton, his wife Megan, and their three children live nearby, and Mona spends a great deal of time with them and on her motorcycle with friends. Mona volunteers at Broadway High School to help with athletics and ticketing, and also volunteers at Open Doors shelter.
Mona left JMU for a short while, but overall she has worked at JMU for more than 25 years. She was recognized at this fall’s service awards breakfast for her long tenure at JMU.
Mona manages a thousand complex details for SPCE, including invoicing, purchasing, travel, HR paperwork, fiscal reconciliation, and compliance with internal and state regulations. Her work serves all aspects of SPCE and all the audiences we serve and support. We are so grateful to Mona for all of her hard work and support over all these years, and we celebrate her incredible contributions to JMU and to SPCE.
