Michael McCormack, the president-elect of the UCLA Staff Assembly, discussed his plans for the assembly in a conversation with Daily Bruin contributor Ava Abrishamchian. UCLA Staff Assembly represents the interests of university employees and discusses issues of concern to provide feedback to university administration.

McCormack, who is also the assistant director for leadership and involvement for UCLA Residential Life, was elected to the staff assembly for the 2024-25 school year.

DB: What was your journey into working with Staff Assembly and through the executive board?

MM: I’ve always been involved in leadership opportunities in Residential Life. My job in Residential Life is assistant director for leadership and involvement, so I advise student government, do large scale events, and last year I was vice president of events for Staff Assembly. I completed my doctorate in 2022 in educational leadership and really wanted to put my money where my mouth is. I ask my students to step up and be leaders and to do the hard things, and I thought that I need to be able to role model that for my students as well.

Last year, I was vice president of events, where my responsibilities included the staff social that occurred last November and Meet the Leaders series with Chancellor Block, with Dean Mazziotta of UCLA Health.

When the president-elect role came up – the president track is a three-year-long role – which is president-elect first year, president your second year and past president third year – it was again an opportunity. I was thinking of my students at that time; I am as good as my students, and this is an opportunity for me to be as good as my students. I think my students inspire me every day, and this was one of those moments that I was able to really resonate with.

DB: You listed a lot of functions of the Staff Assembly and kind of your goals for it. What would you say the most important function of it is and your biggest goal for it?

MM: Considering the transition of a new chancellor coming in, I think the purpose of staff assembly is to be a communication for staff, by staff, to administration. With a new chancellor coming in, having a seat at that table for Staff Assembly and our policy-covered staff in the onboarding of the new chancellor in their acclimation to campus. That’s a really important stake that I hope that we’re able to make.

Myself and Heidi Martinez, this year’s president, have been working with interim Chancellor (Darnell) Hunt’s office and the chancellor’s transition team to hopefully stake our claim in a way that helps us create that path and communication channel between Staff Assembly and staff to the new chancellor and interim Chancellor Hunt’s offices right now.

DB: How do you plan on engaging and supporting UCLA staff members? Do you have any initiatives in mind for that as a staff assembly?

MM: Our funding and support comes from the Chancellor’s Office and various vice chancellors’ offices. With transition leadership, we don’t know what the future will really hold and what those markers are. In my appointment platform, I listed out a few different goals that I personally have for staff assembly.

I think that faithfully representing and advocating (for) UCLA staff and UCLA Health staff is really important to me and knowing who those key stakeholders in those conversations are. I got an opportunity to talk to managers in Student Affairs from a staff assembly point of view. I’ve spoken to people in Health from a staff point of view to gather feedback about their experiences and being able to hopefully leverage the privileges that I have as an administrator to better that for our staff is something that’s really important to me.

Two other really important pieces for me are that there are affinity staff assembly spaces, like the Latino Faculty and Staff (Staff and Faculty) Association, the Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association, the Black Bruin Staff and Faculty Association (Black Staff and Faculty Association), and there was an LGBT Staff and Faculty Association. There are opportunities for coalition building there to help support our staff of color and our staff of marginalized identities to find community, to feel safe, to feel heard at UCLA.

A specific goal of mine is looking over our governing documents of staff assembly. A lot of it is unnecessarily gendered, and thinking about the policies that UCLA is putting in place, like the Lived Name and (California) Gender Recognition Act. There are ways for us to align with affirming policies in that administrative space that is important to show our staff is reflected in our governing documents across identities and not just in this unnecessarily binary way.

DB: In what ways do you see the Staff Assembly contributing to students’ UCLA experience?

MM: Staff Assembly is primarily for policy-covered employees. Our employees work with students every day. It’s the staff that they supervise, the students that come into their centers or to their offices just for a question or something like that, where we can have our staff feel safe and empowered and happy. … I hope it encourages that in their (students’) day-to-day work and in their (students’) office work. Students want to work here after they graduate. They want to do research here. They want to be nurses here. They could be part of Staff Assembly after they graduate, in all the roles that they’re in. In Residential Life, we hire a number of undergrads into professional staff roles, and they step up, and they’re like, “Tell me about Staff Assembly.”

I work in Student Affairs. Students are at the center of everything that I do. They’re kind of at the heart of my values and my vision, and Staff Assembly is for employees, of course, and we’re a college, we do this for the students. It’s something that I keep in my core framework.