[251] Unheralded Secretaries, Clerks Keep MTSU Moving Forward

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 11, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

UNHERALDED SECRETARIES, CLERKS KEEP MTSU MOVING FORWARD
Association of Secretarial and Clerical Workers Also Helps Employees Learn, Advance

(MURFREESBORO) - They’re up front helping students wend their way through the university bureaucracy in order to add and drop classes and try to stay on track toward degree goals.
They’re behind the scenes inserting all manner of data into the veins and arteries of MTSU’s computer network.
They make it possible for administrators who couldn’t operate the fax machine or the photocopier without a diagram look as though they know what they’re doing anyway.
They are the secretaries and clerks who toil in academic and nonacademic units to keep MTSU’s day-to-day essential functions functioning. In 1976, they banded together to represent their collective interests under the name Clerical Caucus. Today, under the name of Association of Secretarial and Clerical Workers (ASCE), these professionals strive for career enhancement for the betterment of their work environment and themselves.
ASCE President Kym Stricklin, an executive aide in the Department of Agribusiness and Agriscience, says she joined because she wanted to reach out beyond the digital communication that has revolutionized the workplace to establish real human contact.
“It was an opportunity for me to network, meet other secretaries at the university and put faces with names,” Stricklin says. “I still think there’s a tremendous value in networking and knowing who to call in another department, establishing a professional relationship beyond e-mails.”
With 16 years as an ASCE member under her belt, Kathy Kano, the group’s treasurer and a past president, agrees.
“I have benefitted from it by the ability to know people on campus,” says Kano, an information research technician for the Division of Student Affairs. “That helps in learning what to do.”
It also helps in learning how to improve one’s income and resume. Employees who earn Certified Professional Secretary (CPS) status by passing an exam that assesses the full range of their skills are eligible for a nine percent pay raise.
“With state pay grades, there are not merit-based raises, and we’re not receiving cost-of-living raises,” Stricklin notes.

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“Today, most of the secretarial job announcements say ‘degree preferred’ or ‘CPS preferred,’” Kano adds. “What’s going to happen to all the women who don’t have that?”
However, it costs $300 to take the test, which is offered only twice a year. Furthermore, there are three books of study materials for each of three different exams, and those books cost nearly $100 each. Most secretaries can’t shell out that kind of money at the drop of a hat.
Enter ASCE with a CPS scholarship funded by annual pecan sales and a set of CPS books available for checkout by members, as well as sets of study books at the James E. Walker Library and June Anderson Women’s Center.
In addition, the pecan sales help fund the Bonnie McHenry Scholarship, for which all MTSU clerical employees and their dependents are welcome to apply. Stricklin says sales for 2009 total more than $1,000.
For everything that ASCE does, the annual dues are an inflation-busting bargain. In 1976, the dues were $2 per member. Today, the dues are only $5 per member.
To learn more about ASCE, contact Stricklin at 615-898-2523 or kstrick@mtsu.edu, or go to the Web site at http://www.mtsu.edu/asce/.


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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For a color jpeg of ASCE personnel donating historical papers to the Albert Gore Research Center, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.









With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.