By Kaycee Carter
When you think of college, you think of all the friends you meet and the new, sometimes shocking, experiences you had. What you don’t think about is all the people behind the scenes who helped the college operate so you could have the experience you did. People like your librarian who probably helped you find a research topic or the cafeteria manager who made sure you could get food every day in the cafeteria, whether it was good food was up to them, or your housing director who made sure you had a safe space to sleep at night.
Kristie Sojka, our librarian here on campus, is an incredible resource for students and most of what she does is hidden under the surface of what you think of when you hear librarian. Now when we think of a stereotypical librarian, you might think of an old lady with glasses and frumpy sweaters, but Sojka is anything but that. She provides many services to help students with whatever information they seek. She was an elementary school librarian when she saw an opening for an academic librarian at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. She went for the position and “decided to just see if being a college librarian was the next step of [her] journey.” She said that her background as a children’s librarian allowed her to “transfer some of those experiences and education that [she] had into working with college-age students.” She continued to work at Friends for the next three years and knew she “fell in love with it.”
She knew she always wanted to be a librarian but had no idea that she would end up an academic librarian. She describes her primary role at Miller Library as “to provide access to information.” But one of the things she found as an academic librarian is that “the exposure they’ve had to getting access to information and knowing how to find credible sources is inconsistent. Along with providing access, you also teach students how to evaluate sources and find them.” When asked about how technology influences her role as a librarian, Sojka said, “It’s always changing. And [she] thinks that’s why [they] need a master’s degree and why it’s called library science: there’s a lot of technology involved. And so a lot of [her] graduate level classes…dealt solely with technology in the library space.”
While librarians focus mostly on the academic side of things, there are other leadership positions on campus that greatly impact the student’s experience while in college. Josh Duame, our Athletic Director, deals with overseeing everything athletics-related. He started his journey in college athletics “in 2003 when [he] was in grad school at Texas A&M and that led to a position at Texas State, then the University of Texas at San Antonio. He then “went on to Arkansas State and then eventually decided that [he] wanted to get away from D1, FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) athletics to a smaller place and [he] just started looking for AD roles.” He was looking specifically for places that he could grow; places that were “growing and places where the student athlete matters, graduation matters, and all the things that initially got me into the business and get back to that.” Daume says that his main role as McPherson College’s AD is to “create an environment where student athletes have an opportunity to achieve their goals, athletically, academically, socially, and then also have an environment where coaches feel supported, where they can go do their job, recruit their athletes, coach their athletes, and help them grow.”
On the admin side of things, Daume says that he finds the most success when athletic directors “stay out of the way a lot of times and don’t micromanage every aspect of their departments” until there is a situation where they need to become more hands-on. He also finds that recruiting the entire student-athlete is the most important thing when looking for the right student-athletes for the institution. He finds that asking students questions like “How’s this class? How are you dealing with this professor? What’s going on on campus?” and reminding them that they matter outside the sport reminds them that “it’s kind of a maybe not so subtle reminder sometimes that, you know, we’ve got expectations on both sides of the campus, right?” In the long term, Daume says that as a leadership role on campus, “You’ve got to learn free mistakes, you have to assess where you’re at constantly and look at what other schools have done. Look at what’s been successful at other schools, not only in our league but some of our peer schools around the country.”
Even though academic and athletic leaders are important for a growing college, without food service employees, students would be scrambling to find another way to feed themselves easily. Benny Lopez is our Cafeteria manager who began his first year here at McPherson in 2024. You have probably seen him in the cafeteria or in The Boiler House on campus, giving a smile and a fist bump to students who pass by. Lopez graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business and continued to become a corrections officer. When asked about his journey in food service, Lopez said that “through college [he] served and [he] loves [s] the food service world, and Sodexo was just along [his] path.” Specifically in the world of college food service “[he] work[s] a lot more hours on campus, but [he] really [does] find it more self-fulfilling, and just seeing to students when they’re low talking to them and seeing them when they’re at their high and them happy. You definitely tend to build relationships on the campus segments.”
As the manager of all things food at McPherson Lopez’s responsibilities cover a multitude of areas on campus. From the cafeteria in the Student Union to the new Boiler House, and gearing up for the new campus commons coming next year, to managing all food deliveries to campus to make sure that there is enough in stock, Lopez does it all. For his typical day, he checks everything over in the morning and makes sure that everything is running smoothly in the main cafeteria, does some administrative work to plan ahead for the upcoming weeks, and checks in on The Boiler House occasionally. Lopez’s main concern, though, is making connections with the students. In his words “[He’s] all about taking care of the students. We’re not here without the students, and I think sometimes people forget to remember that. [He tries] to make [his] presence felt and always open for any constructive criticism.”
Librarians, athletic directors, and cafeteria managers are only some of the people behind the scenes who make a college experience what it is for the students. While we don’t notice them sometimes, they deserve recognition for all the hard work they do. So maybe the next time you see one of them around campus, let them know they are appreciated.
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