Karen Zundel: Here Comes Troubleshooting

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR KAREN ZUNDEL IS THE EPITOME OF WHAT’S CALLED IN FORESTRY THE “UNDERSTORY.”

Winner of this year’s College of Science Outstanding Staff Award, the twenty-year veteran in what is now the School of Biological Sciences has pretty much seen it all. But to talk to her about her work, her contributions and her stamina is like pulling a sequoia out by the roots (not that anyone would dream of doing that these days). Ask her about her critical legacy in making the School run, and she reflexively refers to the faculty as the reason for SBS’s functionality and fame.

Zundel isn’t about to give away the hows, whys and wherefores of what it’s like to be the kingpin of a celebrated understory as large as that of SBS’s. The operational nexus for not only a large community, but a complex one as well, with a single admin like her supporting as many as 16 faculty members at a time while managing a team of other admins simultaneously.

Perhaps it’s the nature of the job, like a forest ranger taking care of hectares of Douglas Fir: have your influence be immeasurably felt but don’t ever be heard or seen; you aren’t the one to take that bow. That’s what it means to be the personification of the shrubs, small trees, vines, and saplings of the more visible canopy trees. And Zundel wouldn’t have it any other way. <

Read a more detailed version of this article at biology.utah.edu.