Congratulations, Diane Braithwaite
May 26, 2023
This month, Diane Braithwaite, will say goodbye to friends and colleagues after spending most of her career at UVic and in the Department of Geography.
“I am eternally grateful to everyone in the department,” says Braithwaite. “I started working at UVic one week before my 18th birthday.”
Braithwaite started in the print shop (Printing Services) in 1974 but was quickly recruited by the Department of Geography in 1979. Braithwaite spent eight years tucked away in a back room of Tech Services, producing the Western Geographical Series, setting up A/V equipment for geography classes, and signing out teaching equipment to students, until 1987 when she left to start a family. After having two children, Emily and Cameron, she returned in 1989, continuing in the same position.
In 2003, when the Western Geographical Series was expected to end, the Chair at the time, Dan Smith, hired Braithwaite into the front office. Since that time, Diane has worked as the department’s Senior Secretary. Her work has involved managing departmental purchasing, running promotion and hiring processes, organizing events, coordinating final exams, supporting the department chairs in their role in a variety of ways, continuing to lend her keen editing eye to support the work of faculty members, and other administrative tasks.
She says that highlights of her career have been meeting all the wonderful people she’s worked with and for (and their families), organizing many social events for them, and attending two glorious mountain field schools in Jasper and Revelstoke.
As Braithwaite launches into retirement, her warmth, knowledge, stability, and historical departmental memory will surely be missed by everyone in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
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