Staff Profile of Cheryl Nimmo: Accountant Rolls with Changes in College Operations
Posted on 11/26/2007
Cheryl Nimmo celebrates 15 years of employment at the University of Arkansas this month. She recently acquired the title of accountant in the College of Education and Health Professions.
However, Nimmo's done many jobs and had so many responsibilities over the years that people in the college come to her with all kinds of questions ranging far beyond financial transactions. She enjoys the interaction.
Cheryl Nimmo enjoys being outdoors. Here, she's out geocaching with her husband at Mount Magazine. Her geocache name is Moravian Girl because her father's family immigrated to the United States from Moravia, a region in the Czech Republic. Geocaching is sort of a modern-day treasure hunt in which people use a GPS device to find a small box or other container called a cache. They leave behind a trinket for the next geocachers to find.
"That just comes from years of experience," Nimmo said. "It's nothing that anybody else couldn't do or provide information about. I want to help. If I don't know the answer, I take the initiative to find out. That serves two purposes: I can serve you – faculty and staff members – and I can file the information away for later."
She laughs that her internal filing space is getting a bit cluttered.
Nimmo started her career on campus with the registrar's office, helping with ballroom arena registration. She began in a temporary position and then was hired as a data entry clerk. She enjoyed working with students and served in the role of troubleshooter as well as supervising hourly workers.
Nimmo also assisted with the schedule of classes publication and created several front page cover designs and numerous forms in the schedule. She was on the team that developed telephone registration but had moved on before online registration was initiated.
In 1995, Nimmo took her first position with the College of Education and Health Professions, working as an administrative secretary in the education technology department. She helped students, faculty members and graduate assistants who taught classes and also assisted with a grant the department had to provide UA e-mail addresses upon request to public school teachers in Arkansas.
"Some people in the college may remember a faculty member we had in ETEC at the time – Jim Swartz," she recalled. "He was a big practical joker who had a belly laugh that could be heard through the entire building. Some mornings I'd come in and find everything on my desk had been taped down or there was yellow crime scene tape tied to everything."
You can ask her to tell the story of what the staff did once to retaliate.
"It seems like we weren't so swamped back then," Nimmo said.
The college has grown tremendously since Nimmo began working here. Student enrollment grew by 45 percent between the fall of 2001 and the fall of this year to a record 3,163 students, and the number of faculty and staff has increased, too. She has also seen new policies and guidelines implemented each year by both the college and the university as well as changes in the college structure and leadership.
"I am glad to have had the opportunity to play a small, supporting role in the goals to improve the college as a whole over the years, and I look forward to the years to come," she said.
Nimmo next worked as administrative office supervisor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Counseling and Foundations, which has since been eliminated with its programs moved to other departments. That was also when she began working with John Murry, then interim department head.
When Nimmo moved to the dean's staff six years ago after Murry's appointment as associate dean for administration, she was the only member of his staff. In addition to budgetary affairs for the college, they handled personnel matters, management of facilities, inventory and information systems. In the years since, additional personnel have been hired to handle the growing needs of the college in each of those areas.
Nimmo coordinated the moving of the Boyer Center for Student Services from Peabody Hall to the Graduate Education Building in 2004 and the move of some faculty and staff from Grad Ed to Peabody around the same time to consolidate curriculum and instruction personnel in Peabody. Then in the spring of this year, she coordinated the move of faculty and staff in conjunction with the elimination of ELCF and relocation of research personnel to West Avenue Annex, where the college shares office space with other university entities. She worked with department heads and center directors on those projects, arranging for facilities management personnel to do the work as quickly and with as little inconvenience as was possible.
The men and women who work in facilities management look for Nimmo when they come to Grad Ed for a work assignment, although keeping up with building maintenance is no longer one of her main responsibilities. She's known many of the facilities management folks for years, keeping up with news about their families and sharing events in her life.
Now, Nimmo works primarily with faculty members, reviewing travel requests and maintaining records for all EDUC budgetary units and departments except IMRS and some remote locations. Like the other accountants on staff, Nimmo helps faculty and staff members stay within state, university and college policies on spending. She provides monthly budget reports but encourages people not to hesitate to call if they need an update between reports.
"The budget reports are a month behind so sometimes people need to know what money has been committed and what they have left," she said. "I'm happy to help any time, just call."
"I miss working with students. That was rewarding to do something to help them, but I get the same sense of reward when I'm able to accomplish a task to help a faculty member, co-workers or another desk administrator."
Born in Texas, Nimmo moved with her family to Fayetteville when she was 5 and then to West Fork when she was in the ninth grade. She graduated from West Fork High School and now lives in Goshen. Her parents live in Springdale.
Nimmo and her husband, Mike, recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary with a weeklong road trip. They enjoy being outdoors, traveling and geocaching and take some daytrips on a motorcycle.
The Nimmos work together at home, mowing about half of their 20 acres along with some adjoining property owned by elderly neighbors, and refurbishing a 19th century barn. Though neither are carpenters, they're doing the work themselves, using wood salvaged from another old barn they tore down. They used rocks from that barn's foundation in landscaping on their property.
The Nimmos have three sons. The eldest is on active duty with the Air Force in Nebraska. In his job maintaining aircraft equipment, he recently received a promotion that may require him to fly as a member of the crew with the president on Air Force One. He and his wife have a daughter, 2 ½.
The middle son also served in the military, spending 10 months in Fallujah, Iraq, with the Marines. The youngest son will graduate from college with a biology degree in May, after which he will be commissioned into the Marine Corps.
In choosing to serve their country, the three boys followed in the footsteps of their father, who was a Marine.
"I'm proud of all of them and of anybody who takes the role of serving in the military," Nimmo said, "but it wouldn't have been my first choice for them. One took my advice and got a college degree first."
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