ByChristina Littlefield
Graduate Assistant
Dressed in jeans and a Pepperdine sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, Student Organizations Coordinator Nicole Phillips has barely slept in more than a week but is still buzzing with her usual chirpiness and the excitement of Recruitment.
Despite 20-hour days overseeing Greek Recruitment, she’s at the top of her game as adviser to many of the campus’ organizations, including all sororities, fraternities and the Student Government Association.
Her office in the Student Activities Center is surrounded by freshman boys fretting over what fraternity they want to pledge. Student Activities interns, one of the associate deans and even the SGA president tiptoe around her doorway hoping for a moment of her time.
She finally has to close her door, turn over the “Do Not Disturb” sign and place a note directing the potential new fraternity pledges to someone else on her door so she can talk to talk one-on-one with a Graphic reporter.
It’s just a typical Tuesday for Phillips, who took over the position in October 2000.
A typical Tuesday she is going to miss.
Phillips resigned her position as Student Activities coordinator last week after accepting a position in the Seaver College Career Center as the new Washington, D.C., Internship and On-Campus Interview Program manager.
The transition is a small step up for Phillips, who began working for Pepperdine as a senior psychology major, but will allow her more time to pursue a Master’s degree and eventual Doctorate.
And while she’s excited to start her new job Oct. 14, she said she has mixed feelings because she’s going to deeply miss her current position.
“I am really excited about what I am going to do and the opportunity for the new program, but I love what I do,” Phillips said, talking a mile a minute about her nervousness over the job transition. “I think I have an amazing job, I’m really blessed. I love working with the students, the organizations, and by no means am I ever bored.”
Phillips’ supervisor, Associate Dean of Student Activities Tabatha Jones, said that it will take a while to refill the position, as the Student Activities Center has to post the open position and recruit a pool of candidates first.
“I don’t know that anyone can fill Nicole Phillips’ shoes,” Jones said. “I hope that we can find the right person to bring the leadership to the position, especially the Greek system in the sororities and fraternities that she has.”
Phillips and others in the Student Activities Center will work together to fill in the gap left by her transition during the interim.
Phillips herself had filled the interim and the subsequent position when her predecessor, Sharon Beard, left the job to complete her Master’s in 2000. Beard will return to Seaver College as the new Judicial Administrator in January.
“I’m still totally willing to help with assistance and advice or help — I mean I’m still here,” said Phillips, who already has Homecoming almost planned and is working on a thus far 13-page outline of her job duties.
Inter-Fraternity Council President Byron Branch, however, said that the Student Activities office will have a difficult time getting along without Phillips there fulltime.
“It’s kind of disappointing to me at least because she was really good,” Branch said. “She advised and counseled and sincerely tried to help people.”
He said that Phillips’ position in the past had often served a judicial enforcer role rather than an adviser role, but that Phillip has served as an adviser to all of the Greek chapters on campus.
“She’s really earned the trust of a lot of people in the Greek system, a lot of people in Student Activities,” Branch said.
Phillips said she hopes to recruit several of the students she’s worked with over the years into the D.C. Internship program, which she has been charged with helping to develop into a full-year program.
“If people go, it won’t be so hard for me because I’ll still get a chance to work with everybody,” Phillips said.
Panhellenic President Alexis Autrey was one of the many Greeks surprised by Phillips’ resignation.
“I feel that she has done a really great job as the Greek adviser and that she is really going to be missed in the Greek system,” Autrey said.
Delta Delta Delta president Brooke Womble agreed.
“It was a surprise, but it sounds like it is going to be more beneficial for her,” she said. “But we’ll miss her. She was really great at what she does.”
Phillips is applying to graduate programs at Pepperdine and other universities that involve organizational development, industrial organizational psychology, clinical psychology or leadership development, with hopes to start in January.
She had enrolled in graduate classes at Pepperdine this fall, but the time commitment to Student Activities didn’t mesh well with her classes.
“I had three classes this semester, which turned into two, which turned into one, which has turned into me taking none and dropping out of the class,” Phillips said. “It’s just too much and I don’t want to go halfway into class because I feel that education is very important. And I’m noticing that with the time commitment that’s involved I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the job. I don’t think that that is fair to the students at all.”
With her new position, Phillips expects to be able to give her all to classes and work. In the D.C. Internship portion, exited by Dana Dudley Aug. 1 for a new job as director of Summer School, Phillips will help recruit students, line up internships in their field and coordinate classes at Catholic University. She is also charged with reviving the On-Campus Interview Program where she will be helping seniors find work.
Phillips sees the new opportunity as coming full circle in her work at Pepperdine. As a freshman and sophomore undergraduate she worked to recruit prospective students, then moved to the Student Activities Center (then Campus Life) as a junior to work with current students. Now, she’ll be helping students making the transition out of Pepperdine.
“I helped you get here, helped you when you’re here and now I am going to help you get out,” Phillips said.
Eventually, Phillips wants to get her doctorate in organizational psychology or a related area and serve as a consultant for different organizations.
“I think my position here has really given me an opportunity to consult with groups about where they are at or what they are doing,” she said. “I don’t have to run the show, I don’t need the glory of it, I don’t need even the credit. I just like to be able to help somebody else realize their dreams.”
As an adviser, Phillips said that she “feels like I am a consultant for 60 people, 60 organizations.” She hopes the D.C. Internship will be the same, as she consults with each student about his or her “overseas-program-in-the-states” experience.
In the meantime, as she moves on up, Pepperdine will be looking for someone to move in to the hole her students and co-workers say she’s leaving behind.
“Hopefully we’ll find a leader like Nicole who takes seriously her Christian leadership but also is coming to student development,” Jones said.
October 03, 2002