Kelly Miller had plans to work in a big-city with a downtown office in the corporate world after graduating from Eastern.

But President Lou Hencken, who was the director of housing and dining at the time, had different plans for Miller.

“He told me ever since I was a freshman in college, ‘You’re going to work with college students, this is what you’re going to do,'” Miller said. “He thought I had a knack for working with students.”

Miller started as a student worker in the housing and dining office as a freshman in 1985, and today, she is the assistant director of housing and dining.

Miller never planned on staying in her hometown of Charleston, but like many other Eastern alums, she has planted her roots around the university and community and can’t imagine leaving the place where she began her career in higher education.

“I love the university environment and I absolutely love Eastern,” Miller said. “I’ve never had a day when I woke up and said, ‘Gosh, I don’t want to go back to that place.'”

While there’s no exact number of how many Eastern alums are employed by the university, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know of one.

Steve Rich, director of alumni services, estimates that about 200 – 300 Eastern graduates are employed by the university.

“People enjoyed their time so much here, whether they were from this area or came from somewhere else, they have really developed a love for the institution,” Rich said.

Some alumni on campus include Hencken; Jill Nilsen, vice president for external relations; Mark Hudson, director of housing and dining and Ken Baker, director of campus recreation.

Baker has a long family history embedded at Eastern that drew him back to teach 20 years after graduating.

“I missed being around college students,” Baker said. “I came back to teach and that gave me my summers free.”

He used those summers to continue his career as an NFL official. The NFL took him away from the young people he liked to work with, so Baker found a compromise.

He worked at Eastern and for the NFL until 2001 when he became the director of recreation and retired from the NFL. He’s since become an NFL replay official, working on the weekends, but spending most of his time at the university that he’s known since childhood.

Baker’s father and four uncles and aunts all attended Eastern. He and his sister followed in their footsteps. Baker met his wife while at Eastern and his daughter also pursued her education here. In 2006, his granddaughter, Anna Sipes, was the Homecoming princess.

“People aren’t just professionally committed to Eastern, they’re personally committed,” Baker said. “They’re all capable of going other places but their heart keeps them here.”

Baker is active in alumni association, and was even featured on the cover of the Fall 2006 alumni magazine.

“Eastern graduates are everywhere,” he said.

On the other end of the alumni spectrum is Megan Kennedy, a spring 2006 graduate who started working as an admissions advisor just three months after graduation.

Originally from LaGrange, a western Chicago suburb, Kennedy took a liking to Eastern during her four years as an undergrad.

“I still love the town, I love Eastern,” she said.

She was interested in a recruiting job after graduation and found one in the admissions office.

“It was for sure my top choice,” Kennedy said. “It went to my advantage that I went to school here because I know a lot about Eastern.”

There’s a difference at Eastern for employees and students, she said, but her coworkers helped her make the transition and now she loves her job and the community.

“The people here are the reason I came in the first place and that’s the reason I stayed,” Kennedy said.

She uses her own love and experience as an Eastern student to recruit new students to the university.

Kennedy said she would like to continue her education but is unsure if she’ll do it at Eastern or at another university.

Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said several Eastern employees take classes at Eastern and become alums after they’re employed. Many contracts include some kind of tuition reimbursement for employees.

“Many people take advantage of that,” Lord said.

Also, more staff positions are filled by alumni than faculty positions because Eastern does not offer a doctorate program.

“We can’t immediately grow our own faculty (with doctorates),” Lord said. The university often hires faculty from the national marketplace, while staff positions are more often filled by local residents.

“So you’re drawing significantly from the local community and the community is full of Eastern alums,” Lord said. “They like the community, they settled in the community.”

That’s what happened to Charleston native, Pam Collins, the director for academic and professional development in the School of Continuing Education.

“It’s not that I didn’t intend on going other places, it just never happened,” Collins said. “I did but I always had something here that kept me around,” she said.

That something was family.

Her father was a professor at Eastern so she grew up with a sense of importance for higher education.

When she was young, she used to think about what residence hall she would live in once she got to college, even though she ended up living at home when the time came.

“I just always had a passion for education and that’s how I ended up in the field,” Collins said.

And now she’s feeding that passion at the same place it all began, her alma mater.

Mark Hudson, director of University Housing and Dining Services, Kelly Miller, assistant director of Housing and Dining, and Jody Stone, assitant director of Housing and Dining, stand in front of a window overlooking the library quad while holding their E

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