Elvira M. Skuzinski

For over ten years, I worked in a wide range of public sector organizations, including nonprofits and universities. In 2015, my mother needed 24/7 care following a debilitating stroke, so I left the University of Michigan and moved to Virginia. After losing both parents, it was not possible for me to simply return to the life I led before: I wanted to effect positive changes that would have a significant impact on others. This is why I decided to pursue a master's degree in Public Administration. Those who have worked with me were surprised that I didn't choose an MBA, MPH, MFA, or a law degree. My undergrad studies had included three cognates -- Business, Employment Law, and Art History -- and my initial major fresh out of high school was in Visual Communication. I believe that earning an MPA degree grants me the rare opportunity to build on all of those passions as I support a community's efforts to be sustainable, inclusive, and welcoming.

While in NIU's MPA program, I was a part-time graduate research assistant at the University's Center for Governmental Studies. My favorite project was a strategic plan that required a deep dive into the many ways technology impacts a municipality's operations and the services it provides to the community. It was my responsibility to analyze secondary data from surveys, focus groups, and interviews done over the period of one year, and I developed the included matrix (see Appendix A of the plan) to allow the city to more easily adapt the project timeline to changing priorities.

Prior to this, I supported administration, faculty, students, and staff at the University of Michigan Medical School. Daily management of educational activities, lab operations, and grant deliverables required time management and attention to detail. Pathology course instructors relied on the websites I created and managed, and I took pride in personally resolving technical issues, such as ensuring virtual microscopy slides were glitch-free during their use in class lab sessions. The site design needed to be significantly simplified to support the tremendous bandwidth required to upload virtual microscopy that allowed users to zoom in and scan the patient slides in real time, as one does when examining them using a microscope. When I began working on this project, sites routinely crashed due to two-hundred users simultaneously accessing the same slides during class. It was exciting to brainstorm with the technology team at UMMS to find a solution, and this collaboration resulted in our work being awarded the U-M Teaching Innovation Prize by the Office of the Provost during its inaugural year (click the Poster icon to learn more). Five years later, a promotion led to my working in the Registrar's Office at UMMS, managing its academic records and Visiting Medical Students Program, which entailed reviewing hundreds of applications from across the nation. Applicants in their final year of studies vied for the few clinical elective spots reserved for visiting medical students, and it was satisfying to assist the selected group with schedule coordination, finding housing, and discovering all that Ann Arbor offered.