Just as every year new students arrive and old ones depart, the same goes for Eastern faculty and staff.

All saying goodbye to Eastern this fall are: Registrar clerk Vesta McLain; University Court apartment manager Doris Hamilton; Peace Meal senior nutrition program dietician Leona Lucas; department of health studies office manager Jeanette Wilson, and the business office’s Dave Horsman.

Each has seen many changes during their tenure at Eastern, and some of the greatest changes have come in the form of technology like the computer and new online registration Banner system.

Technology changed their life at Eastern

McLain, clerk in the Registrar Office since May 1978, said the computer has changed her work environment as well.

McLain, born in Mattoon and raised in Humboldt, said there is far less foot traffic than there used to be.

“The students register on their own computer,” McLain said. “We used to have lines clear up the stairway (of McAfee gym).”

Hamilton, a Charleston native and Eastern graduate in education, has dealt with over 13,000 students during her time at Eastern. She has managed University Court apartments since 1979, when it was still the privately owned Regency Apartments.

She said the facility changed for the better when Eastern purchased it in 1990.

“When the university purchased it, it was very nice to have the help of the university police, carpenters and electricians and painters,” Hamilton said.

Her job became easier since the university took over.

“The students realized they’re on campus housing and knew what the student conduct code required (living in university housing),” she said.

She also said the student activity has also changed a great deal since the building was private housing. Hamilton said student behavior is, in fact, much calmer than it used to be.

“It was a different era of activity (in 1979),” Hamilton said. “That’s as far as I want to go with that.”

Lucas a 30-year veteran of Eastern’s Peace Meal program and an alumnus herself, has also noticed great changes since the 1970s as well.

Lucas has transitioned from student to part-time employee to the full-time Peace Meal dietician.

The Mattoon resident and earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern.

Peace Meal is a program that provides meals for senior citizens through a grant sponsored by the School of Family and Consumer Sciences. She started as a part-time activities director, and later became an assistant director as the program, which covers 14 counties, and continues to grow.

Once she completed the necessary requirements, she became the program’s dietician.

“The number of meals we were doing was increasing, and we were beginning to open our own program-operated kitchen, and I became the dietician,” Lucas said.

In the Health Studies office, Wilson, an Eastern alumnus has been learning the system as she began work there in Sept. 1986. She said the ever-changing system made her job very stressful at times.

“It’s an on-the-job learning process,” Wilson said. “You’re required to keep up (with your work) while you’re learning.”

As the general receptionist, she was the only staff person and the “total office manager,” working alongside the department chair.

Not only technology has changed during the tenure of the recent retirees.

When Horsman began work in the business office, the technology he worked with was very different than today.

“When I started here the only thing I had to use was the calculator, now we use computers,” Horsman said. “When I first started working here we had mainframe systems to do our accounting and billing.”

Horsman graduated from Eastern in 1969 with a degree in mathematics and a minor in organic chemistry. In Sept. 1985 he began work as an accountant in the Bursar’s Office at Eastern and has been an administrative assistant since then.

During his time at Eastern, Horsman worked with the financial aspect of the Banner system and remained involved with the receivable system that bills students and records payments.

“The Banner project is what took us from a mainframe environment into the client-server environment,” Horsman said. “It involves moving all the records and processes onto a different system than what we had in the past.”

Eastern still seen as a family away from home

No matter how much Eastern has changed, all five retirees are still fond of the university as they retire.

“There’s an awful lot of nice people on campus,” McLain said. “It’s sort of like a little community. People know you.”

Wilson echoed the community sentiment.

“Eastern is a great place to work,” Wilson said. “It’s like a community, and this department is like family away from home.”