MURFREESBORO — It’s
“getting to know you” time for the state’s Higher Education Resource Officer
and the more than 52,000 people who keep Tennessee’s public colleges and
universities functioning.
Nneka Norman-Gordon is making the rounds of schools in the
Tennessee Board of Regents and University of Tennessee systems to explain what
she does.
Norman-Gordon’s job was created July 1, 2013, under the
Comptroller of the Treasury to help faculty, staff and other higher education
employees function more efficiently.
“They’re my constituents, and I’m here to serve,” said
Norman-Gordon on her stopover at MTSU’s Student Union Building.
The Higher Education Resource Officer can serve as a conduit
between employees with questions or issues and people who can provide answers,
either within an institution or at the governance level.
“The mission is to make government work better, to the
extent there are institutional barriers, by shining a spotlight on it, perhaps
discussing a different method of handling an issue,” Norman-Gordon said.
In some instances, Norman-Gordon performs a liaison’s role.
When a professor at one TBR school complained that her job was coming to an end
because her applied research was not being taken into consideration along with
her peer-reviewed research, Norman-Gordon agreed to witness a meeting between
the key players. The matter was resolved in the professor’s favor.
Norman-Gordon can field inquiries not only from the higher
education community, but from legislators and other individuals and agencies.
She has used her contacts to explore how equipment grant funds were
distributed, the criteria for those decisions and which programs were unfunded,
among other items.
A 2012 graduate of the Tennessee Government Management
Institute, Norman-Gordon earned her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University
in Hampton, Virginia, and her master’s degree in industrial/organizational
psychology from Austin Peay State University.
She has worked for the comptroller’s office for more than nine
years. Prior to assuming her current position, she worked as a legislative
research analyst for the Offices of Research and Education Accountability.
Norman-Gordon runs the office alone at the moment, but she
does not rule out the possibility that the office will grow over time.
For more information about the state’s Higher Education
Resource Officer, call 1-855-440-HERO (4376) or visit http://HERO.cot.tn.gov.
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