Sharon Barqueiro: Working for the common good
When sociology professor Morton Weinfeld thinks of Sharon Barqueiro, "the metaphor that comes to mind is the firm hand on the rudder." It's an apt image considering her love of sailing and considering that the Barque of her name -- the name she took upon marrying Armando Barqueiro -- means boat in Portuguese.
Weinfeld, who was Barqueiro's boss from 1984 to 1990, when he chaired the sociology department, recalls how the administrative officer, who began in 1977, kept him "on his toes." Current department chair, Axel van den Berg calls her "the institutional memory of the department.
"The people nominally in charge keep changing," he said, "and someone has to have the memory. She's absolutely superb in that she has many contacts in the University and a great memory for rules and who to talk to for what."
Staying in one place for 22 years no doubt gives one a certain familiarity with the territory. But, just as a change in weather can make the best-charted waters unpredictable, Barqueiro insists that in sociology, "there's always something new."
Having started in the days of typewriters and Gestetner machines, Barqueiro, who began working at age 16 as a secretary at Sun Life, has steered her ship through various periods of automation, reduction of staff and increase in workload. She managed all this, while raising a family of five children (and frequently a stray dog or cat or two) with her motorcycle-racing travel-agent husband.
In the speech given last spring when she was awarded the Faculty of Arts Staff Excellence Award, van den Berg noted Barqueiro's "skillful management of budgets, her renovations of the departmental secretarial offices and her reorganization of the support of the department's large graduate programs."
For her part, Barqueiro is grateful to have had bosses who were flexible enough to let her exercise her own initiative and who would accommodate the needs of a working mother. That too is another reason why she hasn't gone shopping elsewhere at McGill for work.
"You know," she answers, motioning to a small table covered with photographs of her children, who range in age from four to 20, "when you have a large family, you don't want to get in over your head. Maybe in five years, I'll consider a change.
"I have flexibility in this job and that's really important in this day and age," says Barqueiro, who, with the assistance of the department, has set up an office in her Kirkland home from which she occasionally works at night.
One of the important aspects of Barqueiro's job is assuring the quality of experience at McGill for sociology graduate students. "We lost space in Leacock and I wanted the graduate students to have their own lounge, with their journals and a computer. Many of the students are international. It will make a big difference to them." Having procured $3,000 from the McGill Associates, the lounge is going ahead.
Also, important to Barqueiro are the working conditions of her staff and of herself; another recent project was the renovation of the sociology department's administration offices so that work could be handled more efficiently and in greater comfort.
"I sat in one secretary's office and said to myself: 'Why haven't they been complaining?'"
Barqueiro turns to her ergonomically designed keyboard and speaks with pride of the steps she took to research, with the help of health and safety officer Chris Lipowski, a new office layout and furniture for undergraduate program secretary Linda Power and former administrative secretary Luvana Di Francesco (now in Human Resources). Each chose the colour of her furniture.
"Everything is beige at McGill," chuckles Barqueiro, who chose dark blue for her filing cabinets, "a cool colour when under pressure."
For that project she found $20,000 in the capital alterations budget and managed to save up two years worth of the department's money allocated for capital equipment.
Five years ago, Barqueiro and her counterpart from the Department of Anthropology, Rose Marie Stano, founded the Arts Administration Group. Meeting at the same time and frequency as the departmental chairs, the group makes recommendations to the faculty. At the moment, Barqueiro is hoping to "get people to pay attention to the ergonomics" of their workplace.
"McGill's got outstanding support people and I think it's important to take care of them."
Bronwyn Chester
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