Office of Communications: Personnel
Sandy Tucker
From data entry clerk to typesetter to office manager to publications designer, plus a few other jobs in between, Sandy Tucker has had a hand in crafting the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Office of Communications for over 20 years.
"I've kind of made a full circle in the unit," she said. "It's been an enjoyable journey, but a hard one too."
She used to design publications by opening a typesetting machine that took up almost two walls of an office. With nine fonts to choose from, she'd pick one, slide the CD-like case back in the machine and start typing. She did this for each news article – typesetting, printing, developing, drying the negative and then spray mounting it – laying out the college's news each week.
Now she sits in front of her Dell, mousing her way to font and design choices for each manuscript that UGA Cooperative Extension specialists send her way. When she's done, she does a little HTML magic, and the publication's on the Internet.
There's more to Sandy than paper and codes. A Syracuse, New York, native by birth, she's a Georgia girl at heart. "I was born in the wrong place," she said. She now lives just outside Winterville with her boyfriend Larry and her two cats, Yashi and Tucker.
She calls herself a beginning photographer, but her "favorite thing to do is throw my photography gear in the car, roll down the windows, turn the radio up and see where the road takes me," she said.
When the road ends, she hits the skies. Her travels have taken her to Canada, Italy – "my favorite was Florence, where I got to see the real statue of David and some of Michelangelo's first works" – and France. Her future travels wish list includes Scotland, Greece and more of Italy.
Back in the States, her favorite place is the "absolutely beautiful" Crater Lake in Oregon.
And when she settles back in a chair at home, she loves to read and crochet.