The spotlight recognizes and celebrates achievements and contributions staff make
to the successful operation of the college. This is an opportunity to acknowledge
the dedication and exemplary performance of individuals that deserve special recognition.
Adrienne McCarthy, of the Center for Health Care Ethics, is the staff spotlight selection
for the month of May.
Adrienne McCarthy does a little bit of everything for the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health
Care Ethics. McCarthy has been in the center for close to seven years. Her job entails
anything and everything to help the center run efficiently: assistant to the director(s)
(current and past), planning detailed travel for endowed chairs, managing budgets,
planning and updating course schedules, graduate assistant contracts, undergraduate
paperwork for the minor and newly implemented major, coordinating multiple annual
lectures, planning conferences (ex: SLU 200: Health and Social Justice Conference last
fall), maintaining calendars, hashing out details for international symposiums, and
much more. However, the most important of tasks is probably “customer service” which
means making sure all of the center's Ph.D. students and our faculty have a main point
of contact and someone to turn to when they need help finding an answer or solution
to any question.
Jason Eberl, Director of Health Care Ethics, said, “Adrienne is absolutely indispensable
to every domain of activity in which the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics
is engaged. From coordinating applications to our doctoral program, to maintaining
an accurate audit of our undergraduate majors and minors, to organizing the logistics
for major conferences we’ve hosted — three in 2018 alone! — Adrienne does it all with
a cool head and an ever-ready smile to greet everyone on the fifth floor of the Salus
Center. Having just taken over as director of the center this past January, Adrienne
has been my Virgil guiding me through the nine circles of Excel-hell and making sure
our financial and other resources are being optimally deployed to serve our students’
and faculty’s educational and scholarly needs. The Gnaegi Center educates over 900
students each year in Arts & Sciences, Medicine, Public Health, Nursing, Doisy, and
Law, enjoys a 100% placement of our doctoral students, and has an internationally-renowned
scholarship profile — none of which would be possible without Adrienne’s single-handed
and efficient management of the Center’s business affairs and academic records. All
of us at the Gnaegi Center are grateful without measure to Adrienne’s incomparable
skills, demeanor, and devotion to our collective mission in service of our university,
discipline, and community."
Adrienne was born and raised in St. Louis and has a master’s in advertising and marketing
from Webster University.
