For those that have been forced to sit through a three hour summer course with a broken air-conditioner, Aaron Chan was one of the ones responsible for quickly rescuing the class from a near heatstroke. He has been the sr. secretary to the dean of academic affairs, Barbara Anderson, for the last four years and before that he worked as the assistant to the college president’s secretary, in the job center and the department of cooperative work experience.
“It’s great working for her (Anderson),” Chan says. “It’s a very team like atmosphere with her and I.”
Aaron deals with a lot of the issues on campus and makes sure all the classes run as smoothly as possible.
“He deals with a lot of the behind the scenes issues,” Anderson says.
He mainly deals with faculty with whatever needs they have, from not enough chairs to the heating or cooling system being unbearable to teach in.
“I consider him the face of Pierce,” Anderson says about Chan. “As soon as you walk into the Academic Affairs office; there he is ready to help.”
When Chan isn’t on campus, he spends his time with his wife and two young children, Andy and Christian. Although his home life is well-balanced, he can’t sit down for a 20-minute interview without being interrupted a few times with questions from staff and students.
Even with the constant bustling of people and phone calls, Chan seems to keep it all together.
“He has a lovely customer service attitude with the teachers, faculty and students,” Anderson says. “He really does his part to support the magic going on in the classrooms.”
The hardest part of his job varies from day to day, according to Chan. He really only deals with students when they don’t get satisfactory answers from the departments chairs and they need to set up appointments to speak to the dean directly.
Chan and Barabara have a lot on their plate, with seven departments under their responsibility including; addiction studies, psychology, English, history, humanities, the honors program, the P.A.C.E. office, modern languages, sociology, philosophy and communication studies, which used to be called speech.
Although he is constantly busy, he thoroughly enjoys what he does and it shows through his attitude.
“He is a great guy,” says Ryan Son, Sr. Office Assistant of P.A.C.E. “He has always been there for me as a friend and coworker.”
