The People in your Neighborhood: Christine Mounts

"Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."



This line from the movie Auntie Mame is something that Christine Mounts takes to heart. Throughout her life, Christine has taken on many challenges, hobbies, and interests in the spirit of living life to the fullest.

Originally from Peoria, Illinois, Christine moved to Minneapolis in 2003 to the city she calls the "best kept secret of the midwest." She lives with two roommates and her 3-year-old cat named Action Jack. Her niece is living with her temporarily also.

Christine has two bachelors degrees. Her first degree is in aviation management from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her interest was sparked because her father flew in the Navy and was "obsessed with aviation."

She even has her Commercial pilot's license, but doesn't fly much because it's expensive and she hasn't maintained her required flight hours. "If I had kept up my CFI, I could teach people how to fly," she said. "Flying is easy, landing is hard."

Christine's second degree is in information technology from DeVry University. "My focus on my second degree was on web design, but I basically developed skills to become an IT generalist," she said. "I can do desktop repair and software support as well as some web design."

This degree has guided Christine in many of her past jobs and her current job in OCM. Before coming to the University, Christine worked in Information Technology at various nonprofits in the Twin Cities and in Chicago.

Her most interesting job was at a nonprofit in Chicago that focused on small business and workforce development. She can remember once providing a workspace for a business that built things for NASA and another business that only made dance clothes. This nonprofit was also heavily tied to local politicians. A Christmas card from Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois, floated around her office.

Since 2009, Christine has worked as the Scheduling Reports Coordinator in the Scheduling unit. She is the primary trainer for the scheduling software, including the new Astra Schedule program. She is also the the primary help desk contact for scheduling software issues and helps manage internal communications to departments regarding the scheduling software system.

She considers herself very cultural. Growing up, she frequently went to museums and concerts with her family. "My parents are very cultural and educated," she said. "I went to a million museums and performances with them. I developed a great appreciation for the arts."

Christine's arts include singing, playing the piano and clarinet, acting, dancing, writing, and photography.

She has seven novels written in various stages of draft. She primarily writes science fiction, but also enjoys writing literary short stories. If she could be anything, Christine would be a successful, professional novelist.

"I've been published in a journal, but getting a book published is very difficult," she said. "Anne Lamott said in her book Bird by Bird that you should not write to be published because getting published is not going to change your life in quite the way you think it will."

Christine also calls herself an amateur photographer. "I see beauty in patterns," she said. "I like to take pictures of nature from different perspectives."

She also spends a lot of time reading. She especially enjoys books that get her thinking about life. "I'm very existential," she said.

Traveling is also a big part of her life. Her most memorable trip was when she lived in Berlin, Germany for four weeks with her college roommate. She went and spoke minimal German. "I lived with the people but didn't speak fluent German," she said. "When you're there, you just remember and pick up the language as you go."

But, no matter what Christine does, she always brings everything in perspective and remembers to "live, live, live."



Christine's Culture
If Christine could be any character for a day, she would be Harry Potter. "It'd be a great time to be able to fly and use the invisibility cloak."
Growing up, she wanted to be a timpani player in an orchestra.
Christine's two favorite foods are anything Indian and steak, medium-rare.
Her favorite vacation spot is Santa Rosa Island, Florida.
Her favorite movie is Auntie Mame.
She really wants to dress up as Gossamer from Looney Tunes for Halloween.
Her favorite book is Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.
Christine likes interesting music, but doesn't like lyrics much.
Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin are two of her favorite artists.
She doesn't like country or rap music.

Better Know a Unit: Graduate and Professional Unit

The Graduate and Professional unit in the Office of Student Finance (OSF) is involved with the financial aid packaging and record adjustments of most graduate and professional students, and even some undergraduate students.

"We work on a yearly cycle since graduate and professional programs admit students year round. But there is always a new challenge," said Liz Holm, manager of the unit. "There are only four of us and we are all involved with different programs."

The unit of four works with all professional and graduate careers, except the Medical School. They also work with undergraduate students in the nursing, dental hygiene, dental therapy, and Evans Scholar programs. They have divided this large workload among the four staff members.

Liz works primarily with students in the health professions programs, including dentistry, dental therapy, pharmacy, occupational therapy, and nursing. Mark Larson works with veterinary medicine and Carlson (MBA) students. Jim Parker works with law students and joint degree programs. And Brian Olson works with all students in the master of education programs.

Their busiest time is between April and October, especially when new tuition and fee budgets come out in June for the upcoming aid year. The next process the team is working on is the May/summer aid packaging, which starts in April.

"We work start to finish with the financial aid process every aid year," Mark said. "We make sure the budgets are set up with the correct program and that the students are packaged with their correct aid."

Although most of their work is done automatically through PeopleSoft, they also complete some of their work manually. An example is the several reports and queries processed daily by Brian to be sure the student's financial aid record is in compliance with federal regulations. Brian also reviews the Cost of Attendance appeals from students who may have allowable expenses that are higher than what is in the standard budget.

Jim and Mark also run numerous queries to catch other issues requiring human intervention, such as one term or joint degree students who need manual packaging, or students who were assigned to an incorrect budget.

"You sometimes have to be a detective to figure out what the issue is with these students' financial aid package," Jim said. "Joint degree students are active in two different graduate programs. The system is not capable of determining which budget to assign or which program the student is pursuing during a particular semester or year, so it's my job to figure that out."

The borrower-based programs - dental, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine students - are packaged just once a year in batch. Students who submit a FAFSA after the initial round of packaging in July are identified by query and are then packaged manually. The general graduate populations are packaged automatically twice weekly in batch.

In addition to all this, the team responds to emails and phone calls from departments, colleges, and students. They answer about 800 emails a year.

"We receive a lot of phone calls, especially from prospective students and new admits," Jim said. "They have a lot of questions and concerns about finances for their program and have questions about loan repayment. We do a lot of individual counseling."

The unit also provides new student orientations during late summer for about ten different programs. Some programs can be complicated, such as the health professional and education programs, and the orientation is helpful for students to understand their financial aid options.

The team agrees that the most challenging aspects of their job is managing the volume and keeping up with changes to federal regulations or policies. But all of this can be overlooked with the satisfaction that comes from helping students.

"It's amazing the number of students who thank us for our help," Mark said. "The students we work with are great."

Graduate and Professional Unit
Liz Holm, manager
Jim Parker, financial aid counselor
Mark Larson, financial aid counselor
Brian Olson, financial aid counselor

Food for thought

Wise words: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." -- Maya Angelou

Grammar myths solved!

At last. Can you really end a sentence with a preposition? Is passive voice always a catastrophic tragedy of the written word? Not at all! Grammar guru Grammar Girl lists the top 10 language myths. Check them out and then revel in the wonder of writing exactly how your English teacher told you not to.

Share your thoughts

Take a moment to complete the first of three ASR mini-surveys. The goal of this survey is to gauge your satisfaction with your work environment. It only takes a few minutes and you'll help foster dialogue between ASR staff and leadership.

Your participation is completely voluntary and your responses are confidential and anonymous; only the Employee Survey Team sees the raw survey data, which they share with the ASR managers in a summary format. But get going! You only have until Friday, Feb. 22 to let us know what's on your mind.

Sign out a laptop with a click of the mouse

You can now easily sign out laptops, netbooks, and schedule time at the Walkstation (Woohoo!). To do so, you'll need to "invite" a particular laptop, netbook, or Walkstation to a meeting, as you would for a regular conference room. Just be sure to look for them under equipment (EQ). Here's the info:

(EQ) ASR-160WmsonH Laptop 1
(EQ) ASR-160WmsonH Laptop 2
(EQ) ASR-160WmsonH Netbook 1
(EQ) ASR-160WmsonH Netbook 2
(EQ) ASR-160WmsonH Walkstation

New swipe cards

The card readers on the doors to 120 and 133 Fraser are being replaced. Staff with old ID cards will need to get smart cards, as the new readers will scan not swipe. The new smart cards will have a number on the back that needs to be given to Debbie Henderson in order to grant access. All staff that require access to these rooms need to contact Debbie ASAP with their new card information.