By MARTY LEVINE
For Julie Bannister, rising to become assistant vice chancellor for auxiliary services after 19 years at Pitt has been a process of discovering new parts of the University and changing her original career vision in the process.
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Coffee and Conversation event
March 10: Dwayne Pinkney, executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief financial officer, from 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the O'Hara Student Center.
April 10: Carla Panzella, vice provost for student affairs.
Staff Council Spotlight Sessions
Feb. 28: David Lebel, associate professor and director of the David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership. The topic is “The Unmute Challenge: Communication During Virtual and In-Person Meetings.” Noon, virtual. Register here.
March 21: Laura Schmid, director of Human Resources Client Services, on March 21 to talk about the evolution of Pitt HR Shared Services to the current Client Services.
The next Staff Council meeting will be April 16.
Bannister grew up in central Pennsylvania and visited Pitt for the first time when a high-school friend was attending, she told the latest Staff Council Coffee and Conversation event on Feb. 10: “I realized this is where I needed to be, being in a city but with a small town feel and still drivable for my parents.”
While earning her undergraduate degree from the College of Business Administration, she immediately pursued her first dream — working in college sports — by volunteering in the athletic office, where she met her first mentor, Jim Earle (now vice dean of operations at Pitt Dental Medicine).
“I got a chance to see different parts of the business, game-day operations — just all different pieces that you didn’t realize, being just a fan, goes on behind the scenes — which was really a valuable experience for me.” By senior year, she was interning in athletics: “I did all the marketing and game day (activities) for women’s soccer. But I didn’t know at that point if that’s where I wanted to be.
“I realized I missed being a fan,” Bannister said. “I was at amazing games and I was down on the court, but you don’t get to watch and you don’t get to be a part of it. You were running stats up and down … printouts would come out at every TV timeout and you were running them everywhere. You were preparing for halftime events, so you didn’t get to see the games. It was amazing to be a part of it and it was during a really great time in sports and that was so exciting, but they were long days.
“I just wasn’t sure that’s where I wanted my life to be. I also wasn’t sure I’d be here” in auxiliary services. “If you asked me, hey, put yourself where would you be, I don’t think this is where I would have said. But it’s worked out. I’ve always been business-oriented. My dad had a family-run business. … Probably thought I was going to go back home and run that. Realized going back home wasn’t in the cards for me. I didn’t want to leave Pittsburgh.”
Taking a position at the front desk of Panther Central, Bannister has since worked her way up through different operations within business and auxiliary services while earning her master’s degree in higher education here.
Auxiliary services, she explains, encompasses “life outside of the classroom.” Her direct responsibility oversees assignments and leasing for all of Pitt’s housing on campus and for University-owned leased apartments. But auxiliary services also manages everything from the contract for dining services to mobility and transportation — including parking.
Bannister was able to dispel the rumor that there exists, for some unknown category of Pitt employee, a parking pass that allows the holder to park anywhere Pitt controls a space. She also reassured that, although Pitt lost parking space numbers with the demolition of the O’Hara Street garage to build the new recreation center, the University is working on adding more spaces — although those plans are not yet concrete. Between the Pitt master plan and planning for individual projects in the future, she said, “it’s definitely on the plan as a need.”
Parking aside, auxiliary services really encompasses “90 percent of a student’s life when they’re here at college, outside of the classroom,” Bannister added.
Asked how much of student life has changed since her own first campus experience, she noted that, besides the addition of so much technology, “a big change within dining has probably been the biggest change of expectation. Students are trying more — it’s not just the old chicken tenders and fries. … What I think has changed is the caliber, the expectations that come with how much they have access to and how quickly they have access to it.”
“I feel like this has fit me,” Bannister concluded about her career so far. “I had a great collegiate experience and wouldn’t change it for anything. Being able to make a difference and really help the next generations to come has been so important to me. It became my passion now. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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