Maher retires as associate registrar
Susan Maher
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
When Susan Maher first came to Stanford in 1972, she worked at an independent travel agency located in Tresidder Memorial Union. In the decades that followed, her career at Stanford took her from that fringe to a very central role as associate registrar for the university, a position she retired from on Friday, Nov. 14.
Aside from a few years in the 1990s when she directed a center for the study of early English women writers, Maher has held a succession of jobs on campus that deepened her understanding of the university and endeared her to an increasingly large portion of the Stanford community.
After her stint as a travel agent, Maher was hired as an administrator by Walter Falcon, then the director of the Food Research Institute, which was housed in Encina Hall. Shortly before the institute closed, Maher transferred to the Art Department, where she managed its graduate programs until the mid-1990s.
It was then that she was tapped to head the women writers center, based in Hampshire, England. Upon her return three and half years later, Maher came back to Stanford in 1999 as an assistant to then University Registrar Roger Printup. There was no leaving the Farm after that.
She was desperately needed to run the day-to-day operations in the Registrar's Office while Printup was busy heading the massive switch from the university's legacy student-information system to PeopleSoft. Another nagging concern at that critical juncture was the threat of a computer system apocalypse caused by Y2K.
"The Registrar's Office had to continue to function," Maher said last week. Printup "had to have somebody who could mind the store while he was involved with those two very large projects."
That meant overseeing personnel matters such as new hires, managing the office's budget and many other miscellaneous duties. One of the more intriguing ones stemmed from the university's obligation to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. On occasion, this meant showing up in some U.S. courtroom to confirm or deny an individual's claim that he or she attended Stanford.
"There are people out there who claim Stanford University degrees, or degrees from Harvard or Yale or Princeton, who never darkened their doors," said Maher, who responded to the majority of subpoenas for student records by phone. "Frequently, these are just routine matters. But sometimes they have entertaining components to them."
Then, when Printup eventually stepped down at the end of the 2006-07 academic year and Thomas Black took his place as the new registrar, staffers in the office were called upon to help ensure that the transition was seamless. And if it seemed that way to the rest of the university and the world, Maher surely played a big part in that.
But now, as services in the Registrar's Office launch into the 21st century, with course catalogs now available via iPhone and the creation of electronic transcripts likely to debut later this year, Maher said she sees the writing on the wall—and it's definitely in ink.
"I write with a fountain pen. I don't own a cell phone," Maher said with a laugh. "It's time for me to move on."