Barb Juknialis may be new to her position as chair of the Staff Advisory Council (SAC), but she certainly is not unfamiliar with the university. In fact, for nearly 50 years, Case Western Reserve has been part of Juknialis’ day-to-day life.
She started at Flora Stone Mather College in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in English and Russian. She then pursued a master’s degree in Russian, which she earned in 1970.
She worked for the university in the 1970s until leaving for a position not too far from here—at University Hospitals. Even there, she continued to work closely with the university through her administrative work in general internal medicine.
Then, in 2001, Juknialis returned to Case Western Reserve, where she took the position of administrative director in the Department of Bioethics. In this role, she manages finances, research applications and administration, human resources administration and myriad other tasks that come up—including keeping the department’s plants thriving, she noted. (It’s a skill she hones at home, as Juknialis also is an avid gardener.)
When she arrived back on campus, Juknialis almost immediately got involved with the Staff Advisory Council.
“I started attending meetings of the Fringe Benefits Committee of SAC almost as soon as I started working in bioethics,” Juknialis said. “I have been an elected or volunteer representative ever since.”
Recently, Juknialis was elected chair of the council and began her one-year term on Monday. During the course of her term, her hopes to build on the group’s three-fold mission:
- To serve as an advisory group with both administration and staff to suggest, comment and provide feedback on policies and raise awareness of issues that affect the university and the people it serves;
- To establish and maintain a forum for communication between university staff and administration on all levels; and
- To establish and maintain a forum for communication among staff of the university.
