Director of Payroll Accounting

While Claudia Clark was fast asleep on the night of Nov. 15, she "kept hearing ringing and voices saying 'wake up there has been a fire.'" But, she recalls that "I must have known it was going to be hectic, and felt I needed a little more sleep," because she kept dozing until her neighbor finally woke her up by pounding on the door while calling her on her cell phone at the same time. Her first thought was "we have to confirm payroll on Wednesday."

Payroll accounting's workload almost doubled with drying out documents, moving twice, processing replacement forms, recreating lost documents and, remarkably, continuing with normal processing.

Throughout the ordeal, however, Clark has maintained a positive attitude, and is grateful that she lost nothing irreplaceable, because "things are replaceable but people aren't, and we lost no people." She also found out how "caring, supportive, dedicated, effective and efficient the staff of the university truly is."