09/26/2006

Sally Thierbach has announced that she will retire from MTAS December 31, 2006. Her loss will be a blow to MTAS. She was kind enough to give us several months notice so we can start the recruitment process.

I know we will all miss her and I thought I'd share a little of Sally's history at MTAS with you.

She was hired by UT on April 19, 1978 in the Treasurer's Office. She transferred to MTAS as a bookkeeper on September 1, 1979. She was hired by Dr. Victor Hobday, the second MTAS executive director, and is one of the last of our staff hired by Dr. Hobday. In November 1980 she was promoted to accounting clerk and in August 1981 she was promoted to administrative services assistant.

In September 1983, Sally left MTAS for the first time to return to school full time and complete her BS. This she did and on November 1, 1987 Sally was hired for the second time by MTAS as data management specialist. She helped with our internal computers and worked with cities as they bought their first computers.

In July 1990,Sally left MTAS for the second time to accept a position as information systems analyst at St. Mary's Medical Center in Knoxville.

In November 1992, Sally was hired by MTAS for the third time. This time she was our business manager. She also returned to school to pursue a Masters degree in Human Resources Development. She was awarded the degree in 1996. Sally was promoted to training consultant in 1998 and has stayed in that position until today (or rather this December).

Her entire career with MTAS has been one of growth and devotion to service to our city customers. She helped install our first network and our first email system. She reorganized our business office. She helped create our first training program and she's worked with the curriculum for our ever expanding training program, and frankly, is one of the reasons it has expanded so fast and so much.

The only question I have is does anyone want to take a bet that Sally will be back a fourth time??