What's the best thing about working at East Tennessee State University?  Our people—students, faculty and staff!  Our quality reputation!  Our beautiful campus!  Our emphasis on caring for the needs of every member of the ETSU family!  ETSU is a student-centered community of learning that employs more than 2,000 faculty and staff.  Our personnel are a constant source of enthusiastic service that makes us a leader in regional universities. 

Featured Employee

JoAnne Boyd

JoAnne Boyd is an Executive Aide in Social Work. She was the recipient of the Social Work Faculty Award for Outstanding Student of the Year for 1999 to 2000. She received the ETSU Distinguished Staff Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service and Dedication to the University in 2004. In addition to her duties as the Executive Aide for the department’s bachelor program, she is the Executive Secretary for the Phi Alpha National Honor Society. As a result of her consistent efforts to rebuild this critical national organization, membership has skyrocketed. Phil Alpha has grown from 70 chapters to 368 chapters in four years. JoAnne represented ETSU and Phi Alpha at a national conference in Atlanta and subsequently earned the organization the title of “honor society of choice” on national social work web pages. She has been trained as a peer counselor and has created an ETSU “safe zone” in her office.

Her community efforts have benefited agencies while strengthening the ties between the university and the local community. For several years she has helped to raise tons of food and collected clothing for area agencies that serve the homeless population. At her own initiative, she collected cell phones for the Compassion Connection, which will benefit the children’s grief group by allowing them to sell phones to the police, who will then donate the phones to victims of domestic violence. JoAnne also wrote a proposal to the university that allowed computers to be given to agencies in need, agencies who could not otherwise afford the technology their employees needed to complete their jobs. We informally and fondly referred to this worthy endeavor as a “liberate the computers” initiative. JoAnne has been an active member of President’s Pride for the past 8 years. Recently, she was invited to serve on the Cultural Diversity training team. She is the treasurer for the HIV network, and is a facilitator of group therapy for individuals and families with the HIV Aids Virus, and meets twice monthly with POZ, which is a support group for those infected with the virus.

JoAnne is a social activist and is an active participant in her commitment to ETSU and the mission it advances. A Social Work student was diagnosed with cancer, and while going through Chemotherapy, was in great financial need. JoAnne collected the necessary money to enable her to have her car repaired, and contacted agencies to have her electricity and rent paid. Another staff member of the university was losing her child to cancer, and JoAnne helped raise money to allow her to survive, when her annual and sick leave ran out, and provided her with a burial plot.

While excelling at her job, and her many volunteer activities, she has also managed to earn her Masters degree in Social Work. She is in her last semester, and hopes to be hooded this year. We are thankful every day that we come to work and start the day with a person who is so caring and good hearted and always smiling.

Thank you, JoAnne, for being with us here at ETSU!

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