Talking with Gail Lee

This morning, I dropped by Horace Mann (the Graduate School you guys) to talk with Gail Lee, as part of a series that will start this week.

There are a lot of people working behind the stage to make our life easier, and a lot of them you will likely never meet, so we decided to take matters in our hands and write a monthly (and maybe bi-monthly) portraits of those peeps who work tirelessly for the grad students community. If you are an active reader of the Brown Daily Herald, this is the diamonds without the coals.

To kick off this series of profiles, we decided that Jill and I would sit down with two people, Jill with Jim Campbell, Associate Dean of Student Life, and yours truly with Gail Lee, payroll specialist at the Graduate School.

You might not know right away who Gail is, but if you have had a payroll problem, you have almost certainly gotten a hand from this problem-solver, people-oriented person.

Gail Lee has been at Brown for 24 years, or if you want to measure it in past presidents, the entire tenures of Vartan Gregorian, Gordon Gee, and Ruth Simmons'. She started in 1989, in the division of engineering, now a School, and transferred to the Graduate School in 2009. She came to Brown straight out of accounting school, and hasn't regretted her decision. "My job is never boring here," she says, and there is nothing she doesn't like in it. And best of all, she loves the community.

The only thing that she still has not gotten used to, after starting at the Graduate School, is the smaller amount of student-contact she gets here. "You know, when I was in Engineering," she recalls to me, "I would see people all the time. Here, I'm still getting used to the lower volume of people." She still looks through the ever-opened door of her ground-floor office when the doors to Horace Mann open to see if someone is coming to visit her, but nowadays, with the Web, most of the students either contact her by email or by phone.

Here, at the Graduate School, her job, soberly described on the website as "payroll specialist", includes dealing with both Human Resources and Payroll. She serves as liaison between those offices, departments administrative assistants, and of course, students. Administrators get in touch with her daily when students don't understand bills, or when they have to fill out paperwork for students appointments (TAships and proctoring, graduate students appointments in general).

If there is something you should know about Gail, it's her patience. And patience you need when the growth of the Graduate School these past years has brought more and more work.

But that's alright, Gail loves numbers, and she enjoys helping people out. Her face lights up when she talks about her priority, namely us. Really lights up, I mean, and you can see what she is talking about when she talks about putting herself in other people's shoes. And you guys know firsthand that these days, with the introduction of our new payroll software, Workday, the community's need for help and patience has been tested several times since September.

"As anything new, nothing is perfect," she adds to my comments about Workday. "We anticipated issues, and we tried to be proactive about it."

Workday has not radically transformed the way she does her work, but it added more steps, and made it easier to fill paperless forms. Along with Associate Dean Brian Walton, Gail has been working on solving issues with Workday as painlessly as possible.

At least, I remark, the last mistake has been in students' favor: some of us got double-paid. Don't worry Brown was quick to ask us a check back--which I asked a copy of. I'm going to frame it, because it will be a long time before a make such a huge check to Brown again, let me tell you.

The bottom-line about Gail is that she could not imagine being anywhere else. She loves campus, and the students. And if you have a problem, she will be on it as quickly as possible to solve it, because you are the reason she does this job.

So, if Workday again decides that it wants to play wreck on our paychecks, whatever you do, PhD or MA, or if your bill sounds fishy, Gail is just a phone call away, you guys.

Where can you find Gail?

You can find Gail Lee in Horace Mann on the ground-floor. You can email her at gail_lee@brown.edu if you need payroll info or you have a billing problem. She will help you understand what is what, and if Workday graces us with more bugs, she will help you get your money back.

You can also call Horace Mann at this number: (401) 863-2600. Horace Mann is at the corner of George and Prospect Street.

Have a good week and stay warm guys,
Acey Sieffert
VP Social Events and Student Life