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Credit: Nick Romanenko
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Position: Senior program coordinator, Center for Continuing Professional Development
Length of Service: Hired as program coordinator in September 1998, promoted to senior program coordinator in 2001
Hometown: Milltown
What the job entails: O’Donnell is in charge of marketing and program development for the Center for Continuing Professional Development (CCPD). She also oversees marketing for the University Inn and Conference Center, an on-campus hotel with 36 guest rooms, five conference rooms and a large dining room, as well as outreach and logistics for Continuous Education and Outreach tradeshows and conferences throughout the country. She has traveled as far as San Diego to present the program’s offerings, which range from an online course in sexual harassment training to nearly 50 certificate programs in information technology, business and healthcare. She also manages traditional direct marketing campaigns, targeted e-mail and an extensive CCPD Web site. O’Donnell especially likes the variety that the position demands. “Every day is a little different,” she says.
Her career path: After graduating from Cook College in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in sports management, O’Donnell had hoped to land a job in her chosen field. She quickly discovered that the compensation and working conditions at the entry level in the field were spare, so she regrouped and found a job with a hotel representation firm. Her sports background helped get her hired. “I was able to talk to people about the sports programs – golf packages, tennis packages and things like that,” O’Donnell says. A move to Honolulu two years later found her competing with the locals for work, and she encountered some resentment toward non-native islanders. Undeterred, her sports expertise again came into play as she landed a position with the Honolulu YMCA helping to market and develop its fitness and exercise programs. After a move back to the East Coast a year later, she contacted a former supervisor from her student job at the Cook Campus Center. The supervisor, Jean Scheaffel, encouraged O’Donnell to apply for a position being developed at the CCPD. Within a couple of months, she was heading back to New Jersey to work for Scheaffel – “the best boss that I ever had,” O’Donnell says.
The days are full: As president of the Cook College Alumni Association, O’Donnell plans and manages the social and professional networking events for the organization. O’Donnell served on the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. “I’m a – someone said avid – no, rabid Rutgers football fan,” says O’Donnell of her continuing love for sports, both as fan and participant. This is not surprising when one learns that she served as the statistician for her high school football team and that she is captain of her department’s softball team, which made it to the championship game last season.
Sidelights: O’Donnell has a big heart. About six years ago, she heard a plaintive meow outside her office window of a kitten that had been abandoned. O’Donnell called animal control to retrieve her. “When I watched them close her in a cage, I almost went running after the truck,” she says. She managed to track down the kitten, a tuxedo – black fur with white paws and belly – and adopted her. O’Donnell named her Holly, and the cat has been with her ever since. Her altruistic side is also evident in her recent donation of her hair to Locks of Love, a charity that provides wigs for pediatric cancer patients. She says the act was a tribute to her aunt Margaret, her namesake, and a cancer patient who wears wigs because of hair loss from chemotherapy.
Special thanks: O’Donnell cites three people from her Cook College days who, she says, “really made a difference”: Scheaffel, now the director of operations for continuous education and outreach; Bob Hills of the academic affairs office; and exercise science professor Neil Dougherty. She is also grateful to her parents who have been tremendously influential. O’Donnell points to the organizational skills and steadiness of her mother who somehow always kept things together for a family of six children, and the deep level of involvement her father brought to every endeavor.
Know someone who deserves to be in the spotlight? Contact Focus editor Carla Cantor at ccantor@ur.rutgers.edu.
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