Staff Spotlight:
Courtney Brown graduated from a certain university across town that happens to be Saint Augustine’s University’s archrival. But that doesn’t keep her loving her job here as technology manager for the Prezell R. Robinson Library.
“I always had a great interest working for a HBCU,” she said. She started working for the university in February 2013. “I first got the opportunity to work here as a contract employee and later and later came a full-time employee at Saint Augustine’s University,” she explained.
One thing Brown believes she brings to the table is her relative youth – she graduated from that unnamed university in 2008 so she is not much older than Saint Augustine’s students.
“I feel like I’m needed here at this institution, as far as being a young adult and being able to relate to students and guide them from any past experience,” Brown said. “I feel that I can put myself in their shoes since it was only a few years ago I was that student. Someone from my institution had to invest in me now I can give back and to help someone else that was in my shoes.”
Brown is from a small town called Mount Olive North Carolina. Her major at that university with a bear mascot was liberal studies, with a concentration in speech pathology and Audiology. She then attended graduate school at North Carolina Central University, getting her masters in library science, with a focus in academic libraries, in 2017.
Brown said she enjoys coming to her job every day. “I really cherish my time working with faculty, staff, and students. Working with students gives me an opportunity to assist in the molding of the next generation. I want to help then strive to be the best person they are meant to be.”
No matter where she got her undergraduate degree, Brown is at home at Saint Augustine’s University.
“I love the Falcon family,” she said. “We’re here to pick each other up when we fall. Being a small institution has helped to develop a more family-oriented environment.”
Brown added: “I’m going to stay at SAU as long as I am welcome and as long as I am needed here to help students.”
— Sterling Raynor
