Jean Miles never liked any attention being placed on her, but she deserves some. She quietly retired this past March just as our busy clinic season was winding down.
Jean first joined the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) as extra help in 1997 assisting Patty Bingaman in the PSEP office. She worked as an Office Support Specialist for 19 years before moving into Patty’s position as Office Manager upon Patty’s retirement. The next 6 years were perhaps the roughest years with high employee turnover and helping PSEP to navigate uncharted waters during Covid, when in-person trainings were cancelled, and alternative online trainings and testing were rapidly developed. The move to online brought with it a new registration and payment system for her to learn, along with an entirely new set of client issues that she had to figure out, many of which required computer support or other technical assistance. Jean was quick to adapt and handled these shifts well. This spring, Jean made her next big move to retirement.
As the Program Facilitator for PSEP, Jean had sole responsibility for managing over 12,000 yearly attendee registrations at 35-40 training clinics. While serving as the logistic backbone of PSEP, Jean’s pragmatic approach to problem solving helped lead the program through a rapid transition to asynchronous online training courses. Moreover, her accessible personality and expertise as a frontline communicator added value to PSEP and the public perception of Extension as a whole. In 2021, Jean Miles was the recipient of the University of Illinois Extension Office Support Excellence. Additionally, she also received the University of Illinois’ Department of Crop Sciences’ B.B. Singh Award for Outstanding Staff Achievement for 2021.
It’s interesting to reflect on her career. For most of her years, she and Patty shared a small office where publications were mailed from and the phone rang constantly, yet we still somehow found time to talk about our families and life outside of work while we solved the world’s problems over coffee. How many hundreds of thousands of phone calls did Jean Miles field during her career with the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP)? How many thousands of publications did she stuff into Tyvek envelopes, attach a label she had printed, and mail out to clients? How many hundreds of training and testing clinics did she set up contracts for complete with all the details ranging from coffee to AV, so that everything was ready upon the arrival of trainers and IDOA inspectors? How many hotel banquet managers have shaken my hand at training clinics in hopes of finally meeting Jean? How many pesticide applicators knew that if they had questions about training or testing, they could just call Jean to get the help they needed in a timely fashion? A vast majority of PSEP clientele have never had a one-on-one conversation with a PSEP specialist, however, many had a conversation with Jean. We’ll never know all the answers to these questions, but one thing we do know is that although she is greatly missed her retirement is certainly well deserved.
Congratulations, Jean! We wish you an enjoyable retirement!
Pictured above: PSEP team members on Jean's last day - John Schepis, Michelle Wiesbrook, Jean Miles, and Steven Zhu. Travis Cleveland was absent. Credit: Steven Zhu.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michelle Wiesbrook provides subject matter expertise and training in pesticide safety with an emphasis on horticultural weed science. She serves as the Illinois Pesticide Review newsletter editor, collecting and organizing material; and co-coordinates social media information for the PSEP program and ensures its timely publication. Her other interests include herbicide injury and invasive species.