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Spider Spotlight
A Q&A with Joan Lachowski
Director of Undergraduate Student Housing
By PHILLIP GRAVELY
Writer/Editor, University Communications
Where are you from originally?
Richmond, born and bred-Southside.
When did you start at the University?
21 years ago.
What brought you here?
I started out being a school teacher, then a stay-at-home mom, and then I went into real estate. When I saw this job come up, I thought it merged both of my professions.
Did you start as director of housing?
No, it was a clerical position when I took it. It was [former Richmond College] Dean Mateer and I-just the two of us.
What does your job entail?
The office itself is responsible for matching
all first-year roommates and running the
lottery for the next year. When students go
study abroad, we get them settled for the
spring. I work with the enrollment
committee, giving them the projections of
how many we can house for the next year.
We train our aid staff. We take care of all
keys for students. We do a lot of
communicating with parents. We do open
forums for students to express their
opinions of us and then try to bring those
changes to fruition. I do all those things in
conjunction with Carolyn [Bigler, assistant
director of student housing]-we really are
two bodies in one mind.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
Actually keeping up. We're dealing with 2,600
students, which also means that many parents
times two.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
When you have daily dealings with a lot of
negatives and then someone walks in and tells
you how much they appreciate what you've
done for them. That enables you to keep going.
When you're not at work, what are you likely to be doing?
I love to fish. We try to go fishing every
weekend-salt water fishing out of Gloucester.
I love to shop. I'm a bargain shopper. I love to
go to flea markets and search for the hidden
antique that's at the bottom of the pile. I like
to garden. I also love to write. I write children's
stories. I've finished two, and I've been
working on trying to get one published.
Tell me something unique about you that your colleagues may not know?
My life is an open book. I'm not an
extremely private person, and I doubt there
is very little about me that my colleagues
don't know.
Is there anything else that we should know about you, either professionally or personally?
I'm a history buff. I do a lot of family history
research. I also currently have a diary that
was written by a Confederate soldier from
Charleston, S. C. He writes in this teeny,
tiny, itty-bitty print, so I'm copying it page
by page from the diary so I can share it with
the various libraries of the states he writes
about, which are Virginia, Mississippi,
Alabama and South Carolina. Oh, and I've
been married 37 years.
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